Maslow’s Missing Apex and the Truth About the Self-Actualization Trap
Growing up, most people are taught that the highest achievement in life is to become self-actualized.
Growing up, most people are taught that the highest achievement in life is to become self-actualized.
But what actually is “self-actualization?”
For most people, the first thing to come to mind is having the fancy sports car, the big house, the model spouse. Or maybe it’s a set of awards and recognitions that tell you that you when did a good job.
Whatever your personal definition of self-actualization, for most people self-actualization comes in the form of external possessions, status, or experiences.
There is nothing wrong with these things inherently. Fast cars are great!
The problem is, the pursuit of self-actualization actually robs most people of the happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment which can be found and enjoyed along the way.
Why?
Subversive Self-Interest
Subversive self-interest is the idea that:
Focusing on yourself too much can stop you from getting what you want.
Of course, you need to know what you want, but can you trust what you want?
For isntance, right now I am craving sugar. I want ice cream. I want things that I know are bad for me, so I’m going to ignore those cravings—despite how strong they are.
Likewise, much of the conditioning developed by people in the 21st century revolves around this idea of needing to pursue self-actualization and that this is the highest expression of what they are capable of in life. Even though, pursuing self-actualization itself will not deliver the outcomes they desire.
If you focus too much on your own self-actualization, your self-interest can actually get in the way of you achieving your desires. The more you want something, the more meaningful it is to you, the more your ability to get it is going to be affected by your beliefs, your stories, and your conditioning.
This can lead to all manner of self-sabotage that is both conscious and/or unconscious, that will affect you when pursuing what you believe to be the most important. Self sabotage, which you will experience far less of when what you are pursuing has more to do with other people than yourself.
It’s the attachment to the identity and certain ways of being, usually involving an incessant unconscious focus on the self, which actually causes many of the perceived problems people face.
For instance worrying about yourself in the future and what will happen next is called anxiety.
And worrying about yourself in the past, and the things which have already happened is called depression.
Not to downplay the severity of these conditions or tendencies as they are very real, the physiological responses they create is very unpleasant and leads to worst health challenges.
This is just to say that if you want to decrease those things, and unlock the hidden benefits of self-transcendence and advanced states of consciousness, you have to decrease your level of engagement with the sense of self which distracts one from the reality of what is happening now.
For instance…
Just imagine helping someone else with their tasks, or giving them advice. Often it is clear to us immediately what the right answer is to help them. But when we find ourselves in the same situations, that insight is no where to be found.
Why is there more clarity when we help others than when we help ourselves?
To clarify, it’s not wrong to be selfish, but focusing too much on your “self” is bad, because when most people think of “self” improvement, “self” development, and “self” actualization… there comes with it a focus on the self that while being well-intentioned, can easily descend into a form of toxic narcissism or self-criticism — both of which halt your personal development.
In this way, pursuing what is best for others can be the best strategy for getting what we want, too.
Knowing this is one thing, but living this way is a whole other thing.
Much of this incessant focus on the self and self-actualization happens, because the man responsible for the most pervasive way of thinking about this, which is taught in most schools, actually died before he finished publishing his best, last, and most groundbreaking discovery in developmental psychology.
The man, was Abraham Maslow, psychologist and pioneer of peak performance and well-being psychology and his discover was that:
Incessant focus on the self is not the solution, but in fact, the problem.
And if you want to truly unlock your full potential, you will have to reach for a level higher than self-actualization, which is not just a higher level of achievement. But also a transition into a higher level of consciousness and well-being.
Maslow’s Missing Apex
Almost everyone has heard of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, which has become the most widely shared model of personal development and is taught in most schools. It looks like this:
In a 1943 paper titled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” American psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that human decision-making is undergirded by a hierarchy of psychological needs. In his initial paper and a subsequent 1954 book titled Motivation and Personality, Maslow proposed that five core needs form the basis for human behavioral motivation.
