The Science of Self-Actualization | Professor Scott Barry Kaufman

foreign [Music] well good morning everybody and welcome we are privileged today to welcome our speaker Dr Scott Barry Kaufman so Dr Kaufman is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist whose emphasis is on exploring the Mind creativity and the depths of human potential he is interested in using his research to help all kinds of Minds never creative fulfilling and self-actualized life Dr Kaufman received a BS in Psychology and human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon a masters of philosophy in experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale University he is a professor at Columbia University and founder and director of the center for human potential and one of the top 20 most cited scientists studying intelligence he hosts the psychology podcast which has received over 20 million downloads and was included in Business Insider's list of nine podcasts that will change how you think about human behavior in 2015 he was named by Business Insider as one of 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world Dr Kaufman's writing has appeared in the Atlantic Scientific American Psychology today and the Harvard Business review and here's the author and editor of 10 books his latest book published this last September choose growth a workbook for transcending trauma fear and self-doubt it's described as a research-based toolkit for turning challenging times into a springboard for healing insight and New Beginnings I'm humbly aware that I've only scratched the surface here but we are eager to hear more directly from the man himself so please join me in welcoming Dr Scott Barry Kaufman whose subject of his talk today is the science of self-actualization Welcome doctor a real honor to be here today and to share with you some of my work and research I've done on the science of self-actualization I'm a professor at Barnard College Columbia University I teach a course called the science of living well and I intentionally called it the science of living well as opposed to like the science of happiness because I think that living well goes beyond just happiness and cops is lots of different dimensions one of my favorite psychologists is the psychologist Abraham Maslow and in his writings and what is self-actualization I came across this unpublished uh it's a quote from his where he says we try to make a rose into a good rose rather than seek to change roses into lilies in necessities of pleasure in the self-actualization of a person who may be quite different from yourself it even implies an ultimate respect and acknowledgment of the sacredness and uniqueness of each kind of person I love this I love this idea from a Clinical Psychology perspective from a coaching perspective we don't try to turn someone into some something else we don't say to someone you know why aren't you self-actualizing Bob yourself right we said we say well what is the best self that you could be self-actualizing in your own lifetime have any of you ever come across Maslow's hierarchy of needs before in a sort of a pyramid it's often depicted as this pyramid where you have certain level of needs that it must be met before another level can be achieved sort of like some sort of as though like life is like a video game right like you reach a level of like security and then it's like congrats you've unlocked family you know and then you reach another level and and you know here's something that many people don't know but Maslow never actually drew a pyramid in any of his writings and um it was actually a depiction in management textbooks and trying to depict his his really rich complex theory of motivation and boil it down to something like a one chart uh one graph but turns out Maslow never drew a pyramid he didn't even like the pyramid um so I'm here to like correct the record a little bit and talk about what the science of self-actualization actually looks like and by the way sometimes there's some memes on the internet that you'll find like we'll see things added here like Wi-Fi at the bottom when kovid started in 2020 people added toilet paper to the bottom because remember you couldn't buy it at the stores it was all used up so this actually set when I discovered first of all blew my mind when I just when I discovered that maso never drew a pyramid and it took me down a whole Rabbit Hole I love going down rather intellectual rabbit holes I love just getting so absorbed in a project for um for for uh for for a certain period of time and I discovered the life of mazzo I discovered that on June 8th 1970 he died suddenly of a heart attack as he was jogging by uh the side of his pull and he knew that he that he was on borrowed time he had had a heart attack just about a year and a half before that and he knew that any moment he could have another heart attack but but he did die suddenly that day and he left a notepad he was writing furiously in his notepad he was working on a whole new Theory a theory of transcendence that no one knows about um and um and I so I went down this whole I was like I'm going to be I'm gonna be the guy that discovers this and I went through such a journey I read his journals you can actually go on Amazon and buy the complete two set personal Diaries of mazel but when I went on there I noticed it was ranked 5 billion so I was like oh my gosh like I'm probably gonna be the only one in the world ever to read this and I discovered some things so for instance I discovered this entry that gave me a pause in his March 28 1970 which was just a few months before he he suddenly passed away he wrote in his diary that's weird that I should be enabled to perceive accept and enjoy the eternity and preciousness of the non-me world just because I became aware of my own mortality that being able to enjoy as public as puzzling it could be his own personal experience was contradicting his own Theory right so his theory had it where you had like different uh not levels but different pre-potent needs that are more important than other needs that was his theory so if um if safety needs aren't met you know you can't really fully self-actualize you can't really um uh be all you can be and that that makes a lot of sense of course if you live in poverty you live with violence it's very hard to do math proofs or you know do the things that maybe help you realize your own potential