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  "map_content": "# The Self-Actualizer and the Maslow Pyramid of Needs\n\n**Daniel Krawisz**\n\n*Self-actualization* is a term that refers to the tendency of an organism to pursue its own growth. It recalls Nietzsche's exhortation to \"become who you are\" and it is most closely associated with the psychologist Maslow, who did the most to elaborate it and popularize it. \n\nMaslow is best known for his pyramid of needs (shown below), but there is much more to his thought than the pyramid. In particular, Maslow wanted to understand and characterize the self-actualizer so that everyone would understand how to be one. This would lead to a much happier and healthier society, he believed. \n\n![pyramid of needs](b://6a2525a5c0c0bef528875c3bc08efc76fff44e80fe558593b0c0c218f6252c31)\n\nThe pyramid depicts the result of Maslow's investigation into the holistic or overall person, which is an important strand in his thought. The other important strand was to characterize psychological illness versus health. In his estimation, the psychology of his day had studied mental illness a lot but had no idea about the nature of health. \n\nTo Maslow, the self-actualizer is the psychologically healthy person and all mental illness can be understood in terms of how it prevents self-actualization. Thus, a psychologically healthy person is one who pursues growth and an unhealthy person is one who prevents himself from pursuing growth. A neurosis is an inhibition of the motivation for growth. \n\nThis information is important because it can inform our understanding of who would be a good prospective user of Boost. A big reason people don't like Boost is that there is an up-front cost and uncertain benefits. Although just about everything good in real life is the same way, this is in contrast to the majority of products on the market, which are designed to addict people with some kind of short-term benefit. \n\nAll growth involves risk and uncertainty and someone who pursues growth habitually will be used to that. Someone who is used to pursuing growth will tend to find Boost intuitive to use whereas someone who is inhibited in the pursuit of growth will tend to see the cost of Boost as prohibitive and the benefit as nebulous. \n\nMaslow describes many qualities of self-actualizers in his book, *Motivation and Personality*. They are more spontaneous, less anxious, more creative, and are able to love more easily. However, all of these qualities can be understood as consequences of the quality of pursuing growth for its own sake and deriving enjoyment from the act of learning new things and developing new skills. For everyone, learning involves frustration and other unpleasant feelings, such as frustration and disappointment. Self-actualizers consistently overcome these feelings whereas neurotics allow these feelings to get in their way. \n\nAccording to Maslow, babies have much less anxiety about the pursuit of growth than adults do and thus he sees self-actualization as having to do with qualities that are retained from childhood that most people forget. \n\nIt is easy to understand how this happens: babies are not faulted for being incompetent, neither by other people nor by themselves. They pursue their skills without much anxiety about failure and they have a faith that they will learn if they keep trying. As people grow up, the need to be competent becomes greater. Think of our experience in schools and how we are punished if we do not do things correctly on the first try. As an adult, incompetency is shameful and people fear being seen as incompetent. However, in order to keep learning, one must continue to be comfortable with feelings of incompetency. \n\nMore work needs to be done to understand self-actualizers, find them, and connect with them.",
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  "timestamp": "2023-01-03T22:49:29.000Z",
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