"Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is."Abraham Maslow

Maslow argued - human intuitively has a natural drive to become the best possible person - in terms of both physical and mental health, including a high level of spiritual achievement.

While undertaking the journey towards achieving the best - she/he goes through the exercise of fulfilling a multiple set of needs - which Maslow argued "are arranged like a ladder in the following order"

1.Basic needs like air,water, food and sleep at the bottom.

2.Moving up progressively with safety, security and stability.

3.Followed by psychological,or social needs for belonging, love and acceptance

4.Finally esteem needs to feel achievement, status, responsibility and reputation.

Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experiencing of something: concentrate on it fully, let it totally absorb you.

Make the growth choice a dozen times a day : Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth):

Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues as to what you should think, feel, say, and so on, and let your experience enable youto say what you truly feel.

When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take responsibility. Taking responsibility is self-actualizing.

Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.

Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you want to do, no matter how insignificant they seem to be.

Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions and false notions.Learn what you are good at and what your potentialities are not.

Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and don't like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you are going, what your missionis. Opening yourself up to yourself in this way means identifying defenses--and then finding the courage to give them up.

As mentioned in Wikipedia, Maslow's thinking was surprisingly original -- most psychology before him had been concerned with the abnormal and the ill. He wanted to know what constituted positive mental health.

Humanistic psychology as his theory popularly known as - gave rise to several different therapies - all guided by the idea that people possess the inner resources for growth and healing ,and the point of therapy is to help remove obstacles to individuals' achieving this.

Author : Abhijit Kar