This was the basis for the popularized, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The model of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that most people are taught in school is a hierarchical pyramid to display an order of importance for human needs, and the order most people achieve them in. While this hierarchical structure is dramatically simplifying things and removes the implication that getting higher-level needs met will inherently help you meet lower-level needs — like having an adequate level of self-esteem is going to help you better meet your love and belonging needs. But this model helps most people understand the importance of base needs like physiological needs, safety needs, and how one can make their way up the hierarchy as they shift their focus to achieving needs of love and belonging, esteem, and eventually reach the top of self-actualization.
But what most people don’t know, is that Maslow died before he announced his greatest discovery yet: that self-actualization is not the top of the hierarchy of needs, but instead the top is:
Self-Transcendence.
“But I thought that the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy was self-actualization?”
Nope.
People love frameworks, hierarchies, and ladders to climb, so when you show them Maslow’s original hierarchy, most people will hone in on self-actualization and do their best to reach this level. This is why most people assume that self-actualization is the most important pursuit in life, and ultimately the way they can finally experience lasting happiness, fulfillment and achieve their purpose.
Unfortunately, not.
The ultimate conclusion that hierarchies leave out is that they aren’t climbed. They are handy for understanding concepts, but when it comes to functionality fall short.
Moreover, when it comes to categorizations for understanding the human being, it is far more effective to think in terms of shifts in states of consciousness than it is to think in terms of boxes that need checked to get to the top.
Reality doesn’t work in the same way as the workplace. That kind of thinking was forced onto the working class during the post-industrial revolution, maximizing human labor consciousness, and is in no way indicative of unlocking the total human potential. Let alone an effective strategy for experiencing happiness, well-being and fulfillment.
The good news is these things can be experienced at the level of self-transcendence, which not only marks a level of development, but also marks the transition into what can only be considered the ultimate state of human existence.
The shift from self-actualization is not just an incremental improvement or pecentile degree of change away from the normal waking state that most people find themselves in as they look for a ladder to climb the hierarchy of needs. Instead, this shift represents a total departure from the traditional needs-based hierarchy of needs, as well as a total shift in consicousness and the way one experiences life. This change can be seen and measured across the board from *a change in the expression of the human nervous system,
Instead of being represented as another row like each of the other needs, Maslow chose to represent self-transcendence with a new pyramid, this time inverted sitting atop the original hierarchy of needs. He chose to place it this way to represent that instead of their being an uphill climb to the top like there is in the traditional hierarchy — there is a shift from one way of being focused on self to a new way of being, which is self-transcendent. This shift happens where the pyramids meet and then the inverted pyramid is meant to represent the infinite upward expansion that occurs once you reach the level of self-transcendence. Which instead of being just another level, marks a shift to an entirely different state of consciousness and being. And a very different way to experience life, with different values, levels of awareness, perception, and therefore different strategies for getting needs met.
The Discovery of The Level of Self-Transcendent
You see, Maslow realized during the last chapter of his life, that the human being is not an end to and of themselves, but a bridge to go beyond the ‘self.’ And that people are never truly as happy, effective, or satisfied as they could be when they are locked into finite perspectives of themselves and the world where they are isolated and disconnected from it all.
Abraham Maslow once said,
“We have everything within us we need to create our fullest potential.”
He realized, to reach the highest level of their potential, that everyone would need to go beyond the limits of themselves and they have everything they need to do that, within themselves.
That self-transcendence is not just part of the developmental cycle, but also its inevitable conclusion. But that didn’t mean reaching this level was going to be as easy as telling others it exists.
To reach their highest potential, and higher more enjoyable levels of consciousness, it is essential that one goes beyond themselves, and their limitations. Limitations, which have their origin in their conditioning, beliefs, and perceptions, and lead to self-sabotage. And instead, transcend that sense of narrative self to cross the threshold from self-actualization to self-transcendence.
At first, this re-ordering of importance is bad news for people who have designed their life around the fundamental premise, that the vast majority of people believe, which is that self-actualization is the most significant achievement one can accomplish.
But for anyone who actually reaches the level of self-actualized, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that this level is not the end of your development. And many of those who reach this level, find themselves be stuck there. Stuck in a cycle of feeling like they need more, of never having enough, or fear that they will lose what they do get.
