10 Characteristics Of People Who Have Reached Self Actualization

A Theory of Human Motivation

‘I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.’

What I love about Abraham Maslow’s work is that he fundamentally believed in the power and the potential of the human being. He saw our true potential as not just a distant goal, but rather the realization of that potential in each of us at any given point.

In one sense, the mind of a child is, to a degree, self-actualized. Take for example a kindergarten classroom.

If you walk into a class of kindergartners and ask them who the strongest person in the class is, they will all raise their hands “knowing” without a doubt that it is, in fact, themselves.

Take that same class a year or two later and ask them the same question, and they will likely all point to one individual in the class who they now see as the strongest kid in the class.

The beginning to self-limitation and societal norms.

This is an example of our perceived weaknesses that as children go unnoticed. They have yet to learn of their weaknesses and envision their potential at an actualized level.

It is the plight of humankind to compare, contrast, and become victims of our lives instead of directors. We instead grow an inner-critic, believe fallacies about ourselves and the world, and hinder ourselves from reaching the potential we were given at birth.

Maslow developed what he called, The Hierarchy of Human Needs. That is the widely known pyramid image we’ve all seen in psych 101 classes. An individual cannot reach self-actualization without each of the steps in the pyramid for reasons that will become obvious.