Philosopher's Notes Transcend
Transcend
The New Science of Self-Actualization
About the Book
432 pages
9.3 hours saved on average by reading this note
Brian's take
As I mentioned in my Note on Rise Above, I’m a very big fan of Scott Barry Kaufman, and Transcend shows exactly why. In this book, Scott answers Abraham Maslow’s late-life hope that someone would carry his work forward, and he does it with love, rigor, and a modern scientific lens that feels like Maslow 2.0. The centerpiece is a brilliant upgrade to the famous hierarchy of needs: ditch the pyramid and picture a sailboat, with a secure hull (Safety, Connection, Self-Esteem) and open sails (Exploration, Love, Purpose), dynamically integrated as you move through life’s oceans. Scott then tests Maslow’s theory, distills the most evidence-backed characteristics of self-actualization, and takes us beyond self-actualization to what he calls healthy transcendence: integrating your whole self in service of cultivating the good society. Big Ideas we explore include A New Metaphor (Pyramid to Sailboat), Self-Actualization (10 characteristics), Exploration (adversity as fuel), Purpose (live it wisely), and Transcendence (a Heroic north star).
==“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.”==
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Maslow never actually created a pyramid to represent his hierarchy of needs.”
Scott Barry Kaufman
“Human life will never be understood unless its highest aspirations are taken into account.”
Abraham Maslow
“The good life is not something you will ever achieve.”
It’s a way of living. As Carl Rogers noted, ‘The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
Scott Barry Kaufman
“So what is a healthy self-esteem?”
==Modern research has identified two distinct faces of healthy self-esteem: self-worth and mastery.==
Scott Barry Kaufman
==“Life is best organized as a series of daring adventures from a secure base.”==
John Bowlby
“Goals that are conducive to growth—mastery, self-improvement, creativity, connection, contribution to society—are likely to lead to greater well-being than goals concerned with status and driven by insecurity—attaining power, money, self-esteem, appearance, or popularity.”
Scott Barry Kaufman
“What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.”
Abraham Maslow
“Slipping into ‘craziness’ is frightening only for those who are not fully confident of their sanity.”
Abraham Maslow
“If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.”
Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?
Søren Kierkegaard
“Even if all these [basic] needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he, individually, is fitted for.”
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need we may call self-actualization…. It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
Abraham Maslow
29:27
A New Metaphor
Introduction
From the book
“In This Book, I Will Attempt to Flesh out [Abraham] Maslow’s Outlines on the Highest Reaches of Humanity, Unravel the Mysteries of His Later Writings, and Integrate the Corpus of Ideas Put forward in the Humanistic Psychology Era with the Wealth of Scientific Findings that Have Accumulated since then on the Higher Reaches of Human Nature, including My Own Research on Intelligence, Creativity, Personality, and well-being….
This book will present an update on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that is grounded in the latest science and provides a useful framework for making sense of your patterns of behavior and how your current way of being may be hindering your growth and transcendence. The aim is to help you boldly and honestly face who you are head on, so that you can become the person you really want to become. You’ll find insights you can put into action in your own life….
Throughout the book, I hope to show you greater possibilities for yourself and the human species than you ever realized was possible. It turns out that self-actualization is only part of the journey; I’ll help take you all the way.”
Brian's Notes
As I mentioned in the Note I created on Scott’s most recent book, Rise Above, I’m a *very* big fan of Scott Barry Kaufman.
And, I’m not alone. As per his bio on the back flap of the book, Scott “is a cognitive psychologist who is among the top one percent most-cited scientists in the world for his groundbreaking research on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. He is a professor at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. He is also the host of The Psychology Podcast, which has received more than 30 million downloads and is frequently the psychology podcast in the world.”
In addition, and always most importantly, you can tell that he’s a good, wise human being.
This is a REALLY good, and REALLY important book. (Get a copy here.)
Abraham Maslow is one of my Heroes. He revolutionized our understanding of human potential and is both a grandfather in my spiritual family tree (right next to Joseph Campbell and Will Durant) AND he’s basically the grandfather of the modern positive psychology movement.
But… Here’s the thing.
He died way too young (at 62 years old) and was really just getting warmed up when he passed away. In one of his journal entries shortly before he unexpectedly died of a heart attack (while out on a morning jog!) (and I have goosebumps typing this), he reflected on the fact that he hoped someone would carry his ideas forward.
