PNTV: Motivation and Personality by Abraham Maslow (#4)

Foreign. Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we are going to focus one of my absolute favorite teachers, a guy named Abraham Maslow. This is his book Motivation and Personality. It's kind of like a textbook in a lot of ways. We're going to use the Note of course, as our guide. Six page PDF. We're going to focus on a chapter in there on self actualizing people. So Abraham Maslow in my spiritual family tree, he's kind of like my great grandfather. So we got my great grandfather Abraham Maslow, I got my grandfather Joseph Campbell, I got a bunch of guys kind of in the spiritual father position. Then we go way back and we've got Buddha and Lao Tzu and Confucius and all those great teachers. And then we've got crazy Uncle Nietzsche in there and Ayn Rand. Crazy Ayn Rand in there. That's my spiritual family tree. And Abraham Maslow is extraordinary. And his thought that what we can be, we must be is one of the most formative ideas in my own philosophy. This idea that there's an impulse within us that's driving us to fully express ourselves. And he called that the need to self actualize. And you might be familiar with his hierarchy of needs. So you imagine this triangle and he described for us a hierarchy of needs that we all tend to go through, roughly speaking, where there's basic needs of literally oxygen and food and security. Then we move up into self esteem and love needs. And as we meet these needs we kind of escalate into higher and higher needs that move into this idea of self actualization. So in this book and in this note, what we do is we profile the 19 characteristics of the self actualizing individual. And I want to go over some of them really quickly. Really powerful idea. The first thing I want to point out is the fact that this is a need, the need to self actualize. It's not like a nice to have oh, wouldn't that be sweet kind of thing. It's an actual need and I like to describe it as, you know, if you don't eat for a while, you have a need to eat. You'll notice that pretty shortly if you haven't eaten in a matter of days, right? You can go so far without food, you can go so far without water. But if we're not actualizing, it's almost like our soul doesn't have oxygen, right? And if we don't have oxygen in our physical lives, you know about that immediately. Well, same thing when we're self actualizing. If we're not expressing ourselves. It's almost like our soul is gasping for air. So really powerful idea to look at it as a need. And he says that this need to self actualize how it expresses itself will be different for everybody. For some people it will be a need to become an excellent parent and to really give themselves to the world that way. For others, it's being an artist. For, for others, it's being a writer or an entrepreneur or whatever it is. It's all going to be different for each of us. But the need is fundamental and that need is generalizable across all of us. Then he's got this really cool idea. He says that in any given moment we have two options. We can either step forward into growth or we can step back into safety. So forward into growth, back into safety. And I like to think of it like this. Imagine a line here and you got 0 in the middle. And then you've got negative 1, negative 2, negative 3, negative 4, negative 5, negative 1 million, right? Then you've got plus 1, plus 2, plus 3, plus 4, plus 5, plus 1 million. It's a nice little continuum here. Now, in any given moment, we have a choice. We can step forward into growth or we can step back into safety. And I like to think of it as kind of like a plus one. You step forward, you get a plus one, you step backwards, you get a negative one. Now, the interesting thing to note here is that if you decide to go backward and you're at negative one, you could have been at plus one. So there's actually a difference of two units, right? And then if you go backwards again, you could have been here. And you go backwards again, you could have been here, you go backwards again, you could have been here. There gets, there grows this huge gap between what you're capable of doing and what you're actually doing. And if there's a gap between what you're capable of doing, what you're actually doing in that gap is where regret and anxiety and depression and stress exist. So what we want to do is close the gap. If we close the gap between what we're actually doing and what we're capable of doing, extraordinary things happen. Starting with we feel really good because there's no room for the regret and anxiety and depression and disillusionment. We when every moment we're stepping forward into growth, we're stepping forward into the highest expression of ourselves. And of course we're never going to do that every moment. But then in the moment, as we reflect on it, we have a choice. We can step forward into growth and embrace the fact that we just took a step backwards or we can take another step backwards by being upset with ourselves. So think about that if you find that