3 Ways to know if you are your own person
Abraham Maslow the renowned 20th Century psychologist, proposed a theory of human behavior that is primarily driven by “needs” – The need for food, shelter, safety, security, love, acceptance, esteem, confidence, and respect. The needs actually fall in a hierarchy of needs. The bottom of the pyramid are your basic physical needs, and as you graduate up the pyramid as the needs become increasing less physical and more emotional, mental, spiritual and metaphysical.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is represented as a pyramid that starts with the most basic physiological needs at the bottom and becomes increasingly more self-aware and self-actualizing as you reach the top. Picture credit: By User:Factoryjoe (Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs.svg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Maslow’s theory maintains that the ultimate need for a human being is to reach “self-actualization”. There are thousands of descriptions of self-actualized people, and we could give great examples of them like Oprah Winfrey, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa, but to put it succinctly, a self-actualized person typically has all of their physical, safety, love, and esteem needs well met (whether they are actually wealthy or not). Although this is not true in all cases. You could say the self-actualized person is no longer worried about basic needs, but rather they are driven by their personal need to evolve and fulfill their life’s purpose or mission. One time someone asked Maslow, “How do you if know if you are self-actualized?” Maslow responded with the following:
“The Self-Actualized Person:
- Is independent of the good opinion of others
- Lets go of ALL outcomes [positive and negative]
- Is free from the need for power over others.”
Wow. One of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century basically said that to find your ultimate self, you need to let go of outside opinions, control, and power over others. Funny, isn’t that precisely what we seek? To have a good opinion of ourselves, greater control over the outcomes of our lives, and the desire for other people to do all the things we want them to do for us? Thinking about letting go of these paradigms is downright scary – to be honest. However, it makes so much sense, that we can’t begin to realize our greatest potential, nor fulfill our ultimate purpose until we uncuff ourselves from opinion, control, and power.
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