Scott read that private journal entry and realized that HE was that someone. I literally got tears in my eyes when I read the story in this book. It’s sacred. You can FEEL the love and admiration Scott has for Maslow throughout the book. In fact, you can feel it from the very first words: “This book is dedicated to Abraham Harold Maslow, a dear friend I never met.”
Angela Duckworth (author of Grit) sums the book up concisely when she said: “What a masterpiece! Maslow 2.0.”
The book is packed with Big Ideas and profound wisdom. I’m humbled by the challenge of trying to distill its essence into a mere seven pages, but I also feel privileged to introduce you to two of my dear friends—one I never met and one with whom I’ve only traded emails.
Let’s get to work. It’s time to learn more about the new science of self-actualization.
P.S. Basically EVERY great positive psychologist raves about the book including these luminaries we have featured: Angela Duckworth, Adam Grant, Martin Seligman, Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday, Emma Seppala, Steven Hayes, and Tal Ben-Shahar.
BIG IDEA
A New Metaphor
From the book
“The Pyramid from the Sixties Told a Story that Maslow Never Meant to Tell; a Story of Achievement, of Mastering Level by Level until You ‘won’ the Game of Life.
But that is most definitely not the spirit of self-actualization that the humanistic psychologists emphasized. The human condition isn’t a competition; it’s an experience. Life isn’t a trek up a summit but a journey to travel through—a vast blue ocean, full of new opportunities for meaning and discovery but also danger and uncertainty. In this choppy surf, a clunky pyramid is of little use. Instead, what is needed is something a bit more functional. We’ll need a sailboat.”
Brian's Notes
That’s from the Introduction: “A New Hierarchy of Needs.”
First, you need to know that Maslow NEVER (!) dropped his hierarchy of needs into a pyramid. Apparently, that first appeared in a management textbook when an editor decided to illustrate it in a pyramid.
==Scott walks us through why the pyramid never made sense AND how Maslow never would have supported that representation of his life’s work. Then he shares a new metaphor of how our needs play together: A SAILBOAT —which has two components: A hull and a sail.==
==The “hull” of our sailboat represents our Security needs. These are things we need to make sure we’re paying attention to lest we sink before we really get going on our Heroic quests across the beautiful blue oceans of the world. These Security needs include Safety, Connection, and Self-Esteem.==
==Once the hull of our sailboat is secure, we’re ready to open the metaphorical sails. The “sail” of our sailboat represents our Growth needs. These are the qualities we use to navigate those open waters as we go out on one adventure after another. These Growth needs include Exploration, Love, and Purpose.==
Scott tells us that all these needs are in a constant state of dynamic integration. It’s not like a video game where you go from level to level one after the other. It’s WAY more dynamic than that. We’re ALWAYS in a state of becoming.
Scott ends this chapter by saying: “ The vision of a good life I present in this book isn’t one that is typically touted these days. It’s not one where the primary motivation is money, power, social status, or even happiness. Instead, the good life that I present, which is deeply grounded in the core principles of humanistic psychology and a realistic understanding of human needs, is about the healthy expression of needs in the service of discovering and expressing a self that works best for you*.”*
He continues by saying: “The good life is not something you will ever achieve. It’s a way of living. As Carl Rogers noted, ‘The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.’ This process won’t always bring feelings of happiness, contentment, and bliss, and it may even sometimes cause pain and heartache. It’s not for the ‘faint-hearted,’ as Rogers notes, as it requires continually stretching outside your comfort zone as you realize more and more of your potentialities and launch yourself ‘fully into the stream of life.’ Just like it takes courage to open your sail on a sailboat and see where the winds will take you, it takes a lot of courage to become the best version of yourself.
Nevertheless, if you stick with it, you are sure to live a richer life, one that is characterized by adjectives such as ‘enriching,’ ‘exciting,’ ‘rewarding,’ ‘challenging,’ ‘creative,’ ‘meaningful,’ intense,’ and ‘awe-inspiring.’ I believe in the fundamental capacity of humans for growth. No matter your current personality or circumstance, I believe this book can help you grow in precisely the direction you truly want to grow, in your own style, and in such a way that allows you to show the universe that you really existed, and benefited others, while you were here. Let’s begin the process of becoming.”
