Tag Archives: self-actualization

Synthesis and Integration: Self and Other Focus

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Hey friends, how was your week?  Learn anything new and interesting?  Anneal any new ideas to existing frameworks in your already complex world view?  I did!  And it came in another big wave after my presentation on Friday.

I wrote last week about how I put together a new presentation.  For the first time, I added the idea of medicine as a complex adaptive system to a talk I gave to physicians at various levels of training and practice.  The objective of the presentation was for people to understand the scope of physician burnout, and leave with some ideas of how they could not only cope better themselves today, but also influence the system and move it toward a healthier, more compassionate state in the future.

As usual for my talks, I focused first on personal resilience.  Many physicians push back at this idea, and rightly so, as many medical organizations have instituted physician wellness programs aimed mainly at ‘fixing’ the doctors with yoga and meditation classes, while allowing the system that burns them out to continue its toxic trends toward over-regulation, loss of physician autonomy, and driving metrics that lie outside of, or even counter to, our core values.  I worried that my talk would be taken as just another attempt to tell physicians we aren’t good enough at self-care.

Thankfully, the feedback so far has been positive and I have not heard anyone say they felt berated or shamed.  I hope it’s because in addition to tips for self-care (eg 7 minute workout, picnic plate method of eating), I talked about how each of us can actually help change the system.  In a complex system, each individual (a ‘node’) is connected to each other individual, directly or indirectly.  So, difficult as it may be to see in medicine, everything I do affects all others, and everything each other does affects me.  This means I can be a victim and an agent at the same time, and the more I choose one or the other (when I am able to choose), I actively, if unintentionally, contribute to the self-organizing system moving in one direction or another [URL credit for image below pending].

Nodes in Complex System

My primary objective in every presentation is to inspire each member of my audience to claim their agency.  Before that can happen we must recognize that we have any agency to begin with, then shore up our resources to exercise it (self-care and relationships), and then decide where, when, and how that agency is best directed.

 

In 5 years of PowerPoint iterations, including and excluding certain concepts, I have always incorporated David Logan’s framework of stages of tribal culture.  Basically there are 5 stages, 1-3 being low functioning, and 4-5 high functioning.  The tribal mantras for the first three stages are, respectively, “Live sucks,” “My life sucks,” and “I’m great”.  Stage four tribes say, “We’re great” and in stage 5 we say, “Life’s great.”  The gap between stages 3 and 4 is wide, as evidenced by the traffic jam of people and tribes at the third stage.  In my view, the difference is mindset.  In the first three stages, most individuals’ implicit focus is on self, and subconscious mindset centers around scarcity and competition.  Victims abound in these cultures, as we focus on recognition, advancement, and getting ours.  We cross the chasm when we are able to step back and recognize how our mutual connections and how we cultivate them make us better—together—we see the network surrounding and tied to our lone-node-selves.

This week I realized that crossing the stage 3-to-4 chasm relates to two frameworks I learned recently:

The way I see it, in Logan’s tribal culture structure, one initially works toward self-actualization, essentially achieving it when fully inhabiting stage 3, “I’m great.”  But crossing to stage 4 requires self-transcendence, as described by Abraham Maslow, by recognizing a greater purpose for one’s existence than simply advancing self-interest.  In the same way, through stage 3 we live in what the Arbinger Institute describes as an ‘inward mindset,’ and we cross to stage 4 when we acquire an ‘outward mindset’, which is pretty much what it sounds like.  Essentially in stage 3 we mostly say, “I’m great, and I’m surrounded by idiots,” and in stages 4 and 5 the prevailing sentiment resembles, “We’re great, life’s great, and I’m so happy to be here, grateful for the opportunity to contribute.”

An astute colleague pointed out during my talk on Friday that we do not live strictly in one stage or mindset in serial fashion.  Depending on circumstances, context, and yes, state of mind and body (hence the importance of self-care!), we move freely and maybe often between stages, sometimes in the very same conversation!  The goals are to 1) look for role models to lead us to higher functioning stages more of the time, and 2) model for others around us to climb the tribal culture mountain with us, spending more and more mindset and energy at higher and higher stages.

The problem is the system, and we are the system.  So, onward.  Progress moves slowly and inevitably.  It will take time, energy, and collective effort.

We’ got this.

