When I was a kid in the backwoods of Georgia - no that is not a picture of me but a good likeness - I wanted to be a singer, a dancer, an artist, a writer, a movie star - my imagination took me to all kinds of wonderful places and even though I had never heard of the idea of self actualization, I knew in my soul what it was all about. It might not have looked like a great life to some, but as I said in my last post, it was beautiful to me. All my basic needs were met and so I could use my imagination to dream and dream big - so I did.
Then when I was in college back in the late seventies I learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which says that we have basic needs that must be met before we can go on to higher levels of functioning, but that if these basic needs are not met we won't be reading Maslow, much less Kant, or Jung or wondering about making some high minded contribution to the greater good. In fact, what we will be doing is simply trying to survive. But that once we meet our basic survival needs we will move on to love and belonging and then to esteem needs which usually means some kind of place in the world of work or career or for women, remember he was writing back in the forties - creating and raising a family.
In American culture, most of these things are usually accomplished somewhere in midlife and that’s where things tend to get bogged down. Maslow’s last stage of development is what he calls self- actualization and he said, this was back in the mid 1940’s, that only about 17% of the population ever gets to this stage. According to Maslow, most people get to the esteem stage and hang out there for the rest of their lives.
Fast forward 70 years; I began to wonder if this number had increased and what I found, by and large is that the majority of Americans are still, as a society, stuck at the esteem stage of human growth and development - just as they were back in 1943 - which translates in practice to a focus on status, money, property and security – what Boldt calls the Little King way of life. We can all live in our little kingdom being masters of our lives. But then what? According to Maslow, once we have reached a certain level, a kind of discontent rolls in and we feel - well, discontented. Now what? Most of the time this discontent shows up once you have met all the challenges of middle adulthood and are more or less on autopilot. You’re doing your thing and doing it pretty well, now what? - again, that question. Add to that the increased life expectancy of another twenty to thirty years longer than our parents and grandparents lived and I find many people seeking happiness and fulfillment through the hedonic treadmill, that is, pleasuring themselves to death. In other words, you’ll use your money, your accomplishments, your status, your sense of having earned these rewards as tools to increase your pleasure and fun in life. Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast, as a way of life, pleasure turns out to be not nearly as satisfying or gratifying as using your gifts and talents in a way that serves more than your own personal pleasure and comfort. After awhile, the little king begins to feel sickly and bored with all that fun and pleasure. It turns out that Maslow was on to something, in order to feel really satisfied with your life you need to keep growing, learning and contributing to the greater good in an ever- increasing trajectory by challenging yourself to be the best person you can be, given your gifts and talents and then to use them in service to something greater than your own personal pleasure and comfort.
Midlife and beyond is the time when this becomes clear – it is the time when many of your earlier challenges have been met and you are now at a place where you need to take on some new challenges, some new growth, some new ways of being in the world. Resting on your laurels may feel good for a while, but eventually you will begin to feel that restlessness that Maslow talked about.
Midlife and beyond is the perfect time to stop and listen to your heart, your soul and see if a message about who you are and what you are here to do is being sent. I call this your soul’s call and everyone of us, if we listen, will hear that still small voice telling us what we need to do next and it doesn’t require an all expense paid trip around the world to eat, pray and love in order to hear that voice. You can hear it right in the comfort of your own home, or maybe I should say, discomfort of your own home, as that is what usually happens, you begin to feel discomfort and discontent with where you are and what you are doing, but calling up a travel agency and booking a flight to Italy, is not, in most cases, what that voice is telling you to do.
Self-actualization then is about becoming the best person you can be with the gifts and talents you have been given and midlife and beyond is the perfect time to do this. In most cases you have the time and the money to do it. You have the self-esteem to do it as well and you have the discontent of a repetitive life of pleasuring yourself as a message that life is more than another golf game, another night out with the girls or the latest handbag from that upscale designer you just read about In Style Magazine.
This is the time of sitting quietly with yourself and listening for the call of your soul. Self actualization also means using those gifts and talents for more than simply self indulgence of your every whim and desire, it is to use yourself in service to something with more purpose and mission than your own little king life. I believe we all have something to contribute, whether this is small or grand.
I took a course in Authentic Happiness Coaching from Martin Seligman who wrote the book Authentic Happiness and in the course he said there were three kinds of “happy” lives.
First the Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, the Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then re-crafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, the Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.
If you want to be a self actualizing person and I hope all who read my blog fall into that category, then the only life to aspire to is the meaningful one. The meaningful life is a self actualizing life and by the way, I say self actualizing as no one is fully self actualized until they move out of this temporal life and into the truly spiritual one beyond this one and even then, who knows, maybe you come back and again and do some more work, as the reincarnation folks believe. But while you are here, I suggest the idea of challenging yourself to be your best self, is the only way to go.
