It seems to me the term is something that means whatever a person wants it to mean. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
It brings to my mind two concepts: self-acceptance (knowing you’re flawed and highly imperfect, but not being bummed out about it) and self-directedness (having a sense of agency while still maintaining some perspective). Good and bad things kinda-sorta just happen to all of us all the time, for no rhyme or reason. A self-actualized person knows this. But they also do what they can to manage that “randomness,” at least psychologically. So they don’t feel helpless. Self-actualized people proffer explanations for their behavior and take responsibility. But they don’t tend to say stuff like “I don’t know why I keep doing that! I’m such a dummy!” Their mental states are not a mystery to them. Which doesn’t mean they know everything about themselves. They just feel like they do and act accordingly.
What’s your definition?
Do you feel like a self-actualized person? If so, when did it happen for you?
Being comfortable in your own skin. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and taking them into account in your life decisions. Not caring what other people think of you or your opinions.
I remember in Abrams’ Battlestar Galactica that while on the radio channels, anyone on the spaceship bridge was authorized to speak as Galactica, but the ship commander would differentiate himself with the callsign Galactica Actual.
I think of a person’s emotions sort of the same way. We can and do allow any emotion to speak in our name, but when you serve as your own actual, your emotions serve you instead of the other way around. Another concept here is “locus of control” which describes the difference in attitude between those who believe they control their fate, and those who don’t. Two people will make very different things of the same situation depending on attitude.
That’s also why self-actualization is the last level of Maslow’s hierarchy. I suppose it’s possible for folks who lack food, shelter, or physical security to master their emotions and become self-actualized, but it’s damn hard.
ETA: I do not consider myself self-actualized. but I am a lot closer than I used to be. The day I realized I had anger issues and confronted it, my life took a big positive turn. When I perceive that events are outside of my locus control, I strive to either get them under my control or stop considering them as important. I have a few other emotional regulatory issues that I need to fix, but at least identifying them has been a helpful step in the right direction.
I’m not sure how I would use that word self actualized in context, so hard for me to define what it is without context. I do agree it is sort of a fuzzy insertable term for a wide range of related concepts as the OP describes. I guess I would take it as acceptance with understanding. One who sees the path so to speak and is walking it. One who has seen the illusion of the world that most people never get to see.
Damm hard or quite easy? That’s why people take pilgrimages, vision quests, etc. Once you get rid of our security blanket and still see you are very much OK, doors open up. Not that you will give up actual food/shelter/security, but you will find that what you once depended on for them was not what they were. In many ways Buddha achieved awakening this way, later on enlightenment.
Yes, this is damn hard. Achieving Buddhist enlightenment is generally regarded as the arduous work of a lifetime’s practice. They state that it is actually quite easy after practicing for 30 years, which I can only scan as Buddhist humor.
But people who do those things arem’t actually starving or homeless in any real sense. They are choosing asceticism for the sake of some higher purpose. That is not the same thing as being evicted from your apartment on the same day you lose your job. It’s very hard not to cave into emotions when you’re in a state like this.
What prompted the OP was a post I stumbled across on Reddit, written by someone bemoaning the drudgery of work and how it robs us of time we could spend on self-actualizing activities. Which sounds like so much bullshit to me. What is a “self-actualizing” activity? Playing video games for 8 hours straight, which is what lots of people would do in the absence of employment? And what’s a better way to become self-actualized, than to practice enduring unpleasantness? So in a way, I agree with you that suffering is a part of the self-actualization journey. I just don’t think it’s “quite easy”.
IMO, modern society puts time demands on us (work, family, friends) that makes it almost impossible to find enough down time to find out who we are while also being able to meet our physical needs. People in hunter gatherer societies in perfect locations (for example between Cape Town and Durban in South Africa) before the arrival of larger groups of humans would have had more than enough time to gather enough resources to thrive while also having time to develop unique cultures. Life today for the vast majority of humanity is a lifelong grind. When do many of us get to sit back and reflect on the joy of life and the beauty of our natural surroundings?
I think about life on the antebellum Southern plantation.
Who do you think were more self-actualized? The folks in the Big House being waited on hand and foot or the folks waiting on them? The guys cracking the whip? Or the folks being cracked on by whips?
