Maslows Hierarchy of Needs explains all human behavior.

Abraham Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people.
He identified four categories of basic needs, and their hierarchy, from most basic:

1. Physiological
2. Safety
3. Love / Belonging
4. Esteem

and gave details (see graphic below).

He said that all people seek to meet whatever basic need they are lacking. Hence whatever a person
does, it is because they are trying to fill one of these needs.

Once all your Basic Needs are met, a person will seek what Maslow calls:

Self-actualization.

Maslow believed that man has a natural drive to healthiness, or self-actualization. He believed that man
has basic needs that have to be fulfilled in order to be free enough to feel the desire for the higher levels
of realization. He also believed that the organism has the natural, unconscious, and innate capacity to
seek its needs. In other words, man has an internal, natural, drive to become the best possible person he
can be.

"...he has within him a pressure toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous
expressiveness, toward full individuality and identity, toward seeing the truth rather than being
blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot else. That is, the human being is so
constructed that he presses toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity,
kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness." (Maslow, 1968, p. 155.)

CHARACTERISTICS

Whether famous or unknown, educated or not, rich or poor, self-actualized people tend to fit the
following profile:

Realistic
Self Acceptance
Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness
Focus on External Problem
Detachment: The Need for Privacy
Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment
Peak experiences
Interpersonal relations
Democratic values and attitudes
Discrimination: means and ends, Good and Evil
Philosophical, un-hostile sense of humor
Creativity
Imperfections
Values
Resolution of dichotomies

In summary, self-actualizers feel finally themselves, safe, not anxious, accepted, loved, loving, and alive,
certainly living a fulfilling life.

As potential models of a self-actualized person, Dr. Maslow identified the following historical figures:
Abraham Lincoln (in his last years), Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington,
Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, William James, Spinoza, Goethe, Pablo Casals, Pierre Renoir, Robert
Browning, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jan Addams, Albert
Schweitzer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Haydn, and others.

Maslow says there are two processes necessary for self-actualization: self-exploration and action. The
deeper the self-exploration, the closer one comes to self-actualization.

EIGHT WAYS TO SELF ACTUALIZE

1. Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experiencing of
something: concentrate on it fully, let it totally absorb you.
2. Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense)
and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.
3. Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues as to what you should think, feel,
say, and so on, and let your experience enable you to say what you truly feel.
4. When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take
responsibility. Taking responsibility is self-actualizing.
5. Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.
 6. Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you want to do, no matter how
insignificant they seem to be.
7. Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions and false notions. Learn what
you are good at and what your potentialities are not.
8. Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and don't like, what is good and what
is bad for you, where you are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up to yourself in this
way means identifying defenses--and then finding the courage to give them up.

Characteristics of Self Actualizing People, with explanations:

Realistic
Realistically oriented, a Self-Actualizing (SA) person has a more efficient perception of reality,
and has comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life. A Self-Actualizing
person is unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown. He has a superior ability to reason, to
see the truth, and is logical and efficient.

Self Acceptance
Accepts himself, others and the natural world the way they are. Sees human nature as is, has a
lack of crippling guilt or shame, enjoys himself without regret or apology, and has no
unnecessary inhibitions.

Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness

Spontaneous in his inner life. Thoughts and impulses are unhampered by convention. His
ethics are autonomous, and Self-actualizing individuals are motivated to continual growth.

Focus of Problem Centering

A Self-actualizing person focuses on problems and people outside of himself. He has a mission
in life requiring much energy, as it is his sole reason for existence. He is serene, characterized by
a lack of worry, and is devoted to duty.

Detachment: The Need for Privacy

The Self-actualized person can be alone and not be lonely, is unflappable, and retains dignity
amid confusion and personal misfortunes, all the while remaining objective. He is a self starter,
is responsible for himself, and owns his behavior.

Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment

The SA person has a fresh rather than stereotyped appreciation of people and the basic good in
life. Moment to moment living for him is thrilling, transcending, and spiritual as he lives the
present moment to the fullest.

Peak experiences
"Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more
powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and
awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something
extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent
transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow

Interpersonal relations
Identification, sympathy, affection for mankind, kinship with the good, bad, and ugly are all
traits of the SA person. Truth is clear to him as he can see things others cannot. He has
profound, intimate relationships with few and is capable of greater love than others consider
possible as he shares his benevolence, affection, and friendliness with everyone.
Democratic values and attitudes
The SA person is able to learn from anyone, is humble and friendly with anyone regardless of
class, education, political belief, race or color.

Discrimination: means and ends, Good and Evil

The SA does not confuse between means and ends and does no wrong. He enjoys the here and
now, getting to goal--not just the result. He makes the most tedious task an enjoyable game and
has his own inner moral standards (appearing amoral to others).

Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor

Jokes to the SA person are teaching metaphors, intrinsic to the situation and are spontaneous.
He can laugh at himself, but he never makes jokes that hurt others.

Creativity
The SA person enjoys an inborn uniqueness that carries over into everything he does, is original,
inventive, uninhibited, and he sees the real and true more easily.

Resistance to enculturation: Transcendence of any particular culture

SA people have an inner detachment from culture. Although folkways may be observed, SA
people are not controlled by them. Working for long term culture improvement, indignation
with injustice, inner autonomy, outer acceptance, and the ability to transcend the environment
rather than just cope are intrinsic to SA people.

Imperfections
SA people are painfully aware of their own imperfections and joyfully aware of their own growth
process. They are impatient with themselves when stuck and feel real life pain as a result.

Values
The SA person is realistically human due to a philosophical acceptance of self, human nature,
social life, physical reality, and nature.

Resolution of dichotomies
Polar opposites merge into a third, higher phenomenon as though the two have united;
therefore, opposite forces are no longer felt as conflict. To the SA person work becomes play
and desires are in excellent accord with reason. The SA person retains his childlike qualities yet
is very wise.

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