As I typed out that passage—longer than most I typically share, I was struck by JUST how good of a book this is. If you’re at all interested in understanding the science of activating and actualizing your potential, you should read it. It will help you be your best self AND it will help your kids, grandkids, colleagues and loved ones do the same. (Get it.)
As I typed that out, I ALSO thought of another one of my favorite people/teachers: Tal Ben-Shahar. In *his* great book, The Pursuit of Perfect, Tal helps us Conquer Perfectionism. He leans on the same Carl Rogers quote as he tells us: “The optimalism ideal is not a distant shore to be reached but a distant star that guides us and can never be reached. As Carl Rogers pointed out, ‘The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.’”
I love that the two of them reference the same wisdom for so many reasons. May we hop in our sailboats, ensure the hull is secure, and open the sails—using our ideals as distant stars to navigate those blue oceans on our next Heroic adventure.
BIG IDEA
Characteristics of Self-Actualization
From the book
“It’s Been about Seventy Years since Maslow Published His List of the Characteristics of Self-actualizing People, but His Paper Provides a Wealth of Still-testable Ideas.
I was very curious just how many of his proposed characteristics of self-actualization would hold up if properly tested, so I converted his characteristics into a scale and formally administered them to a wide range of people. After a few iterations, I found that ten characteristics stand the test of scientific scrutiny and are all significantly related to one another (in other words, those who score high in one characteristic tend to score high in the others as well).”
Brian's Notes
Part I of the book covers the primary elements of “Security” including “Safety,” “Connection,” and “Self-Esteem.”
Part II covers the primary elements of “Growth” including “Exploration,” “Love,” and “Purpose” while Part III is all about “Healthy Transcendence.”
That’s from the Prelude to Part II. We talked about the 19 characteristics of self-actualizers in our Notes on Motivation and Personality. Here’s Scott’s updated list of scientifically-validated ==“Characteristics of Self-Actualization:==
==• Truth seeking (e.g., ‘I am always trying to get at the real truth about people and nature.’)==
==• Acceptance (e.g., ‘I accept all of my quirks and desires without shame or apology.’)==
==• Purpose (e.g., ‘I feel a great responsibility & duty to accomplish a particular mission in life.’)==
==• Authenticity (e.g., ‘I can maintain my dignity and integrity even in environments and situations that are undignified.’)==
==• Continued Freshness of Appreciation (e.g., ‘I can appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstacy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.’)==
==• Peak Experiences (e.g., ‘I often have experiences in which I feel new horizons and possibilities opening up for myself and others.’)==
==• Humanitarianism (e.g., ‘I have a genuine desire to help the human race.’)==
==• Good Moral Intention (e.g., ‘I can tell deep down when I’ve done something wrong.’)==
==• Creative Spirit (e.g., ‘I have a generally creative spirit that touches everything I do.’)==
==• Equanimity (e.g., ‘I take life’s inevitable ups and downs w/grace, acceptance & equanimity.’)==
P.S. You can take the self-actualization test at selfactualizationtests.com.
P.P.S. Scott tells us: “Maslow argued for the path to self-actualization [that featured] ‘Hard work and total commitment to doing well the job that fate or destiny calls you to do, or any important job that ‘calls for’ doing.’ To Maslow, those who were most self-actualized pursued their calling, not happiness. Nevertheless, he pointed out that happiness often comes as a result anyway: ‘Happiness is an epiphenomenon, a by-product, something not to be sought directly but an indirect reward for virtue…. The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.’”
BIG IDEA
Exploration
From the book
“But What Choice Do We Have?
As Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl put it, ‘When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.’ In recent years, psychologists have begun to understand the psychological processes that turn adversity into advantage, and what is becoming clear is that ‘psychologically seismic’ restructuring is actually necessary for growth to occur. It is precisely when the foundational structure of the self is shaken that we are in the best position to pursue new opportunities in our lives.
Similarly, the Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski argued that ‘positive disintegration’ can be a growth-fostering experience. After studying a number of people with high psychological development, Dabrowski concluded that healthy personality development often requires the disintegration of the personality structure, which can temporarily lead to psychological tension, self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. However, Dabrowski believed this process can lead to a deeper examination of what one could be and ultimately to higher levels of personality development.