This is why it is extraordinarily common for those who are considered to be conventionally successful, and even those with large amounts of wealth to continue to feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied, and unhappy. This is made worse by the fact that often they sacrifice to achieve these remarkable things, telling themselves that when they get there… when they; get the new better car, the new bigger house, the right partner, the right job — and the list goes one — that then they will be happy.
But inevitably, the work ends, they might get what they want and still, they aren’t happy. The truth is these things, despite being fun to have, often only contribute to solidifying a sense of narrative self and perpetuating a story, and the beliefs that take a personal toll with it.
After all, these things all exist externally, and like Maslow said, “We have everything within us we need to create our fullest potential.
Then these feelings are exasperated because people believe “I’m self-actualized, or self-actualizing, shouldn’t I be happy?”
“If I’ve gone as far as I can, and I’m still not truly happy, will I ever be?”
When really, it’s the incessant focus on the self, which is often required to achieve things and meet needs, that robs one of the enjoyments of the things and experiences they have. Making them pointless in the end.
And so it becomes obvious that self-actualization cannot be the final stage of personal development. And it is not. Rather than being the apex of human achievement, self-actualization is meant to be a temporary phase on the way to lasting self-transcendence. A phase, which exists to help you discover who you are, what you truly want, and learn strategies for getting it based on your strengths and weaknesses so that you can achieve your full potential. And help you eventually go beyond the limitations of yourself, to unlock your leadership potential and hidden power.
Each level of the hierarchy of needs can be seen as a different set of values and priorities which occupy the attention of the person who experiences life at that level. And each level can also be seen as a level of consciousness.
Which is scarce and finite at the lowest levels, focused on meeting physiological and safety needs. Then expands outward, to transcend and include the levels which come before it, rising in level and qualities of consciousness, until inevitably unlocking the level of self-transcendence and the ultimate state of human existence.
This is why self-transcendence is represented as an inverted pyramid atop the traditional hierarchy of needs, as a way of symbolizing a total departure from conventional levels of consciousness. Crossing a threshold point from actualized to transcended, from lower levels of consciousness and development, to higher. Then infinitely expanding outward and upward, to new, higher levels of consciousness and development ad infinitum.
There is no getting stuck when you’re at the level of self-transcendence. There are few if any limits to the accumulation and wealth of positive experience that can be experienced at this level and higher. No limit to the levels of happiness, meaning, and joy that can be felt and experienced. No limit to consciousness. Because many of those limits are self-imposed, but when you focus on influencing yourself at the level of consciousness, many of these limits are bypassed.
For instance, they say money can’t buy happiness, but if you spend money on things and experiences that influence your state of consciousness — then it can.
After all, it is your state of consciousness that will influence your level of happiness, fulfillment, and how aligned you feel you are with your purpose. But that doesn’t mean when you start influencing yourself to live life at the highest level of consciousness that you suddenly need to live like a monk in a monastery with no worldly attachments or concerns.
It is possible to live an integrated, modern life and from a place of self-transcendence. Because the more integrated and developed you are, the more you are going to be able to sustain higher levels of consciousness, even when dealing with the tedium of daily modern life.
Being able to do this comes down to your level of integration, which determines your level of development. That is going to help you access these higher levels of consciousness, authentically and effectively express them in your daily life, and keep you from getting pulled down into lower levels, when any inevitable stressors show up.
When you change your consciousness you change your awareness, your perception, and your sense of self. This affects your choices brings awareness to the very real trade-offs you are making at every moment. Trade-offs like choosing to be affected by circumstance, versus being free. Really, anytime you make a decision there are trade-offs, and many times the trade-off is your level of consciousness.
Sometimes the trade-offs fall are what most people would consider being acceptable, or even normal.
But other times, the trade-offs are more extreme and involve trading things that are technically unnecessary for immediate survival like happiness and joy, and some that are, as health and well-being — in exchange for what you believe, or what your conditioning is telling you, will help you survive in the short term.
