Self-actualizers

Self-actualizers, he noted, shared a unique ability to engage in moments in which they felt truly alive, creative, and integrated.  Maslow described eight elements of self actualization:

1. Total absorption. Th is element represents the ability to experience key events fully, vividly, and selflessly, with complete concentration.
2. Growth choices. Life is a process of choices, one aft er another, between safety (out of fear and the need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth).
3. Self-awareness. Your thoughts and actions should be in tune with your authentic self instead of merely conforming to your culture. Self-awareness allows you to understand and identify the distinction.
4. Honesty. When practiced by self-actualizers, honesty goes beyond telling truths to others and means looking within yourself and taking responsibility for your actions.
5. Intuition. You cannot count on making wise decisions unless you dare to listen to your intuition. As a self-actualizing trait, intuition is as much about having instincts as it is about having the courage to follow them.
6. Self-development. Making real one’s potential is a never-ending process. For each of us to move forward, we must always be in a state of development and avoid “resting on our
laurels.”
7. Peak experiences. Th e conditions for these transient moments of self-actualization can be set up so that they are more likely to occur.
8. Lack of ego defenses. Maslow felt that we build walls to protect ourselves but that instead they hem us in. We must first identify our internal defenses and then fi nd the courage to give them up.