A key factor that allows us to turn adversity into advantage is the extent to which we fully explore our thoughts and feelings surrounding the event. Cognitive exploration—which can be defined as a general curiosity about information processing—enables us to be curious about confusing new situations, increasing the likelihood that we will find new meaning in the seemingly incomprehensible. To be sure, many of the steps that lead to growth after trauma go against our natural inclinations to avoid extremely uncomfortable emotions and thoughts. However, it’s only through shedding our natural defense mechanisms and approaching the discomfort head on, viewing everything as fodder for growth, that we can start to embrace the inevitable paradoxes of life and come to a more nuanced view of reality.”
Brian's Notes
That passage is from the chapter in Part II on “Exploration.” Below it I wrote: “UNBELIEVABLY POWERFUL.” There’s so much we can discuss.
First, as I am typing this and look down at my left forearm, I can see my tattoo of the word “ANTIFRAGILE” staring at me. It’s right above “HEROIC.” Right below HEROIC I see the word “CONFIDENCE.”
Why do I have “ANTIFRAGILE CONFIDENCE” tattooed to my arm? Well, the short story is that I got those tattoos after doing a fair amount of work with the US Special Operations Forces. I kept on getting invited to give talks on how to FORGE ANTIFRAGILE CONFIDENCE.
Now… Why did I think of my tattoo when reading that wisdom from Scott?
BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT. When we shift our perspective and see our greatest challenges as THE most powerful fuel for our growth, we embody Nassim Taleb’s wisdom on antifragility. He tells us (and this is a slide in all my talks) that “The wind extinguishes a candle but fuels a fire.”
He tells us that we want to BE THE FIRE and WISH FOR THE WIND.
THAT, my dear friend, is how we forge antifragile confidence. And THAT, my dear friend, is how we “Explore” the world with a smile—with our hulls strong and our sails up, using the winds of life to take us to our next destination.
P.S. Scott shares parallel wisdom about the importance of embracing challenges in Rise Above where he tells us: “WARNING: You Might Have a Case of Life.”
He says: “In life, we’re all just doing our best to captain our own ship amid the windswept seas of life. And the thing is, we all encounter storms. Sure, some of us encounter minor tropical depression here and there, while others are like George Clooney clinging to the decks in a Junger-esque disaster, but no one encounters entirely smooth sailing. (And as I’ll demonstrate in this book, a lack of adversity can actually be counterproductive to growth.)”
Then he tells us: “Given that, let’s consider some honest truths about life itself, which can lead us toward the critical step that I call life-acceptance*: You aren’t alone in your suffering. Life is sometimes unfair. Life is ultimately unpredictable. You can’t completely control your life. No one is coming to save you. You and only you are responsible for your reactions to the world.”*
P.P.S. When I read about the inevitable challenges we will ALL face in our lives and how, when we properly approach (rather than avoid!) those tough times and tough emotions, I thought of Abraham Maslow. In a book called Future Visions that Scott recommends in this book, we get a peak at some of his (EXTRAORDINARY) unpublished writings.
In one of the chapters in that book, Maslow shares how he would often lose sleep while working on some of his breakthrough ideas. Apparently, it happened so often that, after a sleepless night, his wife would lovingly tell him: “Something good must be cooking, Abe!”
I call that “cooking Hero bars.” And, every time I find myself up at night I have trained myself to smile, think of my hero Abe Maslow, and know that something good must be cooking!
Note: I’ve had a lot of opportunities to remind myself of that wisdom in the middle of the night over the last few months as I struggled to get clarity on the next steps of Heroic preceding my decision to go ALL IN on Philosopher’s Notes in our next phase. (See my Notes on The Science of Scaling for that back story.)
The other thing I thought about as I typed that passage out? A dear friend of mine who just went through an ACUTE and terrifying health crisis. I was blessed to be the first person he called after telling his wife and I’m so proud of how he used that crisis as a case study-worthy example of how to “approach the discomfort head on, viewing everything as fodder for growth.” (Bless you, M. Love you, brother.)
One final note. I can’t read about “shedding our natural defense mechanisms” in the context of reforming our personalities without thinking of Nietzsche’s wisdom that the snake that cannot shed its skin will perish. It’s ALL fuel. Let’s use it wisely. TODAY.
