Abraham Maslow

American psychologist best known for his hierarchy of needs.

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a “bag of symptoms.” A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

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Toward a Psychology of Being

by Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow sits in the great-grandfather slot in my spiritual family tree and is kinda the great-grandfather of the modern Positive Psychology movement. We profiled the 19 characteristics of his self-actualizing individual in our Note on Motivation & Personality in Volume I and in this Note we take a look at the essence of creativity and the fact that we all have capacities that’re clamoring to be used!

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Motivation and Personality

by Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow tells us, "What one can be, one must be!" (OMG I love that.) He was a 20th century humanistic psychologist who came up with the hierarchy of needs and studied the most exceptional people of his era. In this Note, we'll explore some of the Big Ideas on how we can be all that we're destined to be and look at some of the characteristics of those self-actualizing human beings who're rockin' it.

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What Must YOU be?

Abraham Maslow studied the greatest people of his generation. People like Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. He told us about the importance of actualizing our potential. In fact, he said that “What one CAN be, one *must* be.” This need to self-actualize is, at a certain ...

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And… Newsflash: You Will Not Be the First

Abraham Maslow studied the greatest people of his generation—extraordinary humans like Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. These were truly great people who, in his words, had self-actualized and, in my words, had given their greatest gifts in greatest service to the world. But here...

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Confidence & Conquering Perfectionism

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Answering Your Soul’s Cries

As you know (and as we’ve discussed many times), Abraham Maslow once said that “What one can be, one must be.” He described this as the need to self-actualize. As you ascend his hierar...

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(And Maslow, Aristotle, Stoics and Others)

In our last +1, we talked about Abraham Maslow’s wisdom and the ancient etymology of the word clamor in the context of your capacities clamoring to be used (aka you doing what you’re here to do!). Recall that, in Latin, the word ...

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Masters in the Art of Living Dissolve the (Apparent) Dichotomy

In our last +1, we talked about W.H. Auden’s (genius) quip that routine, in an intelligent person, is a sign of ambition. (I laugh with joy every time I type that.) Then we did a quick check in on your ambition. And, hopefully, we dialed it up a notch and made sure that your routines...

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Maslow on the Punishments of

Not too long ago, we took a quick trip to hell. I think that exercise is helpful because it helps us shine a very bright light on the potential pain of getting to the end of our lives and realizing that we left our lives unlived. But, alas, we (obviously) don’t need to wait until the e...

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Abraham Maslow

American psychologist best known for his hierarchy of needs.

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There Are No Perfect People
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Capacities Clamoring to Be Used
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Caterpillars, Butterflies and You
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Work or Play?
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Crimes Against Your Nature
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