Self-Actualization

The fifth rung of the self-care ladder

Are you living your best life?

Am I living my best life?

Self-actualization involves fulfilling your potential and happiness which leads to personal growth.

Maslow defines self-actualized people as having the following qualities:

Superior reality perception, allowing accurate judgement of others and accepting uncertainty and ambiguity
More tolerance of self and of others
Greater appreciation and complex emotional reactions
Increased identification with others
Increased creativity
Higher frequency of peak experiences

Assessing your own peak experiences

What is a peak experience?

Maslow defines a peak experience as a moment in life where everything is perfect. you are so caught up in the moment that time seems to stop and everything falls into place. These are your best moments and their memory stays with you.

Maslow says "any person in any of the peak experiences takes on temporarily many of the characteristics which I found in self-actualizing individuals. That is, for the time they become self-actualizers". You possess many of the qualities listed above during a peak experience.

Maslow says peak experiences can present themselves if you experience:

Changed views of yourself in a healthy direction (esteem)
Changed views of other peoples (esteem)
Changed worldview
Greater creativity, spontaneity, expressiveness, and idiosyncrasy
A feeling that life in general is worthwhile, even if it's usually drab, pedestrian, painful, or ungratifying

Read this prompt from Maslow:

I would like you to think of the most wonderful experience or experiences in your life; happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love, or from listening to music or suddenly "being hit" by a book or a painting, or from some great creative moment. First, list these. And then try to tell me how you feel in such acute moments, how you feel differently from the way you feel at other times, how you are at the moment a different person in some ways. Toward a Psychology of Being, 3rd Edition 3rd Edition

Identify and then record the most wonderful experiences of your life
Record how you felt in these precise moments. Be as specific as possible. Consider especially what felt different from how you feet at other, more mundane times of your life.

Flow

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discusses flow in his writings and describes it as moments when you're so deeply engaged in an activity that everything around you disappears and you lose track of time.

The 8 Characteristics of Flow

Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:

Complete concentration on the task;
Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
Effortlessness and ease;
There is a balance between challenge and skills;
Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
There is a feeling of control over the task.

Flow_The_Psychology_of_Optimal_Experience.pdf

8 Ways To Create Flow According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [+TED Talk]Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes 'Flow' as a psychological state of complete absorption in the current experience. Read all about flow theory here.

8 Ways to Create Flow

Finding your flow

Start by making sure all previous levels of your self-care needs are met.
Determine when you experience flow. Are you reading, dancing, playing a games, teaching a certain lesson, planning a presentation, participating in a hobby?
Write down your moments of flow. Do these moments have similarities?
Are there common characteristics that help you arrive at these moments of flow?

Tolerance of Self and Others

"The highest result of education is tolerance”

― Helen Keller

Tolerance involves the willingness to accept others' behaviors and opinions, which do not necessarily agree with our own.

Become more tolerant of yourself, learn how to be kinder to yourself and others, promote positive thinking, and listen carefully to your thoughts and feelings.

Diversity and Tolerance Starts with Mindful Self-AcceptanceTolerance of others helps us to accept diversity. This starts with ourselves. However, often we don’t accept our own emotions and thoughts. In other words, we are not tolerant of ourselves. So how can we accept others? Mindfulness is a powerful practice to help us learn self-acceptance and self-compassion

Thrive Global

Self-Actualization Strategies

Living the best life means having passion, vision, goals, dreams, a strong sense of what you want in life, and challenges you may face, and how to overcome these obstacles, to live happily, and accomplish your success.

Choose work you love whether it is for your career or something personal
Choose tasks that are challenging, but achievable and take time
Find your best time
Remove distractions
Train yourself to stay focused
Have a to-do list
Manage your time well
Write down your goals
Follow your passion
Develop positive habits
Exercise more

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