Living Large in Seventh Grade

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NaBloPoMo 2018: What I’m Learning

Did you know that Abraham Maslow never represented his hierarchy of needs as a pyramid?  I didn’t either!  To be clear, I have not read the paper I just linked; it was linked in a different article I read today, describing more about Maslow’s work than I have ever known before.  It’s in Scientific American, entitled, “What Does It Mean to be Self-Actualized in the 21st Century?” by Scott Barry Kaufman.

Especially later in his life, Maslow’s focus was much more on the paradoxical connections between self-actualization and self-transcendence, and the distinction between defense vs. growth motivation. Maslow’s emphasis was less on a rigid hierarchy of needs, and more on the notion that self-actualized people are motivated by health, growth, wholeness, integration, humanitarian purpose, and the “real problems of life.”

I was intrigued by this piece because I remember so clearly when I first learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy.  It was in seventh grade, and I can’t remember anymore the class or context.  I just recall that it made so much sense, and I felt such a swell of joy at the possibility that something so complex could be distilled and explained so simply.  It would have been fair to predict at that time that I would go on to become a psychologist.  The boy I had a crush on that year (and all through high school, actually) asked me where I saw myself on the pyramid.  I remember looking at the tiers and thinking, very clearly, oh, I’m at the top.  I felt a little sheepish, afraid I would be seen as bragging, but it was the honest answer, and I said so.  “Bullshit,” was his reply.  I can’t remember our verbal exchange thereafter, but I think I was able to convince him that I really felt like I was ‘there.’  And I left that encounter feeling both a bit more self-aware and also proud that I had stood my ground and defended a truth.  You could also have guessed I would later entertain a brief interest in law school.

Kaufman has revisited Maslow’s work, including his hierarchy of needs, and evaluated the components in the context of modern life.  Reassuringly, 10 of 17 of Maslow’s self-actualization characteristics still stand up to ‘scientific scrutiny,’ (not sure how he measured this).  He names the ten characteristics in the article, and you can ‘take the quiz’ to see how self-actualized you are today.  I love quizzes like this.  I have done the Myers-Briggs at least 5 times.  Others I love are Gregorc Mind Styles, Insights Discovery, and the Gallup Strengths Finder.  The most useful ones tell you what you already know about your strengths, and also offer advice and insights on how to manage your blind spots.

But the most interesting aspect of Kaufman’s article to me was Maslow’s interest in self-actualization and its relationship to self-transcendence.  We can understand self-actualization as ‘achieving one’s full potential’ and self-transcendence as ‘decreased self-salience and increased feelings of connectedness,’ (again, not read the paper; it’s linked in Kaufman’s article) or basically subsuming and/or integrating oneself within a greater whole.  At first you may think that these are mutually exclusive states of mind and being.  The coolest thing is that it’s not actually an either/or proposition; it is absolutely both/and:

While self-actualization showed zero relationship to decreased self-salience, self-actualization did show a strong positive correlation with increased feelings of oneness with the world.

Self-actualized people don’t sacrifice their potentialities in the service of others; rather, they use their full powers in the service of others (important distinction). You don’t have to choose either self-actualization or self-transcendence– the combination of both is essential to living a full and meaningful existence.

It reminds me of another subsection of Chapter 3 in Leading Change in Healthcare, wherein Suchman et al discuss holding the tension and balance between self-differentiation (clear sense of individuality) and attunement (deep awareness and acceptance of how we are connected and resonant with those around us).  It also reminds me of Brené Brown’s work on trust; she describes eloquently in Rising Strong how we can neither trust others nor be trustworthy ourselves without clarity and boundaries around who we are and our core values, and living in that integrity all of the time.

Once again, I find encouraging and validating evidence for something I really feel I have known since an early age:  We are all our best selves and our best communities not in competition, but in collaboration.   Cohesion in diversity weaves a stronger social fabric of connections, more flexible and elastic.  But that means we need to know exactly what we as individuals each bring to contribute.  Personal, intrinsic meaning and purpose are foundational for substantive interactions with others and resilient communal relationships.

Our world can meet each and every one of our physiologic, psychologic, and self-fulfillment needs—we can provide this for one another.  We can each strive for our own goals, alongside our peers, and still help each other on the rocky, uphill parts.  We really need to stop with the scarcity thinking and get on with the business of working together, maximizing each of our strengths, and making society better for all of us.

Onward.