Dr. Abraham Maslow coined the term “Self-Actualization” as the pinnacle in the hierarchy of human needs. Dr. Maslow summed up the concept as;

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This is the need we may call self-actualization ... It refers to man's desire for fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming ..."

Have you ever wonder why achievers have been able to accomplish much more in life compared to the non-achievers? The real difference is achievers have the ability to self-actualize much more in life than the non-achievers. On a most basic level, achievers and non-achievers are required to satisfy their needs for food, water, and air. It is only when these basic needs are met that they can turn their thoughts to higher needs, such as love and acceptance.

As each of these needs is fulfilled, some of them reach a point of restlessness. It is at this point that they begin to seek higher goals of personal fulfillment. They attempt to grow beyond what they currently are and they strive to fulfill their highest potential. This is what Maslow termed self-actualization.



It is through self-actualization, achievers seek personal fulfillments in life. Achieving this state of fulfillment, however, involves more than having success in the workplace or the admiration of others. It is a goal that achievers want to achieve through different methods and with drastically different results to achieve a more holistic life.

The flaws with under-achievers are they are often obsessed about their goals and leave behind other matters which are vitally important. If they are dominated by a higher need, this higher need will seem to be the most important of all. It then becomes possible, and indeed does actually happen, that they may, for the sake of this higher need, put themselves into the position of being deprived in a more basic need. When their basic needs are being derived, they no longer can fulfill the next stages of self-actualization to their full potential to be the best they can ever be.

As for achievers, they have an internal natural drive to become the best possible they ever can be. They have within them a pressure toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous expressiveness, toward full individuality and identity, toward seeing the truth rather than being blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot more. That is they believe that they are so constructed that they press toward good values, serenity, kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness.

Some profound and interesting characteristics from our research of achievers who have self-actualized have the following findings. Their interpersonal relations are profound and intimate. They are capable of greater love than others consider possible. They seemed to have the ability to demonstrate benevolence, affection and friendliness to everyone. When coming to learning, they are able to learn from anyone humbly regardless of class, education, political belief, race or color. They do not confuse between means and ends. They do not do wrong, enjoying the here and now, getting to goal--not just the result. They make the most tedious task an enjoyable game. They have their own inner moral standards appearing amoral to others. They love to joke and they use jokes as their teaching metaphors, intrinsic to the situation, spontaneous, and can laugh at themselves without cracking jokes that hurt others. They have inborn uniqueness that carries over into everything they do, see the real and true more easily, original, inventive and less inhibited. They are painfully aware of their own imperfections, joyfully aware of own growth process. They have philosophical acceptance of the nature of his self, human nature, social life, nature, physical reality, remains realistically human.

With this deeper understanding and knowledge of the profiling of achievers, under-achievers will then have this bigger capacity to motivate themselves to realize their goals. It will also oblige them to actively work toward self realization and respond to the call that a value makes on them. This whole discussion shows the importance of studying Values and Ethics in being an achiever. Under-achievers have to discover their range of possible moral behavior and success characteristics to model after and improve upon if they are working after their goals toward personal fulfillment.

By Sean Toh

www.creditplushealth.com

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