By Greg Dardis / Guest Editorial
My wife and I are about to welcome our third child, which means the Dardis household will soon be consumed by the endless loop of newborn care: feed, burp, change, rock, feed, burp, change, rock, rinse, repeat.
It’s the bottom level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, including “breathing, food, water, sleep, excretion.” These are matters of lengthy discussion for any new parent.
Do you remember that pyramid of needs from Psych 101? It was proposed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943, and 70 years later, it remains a central framework in developmental psychology.
Only once basic needs are met, Mr. Maslow asserted, can we fulfill more advanced ones. He identified five levels to his pyramid: physiological (think newborn); safety (employment, health, property); belonging (friendship, family, intimacy); esteem (achievement, respect from others); and self actualization (creativity, problem solving). This summit is where a person’s potential is fully actualized or achieved.
I’m fascinated by the way Mr. Maslow defined self actualization. He linked it to certain key characterizations, some more obvious than others. For instance, self-actualized people are more in touch with reality and more accepting of it. They aren’t afraid of the unknown. They are mission-oriented rather than ego-centered, focusing on causes and problems outside themselves.
A number of these characteristics involve a delicate mix of humility and confidence. Self-actualized people demonstrate a kinder sense of humor, riffing on a situation rather than a person. They’re spontaneous, unhampered by convention. This sense of security breeds a desire for occasional privacy and solitude.
Self-actualized people are occasionally swept away by peak experiences, moments when their abilities are being fully used and their horizons feel limitless, sometimes described as an “oceanic feeling.” When this happens, they’re struck by the significance of the experience, believing it will have real carry-over into everyday life.
Mr. Maslow offered high-profile examples of self-actualized people, including George Washington, Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. Though he believed that we all possess an innate desire to reach a state of self actualization, he estimated that only 2 percent of us do.
The drive to reach that state and the route to do so, Mr. Maslow explained, are less obvious than the first four levels of his hierarchy, which he classified as deficit needs. If you don’t have enough of something – food, sleep, respect, friendship – you are acutely aware of that shortage or deficit. But once you satisfy it, boom, you’re set, the bell stops ringing.
With self actualization, on the other hand, you aren’t eliminating a deficit but advancing beyond a plateau, which is why the desire to do so may not feel as acute. It’s not a matter of simple cause and effect: hungry, eat; tired, sleep. Instead, the more you have, the more you want. It’s a case of building, of going higher and higher.
This helps explain why services like the executive training can be harder to justify. Such training doesn’t feel as urgent when you’re reviewing line items of a budget. Yet it is the secret to entering that top 2 percent, the sublime state of self actualization. I encourage you to reflect on the characteristics of self actualization and press beyond the status quo. You never know what may be waiting for you.
Greg Dardis is the CEO of Dardis Inc., located at 2403 Muddy Creek Lane in Coralville. For more information, visit www.dardisinc.com.