Which is all part of why life at the level of self-actualization is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
The Self-Actualization Trap
“Why self-actualization is not the top and how that’s experienced?”
When you were a child you were sold many ideas. Ideas that most people never go on to question, and which create the basic blueprint of a life in the 21st century that is well-lived.
Many of these ideas involve doing well in school, finding a job that you both love and makes good money. Find a partner, have or adopt kids, somehow secure a legacy and find happiness in retirement.
Obviously, this one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work for everybody — and in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the meaning of these achievements are beginning to change.
After the industrial revolution, many ideas conjured up meaning for those who had just won a war. In a time, where the world was still being explored. And the zeitgeist was can we do it? Rarely, should we do it?
These ideas influenced culture itself and people began to want the same things. They began to use the same measurements of value to determine what’s worth having and what’s worth a lot. Along came the American Dream, the vision of the red convertible sports car. The big house in the suburbs. If you’re ambitious add a yacht and few lifestyle hobbies.
When you think of self-actualization, what comes to mind?
For many, it’s the bright red sports car. It’s the new house that’s bigger than the last one. It’s the laminated VIP pass and really everything short of a hand-written letter from The Universe that says “You made it.”
But none of these things have anything to do with your self-actualization. People don’t have an issue actualizing, they have trouble getting past the limitations of their identities.
For many people, success is simply what they believe they need to achieve before they can feel happy, fulfilled, or satisfied. They think, I’ll be happy when I make a million dollars. After I have a million dollars, then I’ll be able to focus on my health, find the right partner, or do what I love.
These things are hard enough to achieve, that it isn’t until people start experiencing their own version of a the dream they envision for their life, often a dream that they first began to think up as a child — that they discover it isn’t quite enough.
The first time driving that new car, there is a thrill. The first time going to that new place there is a the sense of adventure. Going out wearing the new clothes, sporting a that new bag or watch.
But because these things are really not desires themselves, but actually just strategies for displaying social value to others they only make you feel good, so much as they get affirmation or admiration from others. This is why when they stop doing that, it’s almost as if the things themselves hold less value to us.
That’s because we aren’t perceiving those things for what they are…
Beautiful feats of engineering…
Places alive with a different culture and history than your own…
Ways of expressing yourself and a means of feeling your best and most empowered…
But instead through the lens of what they can do for you, and how they will alter other people’s perception of you.
When you’re taught self-actualization is the thing you should be aiming for, and that they way you achieve it, is by ticking boxes off a list — it should be no surprised that that is exactly what most people do. But what ends up happening is you focus more on telling the story of a life well-lived, instead of simply living it.
This is not all to say that self-actualization isn’t necessary, and that the achievements of life at this level aren’t awesome — they are! Fast cars are fun to drive, and driven better in the hands of someone with senses sharp enough to enjoy each sensation. Same goes for nice houses, beautiful adventures, and abundant quality time with loved ones, they are better appreciated by the person in the right state for enjoying them.
But if you don’t know what you’re missing out on, by staying at the level of self-actualization, it can take awhile for you to find out.
For many, best case scenario is they get a good car and get a thrill every time they drive it. Or they live in the right house, and that comfortable feeling of home warms you every moment you spend in it. And so on, filling every moment of life with an experience of self-actualization.
Most people simply organize their life, to have the most actualized, most refined version of every element of their life. The best car, house, hobbies — so they spend every moment of their life immersed in these experiences, but the rhythm is impossible to manage. There will always be time in-between.
You can’t drive all the time, and you can’t always stay home.
And no matter how thrilling an experience can be, your personal experience of it will always be influenced by your level of consciousness.
Anyone who has actually accomplished their desires will tell you, that after the climb comes a fall, when expectations do not align with reality.
But these same things experienced from an abundant, self-transcendent level of consciousness are going to feel very different than they do to someone who is experiencing them only for self-actualization’s sake.
The person at self-transcendent will have their senses transfixed absolutely on the experience at hand — seeing each thing as if for the first time, because in a way, for them, it is. Even if they’ve been somewhere a dozen times, they see how a place has changed and they’ve allowed themselves to change.
