Self-Actualized Characteristics of those in the Mind Fitness Program

Unveiling the Path to Proactive Personal Development and Wellbeing

It’s helpful to know where optimal mental health can bring us. As you progress from feeling depressed, anxious, or overstressed in daily life and begin to get a sense of stability of thinking and intentional wellbeing, a new level of functioning is possible. These are some of the Self-Actualized Characteristics of those in the Mind Fitness Program are described. 

• They are spontaneous, creative, open to new experiences, and relatively unafraid of the unknown.

• They feel dominion over their lives and demonstrate healthy selfishness, which means they respect their activities and guard their time accordingly.

• Work and play overlap and become equally absorbing and satisfying.

• They often feel a sense of enjoyment, whereas others have only limited moments of joy.

• They are kind toward others because they have a relative absence of fear.

• They are quick to love and be loved.

Healthy motivation is seen as being initially concerned with tension reduction

and survival, followed by increasing human growth and development levels. 

Beyond the satisfaction of basic needs and stable mental health lies another level of human potential—a self-propelled need for fulfillment through creativity. Dr. Maslow saw creative behavior as a desire and a need to be filled, while Freud saw humans as primarily motivated to escape things, to assuage anxieties. Because Freud worked with mentally ill patients, that analysis seems appropriate. I was intrigued that these two scholars looked at human behavior from two sides and offered opposite views of human motivation and potential. Combining the two approaches, one might say that our essential, more primitive needs are anxiety-driven. After satisfying those needs, we can become motivated to “Be all you can be,” as the U.S. Army puts it. This idea leads us to an optimal health-oriented model. From this model, Humanistic Psychology was born, encouraging the pursuit of fully thriving mental and emotional health or self-actualization. Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century, balancing the two prevailing theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology, one not based primarily on assuaging anxieties or being behaviorally conditioned. This approach certainly appealed to me and has motivated me to this day. 

Self-actualization embodies the motivation to engage in

proactive optimal personal development and wellbeing.

Hoping you can fulfill your desire for fulfillment and self-actualization,

Joy