however he found Transcendence was a whole other beast and he was working very hard the last couple years of his life trying to add an additional uh motivation above self-actualization Transcendence which he called the motivation for Transcendence but was puzzling to him what was puzzling him was well how come here he was facing a threat to his safety needs he could the doctor told him he could die any second and yet how is it that he was feeling the most poignant experience of transcendence he ever had in his entire life that's what seemed a contradict his theory so that's what he became very fascinated to understand how is it that here I am confronting my mortality and instead of being so focused on that first pre-potent need that I that he put in this Theory instead I see joy and preciousness and of the smallest things I just uh he was walked in he called it the post-mortem life he argued that if everyone could die and then come back that remaining life would be more beautiful than we ever had up to that point so I'll published essay you said it must be stated that self-actualization is not enough personal salvation was good for the personal loan cannot be really understood in isolation the good of other people must be invoked as well as the good for oneself it is quite clear that a purely interest psychic individualistic psychology without reference to other people in Social conditions is not adequate so you've also made it very clear that self-actualization which he talked about a lot from an individualistic point of view wasn't enough we need other people we need to have the context of our surrounding environment so you can see what this threat to mortality did to him personally as well as to his own theories right that any this is not what's discussed in Psychology 101 in Psychology 101 it's still kept very much in terms of that sort of individualistic self-actualization he gave a talk called the farthest reaches of human nature just a couple years before he died arguing that a Revolution was underway and he says the fully developed and very fortunate human being working under the best conditions tends to be motivated by values which transcend oneself they are not selfish anymore in the old sense of the term beauty is not within one's skin nor is Justice or order one can hardly class these desires as selfish in the sense that my desire for food might be my satisfaction with achieving or allowing Justice is not within my own skin it is equally outside and inside therefore it has transcended the geographic limitations of the self thus one begins to talk about transhumanistic psychology now my entire talk today is not just in one big Ode to Abraham Maslow but I'm just a contextualize sort of my own career and my own independent scientific Journey for the past 20 25 years operated within a context in which I was labeled with a learning disability as a kid of an auditory learning disability I had trouble hearing things in real time and people very much discounted my potential and so I had been fascinated even long before I discovered Maslow's writings I've been just absolutely fascinated and I would say obsessed with understanding differences in talent and where does that come from you know differences in giftedness you know I don't know if anyone has heard of gifted education in schools and then I was in the opposite thing when I was a kid I was special I was that's why the title of my first book is called Ungifted I was The Ungifted kid but but I always was I always had questions to myself when I was young I would hear I remember Middle School I remember hearing the um announcement on the speaker uh gifted kids please report to room two for your gifted classes and I was like that ain't me you know like who are those kids I want to be them you know so um so really that set off very young in my life a fascination with this so when I made contact with the writings of humanistic psychology and as you'll see later Maslow it was so deeply deeply influenced by East Indian philosophy it actually all goes back there you know in a lot of ways that mazzo and his ideas of transcendence were so influenced by by ancient philosophies I made contact with the writings of uh self-actualization and those Notions I I realized aha that's that's it that's what I really am studying that's what I've been studying all these years I thought I was studying it what is intelligence when I first started out in my career I was doing IQ testing and how we need to think about potential more than IQ testing but I realized quickly that wasn't all there is to your human and potential so so this model I developed is very much in the same Spirit of Maslow's notion of the difference between the d-realm of human existence and the B realm of human existence so he argued that we go so much of our life motivated by our deficiencies we go similar to our life when our basic needs aren't met seeing the whole world to the extent to which things can satisfy those basic deficiencies for instance if we are chronically hungry we will constantly be motivated to find food right and everything is that's the our priority in all the Universe I I I'm sure you all can relate to that right no matter how evolved or enlightened we all are if you are starving right like food is your top priority so um uh social uh deprivation if you feel lonely everyone you meet is a potential friend right a potential someone to satisfy that you know if you feel low self-esteem you feel like you want to want more respect or you want more appreciation but that's all the D realm but Maslow argue that that the B realm the being realm of human existence when you replace a very cloudy lens with a clear lens it's like like replacing a cloudy lens with a clear lens you're able to see life on its own terms you're able to see life not for what it does for you only for the deprivation but you accept people and things on their own terms and he said that's actually where Beauty where you see the world is beautiful that's where um uh the the B values come from the values of pure being itself not the values you have so that you can get something else but the value is like goodness Justice truth beauty all these things that meaningfulness things that in and of themselves or goods are basic Goods and so he said that operates all in the B realm so to kind of be in line with the spirit of that D versus B realm of existence distinction I