The difference is that at this level of personal development, where self-actualization is the highest propriety, life is incomplete and unfulfilling on its own. Rather than being the capstone achievement of life, vaguely described as success, is self-actualization is actually more of a stepping stone to what will be ultimately be the most meaningful, for you. Accompanied by a shift in not just your life and lifestyle, but also your state of consciousness and how you feel.
Conversely, the person who experiences something for the sake of self-actualization will be more worried about what something says about them, than enjoying their experience the most.
They will be worried about what something means and what story it tells about them.
Namely, “Am I significant?”
“Am I successful?”
Ultimately asking, “Am I enough?”
Because after enough accomplishments, experiences and possessions — if you remain at the level of self-actualization, it will not feel like enough. In fact, it will feel worse than having nothing at all, because you will have what you think you want, and you will still not feel fulfilled or satisfied.
The hedonic thrill of experiencing anything new, will alleviate this suspicion for a time. And each new dose of novelty will prolong your own realization, but eventually you will run out of methods for self-actualizing.
Or better yet, you will experience a shift to the state of self-transcendent, even temporarily — and know forever that it is possible to experience what you want. It just may not be possible in the way you thought it would be.
This is why self-actualization can be a trap. It’s easy to assume that just because something is hard to do, that it is worth doing. And in a society that prioritizes difficulty and effort over fulfillment
At its root, it comes from the mindset of a time in history where people were believed to be fundamentally expendable, because their very lives were often easily expended. The world was at war, and fought with currency of lives, so creating a culture of expending well-being, happiness and health was a small price to pay compared to those who willingly threw down their lives.
Out of that mess, something had to be gained. Something that made it worth it and demonstrated progress, not just personally but collectively as well. And so the aspirations of the idea of self-actualization emerged.
This is a time when self-transcendence still existed, but instead came from a cause greater than the individual. The trouble came when in the long-term those trade-offs being made actually weren’t great for the individual.
Beliefs like it is better to suffer in the short-term, in order to prosper later. That it doesn’t matter how you feel as long as the result is the same. That ends justify means.
Obviously these beliefs neglect the fact it is always possible for you to live well now, and in the future — and while trade-offs do exist, many of the trade-offs we make are unnecessary.
Life viewed from the lens of self-actualization is harder to perceive all of your options. It’s harder to tell when a trade-off or self-sacrifice is truly necessary, or when it is just assumed. In the same way that we assume, because something is more expensive that it must be better.
The truth is, you’re already actualized. You just may not be actualized as who you want to be. But this version of you didn’t just come into being without you having anything to do with it.
You can become more aligned in your actualization, by choosing who you ant to be. But best case scenario, in the stage of self-actualization, you are able to finally know yourself. That is this stages true purpose. To help you discover what you like, what you don’t and get all of the self-awareness you need to make the right choices for yourself.
It is not the stage where all your hard work starts to pay off, like many falsely believe it is. Which is why after many people finally get the car, the house, the spouse — you name it — they are shocked by the sudden and sharp drop off they experience, when they realize, they still aren’t happy.
The problem is, you are the one who decides if you’re self actualized.
And if when you get there, when you reach the point of ‘worth it’ and get all the possessions you could possible want, and realize that what you’re seeking still isn’t here — then what?
This is why self-actualization is not the final stage of personal development. In reality, self-actualization is a trap. It actually doesn’t have anything to do with actualization, but rather self-perpetuation. It comes in the form of a laundry list of tasks, accomplishments, habits, beliefs, possessions and status signals which only serve to continually reinforce your identity and sense of self.
In the process, reinforcing your current set of conditioning, beliefs, stories and limitations. Which only make them harder to transcend.
Life experienced through the lens of seeking self-actualization is narrow and perception and awareness are limited. Less options are perceived, because what you’re looking for is different — and how you look for it is different.
The shift that occurs between the levels of self-actualization and self-transcendence is not an incremental improvement, or another level ascended up the status hierarchy.