Unique cultures emerged from that era. One of the most influential was created from the folks who suffered the most. The ones who literally slaved away the most and were brutalized the most. The folks were not allowed to experience the world around them because they were told they were no better than animals.
So I think this is why I find my eyes rolling just a little when people make contemporary work culture to be some horrible, life-denying thing like nothing that has ever existed before. I agree that work culture (especially American work culture) is often very toxic. But it’s toxic for reasons that have nothing to do with self-actualization, in my opinion. Suffering oppressed folks throughout history have been able to tap into wells of joy and resiliency to create beautiful things, including other people. I can buy the idea that people are having a hard time feeling self-actualized than they might have in the past. I just don’t think the nature of employment today all by itself is to blame for this.
My hunch is that it has something to do with the values we’ve been instilled with in conjunction with other factors. At least in the US, we’ve pathologized “non-happiness” to a stupid degree. People think there’s something wrong with themselves or their lives unless they’re happy.
The reason I used hunter gatherers living isolated in an abundant environment was because while they worked to gather food and clothing they were free of the worries and anxieties of day to day life. They knew the resources they needed to survive would as far as they knew always be there. That gave them a stress free environment to build a community based not on fear nor resentment but on sharing. Not that there wouldn’t have been fights and disagreements between its members, but the stakes would be much lower.
I agree that the idea of work in the modern world is important. It helps develop self respect and independence. We just don’t have the same sense of innate security that earlier people had and it’s more difficult to find that kind of happiness.
Yes enlightenment may be damm hard, and I did mention it, however what I said he accomplished this way was awakening, which is not so hard, it’s a moment of realization and many people have accomplished it, many more have not, but this is where Maslow’s pyramid has to be destroyed and rebuild.
I think ones finds during this process that one does not need to suffer, that leaning is part of the journey. We also see this in the apostle Paul’s writings where he rejoices at times that would make us cry.
And yes, though I have taken several pilgrimages and given up much of the securities and comforts of life, I always has that credit card to take me back to the world at any moment I chose. The funny thing is some people get lost on such pilgrimages and don’t leave them.
As for the work robbing time, I have found that if you are doing what you are meant to be doing work is enjoyable and fulfilling, it adds to self actualizing (whatever that really means). And most importantly your needs will be provided for. This is opposite what most working people are doing, either focused on gaining money or working to keep their head above water. Those people I believe are the ones that need to make leap of faith to ‘awaken’
This was always one of my sticking points with Maslow’s Hierarchy. Technically, the Achievement phase required setting goals for oneself. If you stop setting goals, are you self-actualized or have you dropped back down to Healthy Relationships? If constant goal setting is a prerequisite for self-actualization, can anyone actually reach that lofty height?
Deliberately not reading the thread to be able to answer the question unsullied, “self-actualized” means (to me) that the person has spent some time reading self-help stuff, and has decided that they’re going to consciously declare their own status. Like, “I am great, because I am saying so!”
Now, off to read the thread and find out how wrong I am.
Based on the world’s shortest, most incomplete google, you’re self-actualized when you’re doing the things you’re good at to your full potential. So I am not self-actualized, because I have the capability of writing at least five more novels, writing several hundred thousand lines of code, watching every movie and TV show ever made, reading every book ever written, and collecting far more lego sets than I currently do. Just, not all at the same time, so I don’t accomplish any of them to the fullest, and am doomed to be a failure forever.
Seems to me that the only way to be properly self-actualized is to be only any good at/interested in one thing. Thus you can devote yourself fully to that activity and do it to the limits if your ability. But the moment you like two things, you are the master of none.
My planned answer was something along these lines. Self-actualization is acceptance that unhappiness and boredom are not altogether bad (nor are they personal failures).
It means the speaker knows all the currebtly fashionable buzz-words, and uses then instead of plain old-speak which everyone understands. Unless there is something new under the sun.
I’ve only ever seen the phrase in the context to Maslow’s pyramid, and I never did have any clue as to what Maslow himself thought he meant by that. I always assumed it was just some vacuous new-agey buzz-think. Of course, ever since then all the new-agey buzz-thinkers have glommed onto it and have taken it as some kind of elusive holy grail that, I suppose, you will only know when you find it.