reimagined Maslow's hierarchy of needs as it needs as a sailboat do we have any Sailors in the room or anyone who has ever been on a sailboat has that one or been a sailboat no that's really cool not not that many people have actually even been on a sailboat and and we thought um uh my designer and I thought this was a better way of depicting the self-actualization journey and I'd love to see what you all think but so the pyramid is gone okay it's not like we life's not a video game we all recognize that instead it seems like life is more about integration and wholeness and um and uh and contribution and your and you know the journey you can be as individualistic as you as it can be but waves can come crashing down at any time you still have to go in the most valued Direction even knowing that that um there's so many unknowns that unknown the only thing we know is that there's unknowns that's all we know right um no matter what you know things could happen you know I can like and then predict that I was going to accidentally you know hit this thing and the whole thing was going to turn off right I didn't predict that was going to happen you know so there's always there's always something going to go wrong the law of entropy so but at the same time we have the boat that must be secured to a certain degree if you have too much water coming in on the boat that's obviously your basic needs aren't met you don't feel safe you don't feel secure that's that's of a utmost importance but if you just feel safe and secure you're not going to move in your most valued Direction unless you eventually open that Sail and it's the opening up the sale process being vulnerable to the winds and the waves and other people being vulnerable is is just an essential part of that self-actualization process and that journey and usually it's done with a spirit of a pro-social purpose a spirit of exploration and and love so this is my revised hierarchy of needs that separates the boat security needs from the uh the sale growth needs needs for to explore the needs to that they need to love unconditionally to give to others the need for a purpose to feel like you have some sort of calling in your life some sort of higher order dream and I argue that Transcendence is something that just comes along for the ride of all that it's an emergent property as they say or to be even more fancy Transcendence is an Epi phenomenon of growth you like that like that Transcendence is an Epi phenomenon of growth um so it's you know it's not a destination it's all this is a direction we're all we're talking about is directions um uh but I'd love to see what you all think but I I don't even think Enlightenment is a destination I also view that as a Direction as a North star goal as something that people are closer to people are moving in the direction you can make choices in your life on a day-to-day basis that moves you either in that direction or away from that direction but it's never anything that sounds like that'd be boring anyway to just like finally just that's it you reached it and then what you do the day after you know you wake up you're like I'm going to Hawaii I'm done you know like I don't know what happens the day after you're enlightened 100 you know I don't know what does that person do sounds like I don't know so um yeah so we tend to view it more in uh in it as a as a as a North store a star uh dream um that we can uh we can move towards um so so uh let's see let me talk a little bit about love because I do and I decided to like double click on Love Today a little bit because um it feels like this is a very loving room it feels like this this whole society is very grounded in love would you say that's fair to say right that's like out of all the needs I feel like that's a that's a big one you all care about um it's a big one that I care about too and you may have noticed that I've separated the Need For Love from the need for connection did you notice that in the sailboat I actually put love is a higher need um it's it's from it's coming from the growth not from the um the the boat itself and the thing is we're seeing a lot today um in our society of people uh not if they don't feel connected to someone they don't like hear them out you know there's we're more like and then put inversely we're more likely to care for and hear out the people we feel some sort of connection to that's and that's the the inverse of what I just said but we're seeing a lot of that today we're seeing a lot of sort of in-group love and our group hate you know you perceive as and it's just about perception um in fact here's a little biology lesson there's a there's a hormone called oxytocin has anyone heard of oxytocin oxytocin you it goes when you hug a dog you'll feel oxytocin when you feel connected to someone you feel um uh mothers so people argue that it well it probably evolved for the mother child Bond but but it now applies to other things us bonding to others that we view as part of our in-group but there's been they used to call it the love hormone butt or the cuddle hormone but more recent research has come Under Fire a little bit oxytocin is coming to fire sounds a little funny to say that but it sounds so loving oxytocin to say it's come under Fire but um there's some more nuance and context though now we know that oxytocin releases itself only when we feel a connection to someone but it actually backfires if we don't feel a connection to someone so the research shows that it makes it more like that hormone makes it more likely that we will we will do something like a hospital hostility towards someone that we view maybe as a threat to our in-group and it makes complete sense as well from a mother child Bond right like if it's you feel like there's a threat to your child oh heck no right like you'll do any the mother will do anything you know and a father will do anything you know to protect that child but you see that in terms of group functioning as well right like so if you feel as though there's a group or there's that's a threat to your group um oxytocin suddenly isn't so loving right so this is why I bring up love and I try to understand I really try to understand scientifically um how we can have more of it how can we have more love in our life which is unconditional um mazzo called it be love love for the being of others um so my question really today is how can we have more Be Love in the