The Shift To Persistent Self-Transcendence
It is a shift in your level of consciousness. At the level of self-transcendent you are literally more conscious, more aware and more perceptive. This shift in consciousness is fundamental to the way you experience life itself and therefore changes everything about the way you experience life.
The threshold between the levels of self-actualization and self-transcendence marks a transition between two very different states of consciousness. This shift comes with it entirely different perspectives, dominant thought patterns, and even identities.
Unlike the jumps between previous levels, which are more like incremental improvements and optimizations on a way of thinking and living that is still fundamentally rooted in scarcity and self — crossing the threshold to self-transcendence is more akin to a total phase shift in the way you experience life and even understand yourself.
It is a shift to higher, more sustainable, levels of consciousness. Which are more expanded and capable of integrating lower levels of development, without rejection or denying them, while continuing to move towards higher and more advanced states of consciousness.
It is a shift from optimizing the circumstances of life and trying to mitigate risk and playing to not lose to a totally new and novel way of experiencing life which can only be described as persistence self-transcendences.
A state where you operate beyond your own limitations, conditioning, and stories — and open yourself up to authentic and empowered connection with reality as it is and other people as they are, expressing yourself as you choose to be.
When you shift to self-transcendence you are still of course you, which means that you are still your story and the roles you need to play at home and at the office. Except now, you are the version of you that you choose to be. Your chosen, and therefore true self.
Traditionally, as one develops, you move through the levels of development in succession. And whatever model you use, whether it’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which demonstrates the needs-solution perspective of each level of development, or if it’s Spiral Dynamics, which demonstrates the psychographic development of each level — they both have the same challenge.
Which is: you will fall to your highest level of development.
Development sounds clinical, but in this context your development is the set of beliefs, mindsets, stories and even conditioning you’ve created which will anchor you in whatever level of consciousness you operate in most of the time.
For most people, this is one level lower, than they actually think they are at.
The self work you do on your self worth and personal growth will influence your level of development, and raise your baseline. This is the hard work. It’s the shadow integration, re-authoring of your story, and desensitization of your social fears, which will help you integrate and raise your level of development. Which, in turn, raises your baseline and the level of consciousness you operate from most of the time.
But the key phrase here is most of the time. Because you and your level of consciousness are dynamic. And will be affected by the thoughts and experiences you have.
When you’re at rest, doing what you love, with whom you love, where you love — you will naturally rise to your highest level of development. Which is why so many feel great when on retreat, but lose that high the moment the plane lands and they come back home, or step back into the office.
This fallout happens, because the moment you face scarcity or adversity, you will fall down the levels. Lower levels of consciousness are entirely focused on survival and effective at keeping you alive. They are what has gotten humanity through the dangerous wild, ice ages–you name it. But when these ancient neural circuits kick online it comes at the cost of your well-being and your level of consciousness. And at these lower levels your consciousness contracts, your awareness narrows and lose sight of the bigger picture, what’s truly important and even who you really are.
Likewise, it is possible for you to temporarily ascend the levels and reach a state of higher consciousness like those found in self-transcendence momentarily.
But as with all things, what goes up, must come down. And without the appropriate level of development necessary to maintain life at the level of self-transcendence, you will fall down to the level of development you are anchored at.
So, the question is how do you not just temporarily enter the level of self-transcendent, but manage to stay there as well and make it your new normal.
Another good Maslow quote:
“We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves.” Abraham Maslow
Do we fear becoming someone other than who we really are? And leveling ourselves with the consequences of antiquated ways of thinking?
Do we crave finding out what truly ourselves is to us, and living with the consequences of that?
Can we be simultaneously excited and terrified to be alive at the same time?
Is there a way to get out of our own way and finally get what we want and do some good while we’re at it? Was this the only way we were ever going to unlock our full potential? Is there another way to win this game, and if there were, would we prefer it?
Perhaps, it was this line of thinking that lead maslow to this discovery in the first place.
Want to learn more?
You can use the link below to watch Colton’s new Masterclass, on accessing the state of self-transcendence, Unlocking Hidden Power — available for a limited time.