BIG IDEA
Purpose
From the book
“Now, We can’t All Be (nor Do We All Strive to be) a Mohandas Gandhi or Eleanor Roosevelt, but for Most of Us, the Greatest Source of Our Growth, Energy, and Wholeness Comes about when Our Agentic Drive to Realize the Deepest part of Us is Harmoniously Integrated with Our Drive to Have a Positive Impact on others—whether it’s through Mastering a Craft, Giving Birth to an Artistic Creation, Inspiring Leadership, or Being Involved in a Humanitarian Organization.
==We tend to be most happy, persistent, productive, and high-performing when we both feel self-determined and are motivated to make a positive impact. As Sheldon put it, ‘The happiest person is the person doing good stuff for good reasons.’==
Such a high level of integration is not easy and requires considerable ‘self-development’, but it’s an essential part of becoming a whole person. As psychologists William Nasby and Nancy Read put it, ‘Agentic heroes separate to fight the dragon; only heroes on the higher, mythological level, integrating agency and communion… raise their swords to battle the real dragon within.’
Bringing it all together, striving wisely involves choosing overarching strivings that (a) really fit your deepest growth impulses, (b) feel enjoyable and are freely chosen, (c) help you move toward a future self that will continue to grow and contribute to society, and (d) are well integrated with your other strivings in life as well as other basic needs.
But striving wisely is just the first step. In order to experience the fully transformative benefits of satisfying the need for purpose, it’s crucial to live your purpose. Wisely.”
Brian's Notes
That, as you may have guessed, is from the chapter on “Purpose.” We can spend a week on all the wisdom in that passage but, alas, we’re running out of space in this 7-page Note!
I will say that it reminds me of some parallel wisdom from another GREAT book I just created a Note on yesterday: The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg.
He tells us: “Excellence combines mastery and mattering. Mastery means developing skill and making progress in activities you deem worthwhile. It could result from learning a trade or advancing a career, but it could also come from increasing the weight of your deadlift, writing poetry, building a table, making art, or learning how to play an instrument. Mattering is a sense that what you are doing has significance, that your contributions and progress are meaningful. Decades of research show mastery and mattering are key to a life well lived, or what psychologists call life satisfaction….
Like a finely tuned instrument, excellence exudes an attractiveness and rightness that we know not only in our heads, but also in our hearts. It’s a big part of what makes life worth living.”
btw: Not too long before that passage, Scott drops this wisdom bomb: “Therefore, the wisest path in life is to deliberately commit to a goal that is expressed in your vision of your future self and is highly integrated with your other strivings.” That reminds me of some parallel wisdom from Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now. (It also reminds of Ben’s wisdom on goal setting from The Science of Scaling as well.)
For now… Here’s to being the Hero who courageously faces both our inner and our outer dragons as we transform ourselves and give the world all we’ve got.
P.S. Maslow also says this: “Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside themselves. They are devoted, working at something, something which is very precious to them—some calling or vocation in the old sense. They are working at something which fate has called them to somehow and which they work at and which they love, so that the work-joy dichotomy in them disappears.”
P.P.S. Check out our Purpose Quest for my favorite Notes along with Purpose 101.
BIG IDEA
Transcendence
From the book
“Considering The Writings of Maslow and Modern Psychological Research Relating to Self-actualization and the Heights of Human Nature, I Propose the following Definition of Healthy Transcendence:
Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one’s whole self in the service of cultivating the good society.
This view of transcendence, which I believe is the healthiest form of transcendence, is not about leaving any parts of ourselves or anyone else behind or singularly rising above the rest of humanity. Healthy transcendence is not about being outside the whole, or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. It’s also not a level any human ever actually achieves, but it is a north star for all of humanity. In a nutshell: healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.
There are those among us who are consistently motivated by these higher values and higher experiences. For these ‘transcenders,’ self-actualization is merely a bridge to transcendent states of being. These transcenders show us what is possible in all of us and what we could become as a species.”
Brian's Notes
I LOVE this: “Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one’s whole self in the service of cultivating the good society.”
Why do I love that so much? Because Scott’s definition of transcendence is also a pretty close-to-perfect definition of what I think it means to be Heroic.
Joseph Campbell echoes Scott’s brilliant wisdom: “The ultimate aim of the quest must neither be release nor ecstacy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.”
Let’s remember that, as important as it is for us to get both the metaphorical hull *and* the sail optimized as we set sail on the ocean of life, “self-actualization is merely a bridge to transcendent states of being.“
The ultimate purpose? “Harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.”
Let’s do that. Together. TODAY.
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