Self-Actualization

Originally posted by FMF
Maybe you need to think of it as a normal word that is useful rather than label it "jargon". One can be caught up in "being oneself" without there being fulfillment of one's talents and potential, which is what the term self-actualization refers to. It's a word whose etymology stretches back 75 years.

Oh, I think a normal word would be encountered in everyday life. Unless one moves in pretentious circles.

As an aside, I'm still struggling with the concept of you doing "quite a lot of work" with organisations local to you while still being on RHP in one forum or another almost 24 hours a day. You've mastered the art of bilocation, then? 😉

Originally posted by Startreader
Oh, I think a normal word would be encountered in everyday life. Unless one moves in pretentious circles.

Self-actualization is a gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots struggle in daunting circumstances for millions and millions of people (and not just women) in the country where I live, and not something pretentious at all.

Originally posted by FMF
Self-actualization is a gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots struggle in daunting circumstances for millions and millions of people (and not just women) in the country where I live, and not something pretentious at all.

Yes. Of course it is. I accept it in that context.

That meaning, though, seems not to have very much in common with drewnogal's initial question.

Each to his own.

Originally posted by Startreader
Yes. Of course it is. I accept it in that context.

That meaning, though, seems not to have very much in common with drewnogal's initial question.

Each to his own.

Different countries have different contexts. There are people on this forum from all around the world facing different challenges. I think it was a couple of posts well spent divesting you of the notion that "self-actualization" is a pretentious notion. Sorry drewnogal if you have found this to have been a deviation from what you wanted to discuss; "self-actualization" in the UK and in a place like where I live perhaps have different connotations in the harsh realities of lives lived.

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Not far away these days. I enjoy my life very much, and am blessed with a lovely family who have remained close to me and each other over the years. I'm able to indulge in my favourite hobbies and interests, bird-watching and anything to do with nature. I live in a community large enough to have everything anyone could need and small enough so that I can walk out of my garden and find I am greeted by friends, acquaintances and familiar faces.

I'm very content, can create and care for my garden, and importantly can also work on my own creative work, as well as look after and spend time with my grandchildren.

Importantly, too, for me, I am free to worship as I choose and be part of a lively and close-knit parish family, looking outwards to the world and all in need and doing what we can. I'm also able to do my bit in other voluntary areas, as well as working hard at an occupation of my own choosing and creation.

Also, crucially, I have time for and very much enjoy time on my own to think and reflect, read and pray.

I'm blessed beyond measure, and am very grateful for it. So I feel, drewnogal, that I'm very much myself, and happy to be so.

If self-actualisation, it's meaning now having been amplified, not unhelpfully, by FMF, involves something close to creating oneself, than actually I don't think I'm entirely on board with that and wouldn't in fact want to be. Dunne famously said, "No man is an island". We're not. We're very much a communal species and because I have a deep religious faith that has to be part of the picture.

I don't "actualise" myself, and wouldn't want to. But I am very content and happy to be at one with myself.

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My work is a key part of my self-actualization. The elements that are important to me, as I wrote on a different thread some time ago, are

[1] I work for myself rather than work as an employee;

[2] I have set my sights on earning a livelihood from particular skills and knowledge that I have developed over time and that represents a relatively rare 'product', whilst dispensing with spending too much time on other stuff;

[3] I try to keep what I do linked to ~ or in some way actively exercising ~ my core political and philosophical values; and

[4] I like to think that, with both my heart and brain into it, I would continue to engage in what I do even if I came into a large enough amount of money to enable me to stop working.

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Trying to stay true and honest to myself, family and friends, to make the right choices (what's left of them) and just live as good a life as possible.

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I wasn't thinking so much of creating, and being created by God, more that I was looking beyond the self.

It might not have been a very well worked out thought, but in fact my response was me thinking on the hoof, as it were. Yes, it is something to do with my faith, but much more than a belief in him as Creator. Hard to summarise. More that it is a constant awareness, a backdrop to my life, to everything. A trust.

So it takes away from me any need to worry about the future, though not of course to take care of day-to-day details. I think it could be summed up as joy. Whatever happens.

I was interested in your account of your own creativeness. It's rather like mine. Some details are different, but the feel is the same.

Also, I think I am a lot older than you. So, my answer is of me as I am now. Life has flung many things at me over the years, so this is me, a content survivor! And in a sense, I suppose I have created things as they are now. But the earlier reply was true too! LOL!

I'm constantly enquiring, though, and love to take myself off on a questing adventure, on my own or with family!

Originally posted by FMF
Self-actualization is a gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots struggle in daunting circumstances for millions and millions of people (and not just women) in the country where I live, and not something pretentious at all.

Scrummaging around for basic survival and safety is not what Maslow calls self-actualization in his hierarchy of needs.

Originally posted by FishHead111
Scrummaging around for basic survival and safety is not what Maslow calls self-actualization in his hierarchy of needs.

I wasn't talking about "scrummaging around for basic survival". There is that too. But I was talking about people doing stuff like starting businesses, standing for office or leading others, and getting involved in making decisions about things around them that affect them and their families. Through these kinds of things, they can make more of their talents and other potentialities and perhaps work towards being who they want to be.

Originally posted by FMF
I wasn't talking about "scrummaging around for basic survival". There is that too. But I was talking about people doing stuff like starting businesses, standing for office or leading others, and getting involved in making decisions about things around them that affect them and their families. Through these kinds of things, they can make more of their talents and other potentialities and perhaps work towards being who they want to be.

You said self-actualization where you live was "a gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots struggle in daunting circumstances" which sounds a lot different than starting businesses, or running for political office, etc.
What, did you look up Maslow and realize you needed to start back peddling?

Originally posted by FishHead111
You said self-actualization where you live was "a gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots struggle in daunting circumstances" which sounds a lot different than starting businesses, or running for political office, etc.
What, did you look up Maslow and realize you needed to start back peddling?

Nope. There's no back peddling. As I said on page 1: self-actualization can be approached by way of things like tackling domestic violence, maternal and reproductive health, political literacy with regard to rights, social entitlements, advocacy, activism and alternative media, and entrepreneurial and management skills. It's nitty gritty and grassroots and real, as opposed to "pretentious".

Reached the penultimate bit of the triangle.
Quite well off and happy but never going to be Bill Gates.

Originally posted by FMF
Nope. There's no back peddling. As I said on page 1: self-actualization can be approached by way of things like tackling domestic violence, maternal and reproductive health, political literacy with regard to rights, social entitlements, advocacy, activism and alternative media, and entrepreneurial and management skills. It's nitty gritty and grassroots and real, as opposed to "pretentious".

That's not what the thread is about. It was very much in the context of Maslow, not the very worthy efforts of a disadvantaged community improving their own lives.