helpful. Forward into growth or back into safety. And the interesting thing is that I think there's this unconscious computer that that's calculating all the time. And if we start our day, you know, and we said the night before, we're going to get up this morning at 6:00am or 6:30am Whatever it is, we're going to meditate and then we're going to go out and we're going to eat well, we're going to do this. And then the alarm goes off at 6:30 when we're like, ah, no thanks. We had an opportunity to step forward into growth and honor our commitment to ourselves or back into safety. And when we do that, there's this little computer that's keeping track of that stuff. And I think that at the end of the day that computer is like, wow, we could have been here and oh my God, we're here and we don't want to deal with that. Then we come home, we have all this tension because there's this huge difference between where we could have been and where we are. And what do we do? We crack open a beer or a bottle of wine, or turn on the TV or do anything we can to avoid that pressure. So the idea here is how can we look at that, honor it, and then realize we are making choices every moment and start making choices we're going to be proud of and that are going to make us really feel fulfilled and honor the fundamental need to self actualize. So there you go, get a little excited about that growth or safety. That's the big idea that we talk about in the node here. The next big idea I talk about here is that no one is perfect, which is very important to talk about right after this whole cave bowl and actual thing. No one's perfect. No one's always going to be at the ultimate potentialities. It's not going to happen. That's why it's a potential. No matter how advanced we get, there's always going to be the next thing we're going to move toward and we're never going to be perfect. He's got a great quote here. He says that there are in fact extraordinary human beings, people that make extraordinary leaps in consciousness and contributions to the world. But they're not perfect. They too are petulant, annoying, selfish at times. Everyone has those flaws and Rumi, I mentioned here as well. Rumi says that there is no worse sickness for the soul. Oh, you who are proud. Than this pretense of perfection. So pretending that we're perfect is just insane. And as Rumi says, there's no worse sickness for the soul than this pretense of perfection. So we need to get over ourselves. We're not going to be the first ones to be perfect. Let's embrace that and move on. I talk about a lot more around this idea in the note, which you can check out. The next big idea is this idea that in the book Motivation and Personality, focusing on self actualizing people. He talks about how self actualizing people tend to be very grateful. You'll notice a theme here. I've talked about that in the last, well, two out of the last three nos. The hell of happiness and happy for no reason. The importance of gratitude. And he says one of the worst things is taking things for granted. Amazing things that we take for granted. And that self actualizing people tend to freshly appreciate the beautiful things in their life. So for example, I think it's insane that we complain when we're in traffic, right? That's just ridiculous. 100 years ago, the idea of a car. 110, 20 years ago, the idea of a car was science fiction. And now we're sitting in a car with air conditioning. Horses didn't have air conditioning last time I checked. Air conditioning. And yeah, okay, traffic's a little bit slower today, but you're in a car. That's amazing. And it's like the YouTube clip. I don't know if you've seen it, but I think it's. Everything is perfect, perfect and no one is happy. I'll create a link and put it onto this video. Great Conan o' Brien show with this comedian and he says no one should be allowed to complain when they're in an airplane. You're flying at x hundred miles an hour X miles off the ground, in a chair, in the air. It should be illegal to complain at that moment. It's impossible. So watch that video. It's hilarious. Maslow also talks about the importance of knowing ourselves self actualizing. Human beings have a deep sense of self awareness. Know thyself. So what are your strengths from the last episode? Did you do that test? If you were guaranteed to succeed, what would you do with your life? Ask and answer questions that help you understand yourself better daily. And I've got a bunch of them in here, about a dozen of them in the note. So there you go. That's a really quick look at Abraham Masville, one of my favorite guys. Check out the book, check out the note for more. And as he says, plunge in. Go for it. He says it seems that the necessary thing is not to fear mistakes, but to plunge in to do the very best one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually. And he also says, if you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life. So let's step forward into growth and rock this hero's journey of ours. Have an awesome day. Hope you enjoyed. Bye.