world um Mazel distinguished a form of love which is a needing form of love which is where you feel lonely and then that therefore that's why you seek out Love From unneeding Love um which he referred to as B love for the being of another person um and he argued that instead of needing it Be Love is admiring another person and instead of striving for satiation Be Love usually grows rather than disappears you know you're in a be loving relationship with someone when you feel like it's expansive you feel like it's moving it's Dynamic it's an alive organism system but you can also feel when you're in D love and you feel like it's um uh toxic you feel like it's a uh has anyone ever talked to someone and you feel like you're in a corrosive black hole with that person it's not they're sucking all of your energy right and that's that's something and it's very important to recognize this because a lot of people can full uh can can be tricked into thinking that that be that D Love is beloved especially if you're with a manipulative person who wants you to think that so I've been really trying to understand the difference between these two things and and in order to scientifically study it I looked I first started from the psychological literature on the dark Triad has anyone heard of the dark Triad sounds sexy doesn't it no it sounds horrifying it includes narcissism includes machiavellianism and psychopathy um so machiavellianism is a particular trait that involves a constant calculating and trying to manipulate people you know Pete the kind of person who's just always scheming you can you like give it a rest Bobby you don't have to scheme every second you know there's someone who like every second you're telling them like oh how can we get money just like calm down I mean give it a rest um uh psychopathy which is um some when I say psychopathy some people might think serial killers but actually most are most Psychopaths aren't serial killers psychopathy is just a personality trait and at its most extreme manifestation can be a clinical can rise to the clinical levels but psychopathy just means uh it's a trait of people who are callous and uh why why a lot so lying is a big part of it callousness and sort of uh yeah those are the two big things costness and lying and then narcissism you all know what narcissism is right like narcissism is uh entitlement it's self-important self-importance and in a way that's so you feel like you're you deserve all the greatest things in the world more than everyone else on this planet because you're innately better than everyone else so that's nice even you when you find all three of these things together I don't recommend marrying such a person that's all I'll say if you find if you find all three of these things in runaway um don't also don't start a company with them either I'd say don't you know what I'm saying uh okay so what I wanted to study because there was nothing in the psychological literature that was the opposite and that upset me because I was like well how come there's so much research attention to the dark Triad and it's almost like is does known care that there might be good people in this world like why why is no one seem to care about that when I turn on Netflix these days it's like serial killer documentary serial it's like all I can choose from are serial killer documentaries I'm like those are my only options about documentaries like where's the documentary about like you know the the founder of the center for instance maybe there is it has been made one but it should be on Netflix anyway yeah it's just it frustrates me so I worked with my colleagues to um to come up with and study what the opposite might be and I think the I the the basic sort of mentality of the light Triad person um is uh Anne Frank who even despite you know the Nazis coming up they were they were she was writing her journal as the Nazis were trying to find her and we're very close to coming in to kill her she wrote her diary I still believe in spite of everything that people are truly good at heart if you can still maintain a fundamental belief in the goodness of humans despite individual instances of evil or individual instances I mean that that that that's a very profound form of wisdom I think that to transcend that so these are just some of my collaborators on the light Triad research um no the Dalai Lama wasn't actually a directly a research collaborator but uh David Yeadon was and I like that picture of David Aiden with the dialogue so um so these are some of my collaborators and we discovered that there are three main components of the light Triad which we view as a basic benevolent orientation social orientation toward others so if the dark Triad is a hateful orientation towards others or an antagonistic orientation toward others the light Triad is a benevolent social orientation toward others and includes three main components one component is Faith and Humanity believing the fundamental goodness of humans another is continuism we call that we're nerds so we call it continuism are there any philosophy nerds in the room like uh like okay so what we did is we it's the opposite of machiavellianism do you see what we did there some anyone anyone with me anyone with me so Machiavelli you know how communipotent others well kant's first categorical imperative is don't treat people as a means to an end treat them as ends and to themselves so that's why we call it continuism and it's it's to con you're with me with me back there and it's a nerdy move but well played Scott well played okay human nerdy okay but humanism uh valuing the dignity and worth of each individual you know every each individual you meet do you have a humanism toward them or are you tribal toward them right are you like do you just judge someone completely and reduce them to whatever group that they're part of or do you do you treat every individual with dignity and respect and so we looked um in fact you know what I can give you some of the items on this test um but don't cheat you can go on the website uh self-actualizationtests.com and you can take the test and and it'll tell you where you are if you're a Yoda or a Darth Vader so we put it in terms of a Star Wars uh thing it's on my website and it's it's free I'm not trying to sell products it's free it's self-actualizationtests.com but I'm going to give you the items right now but don't cheat but I suppose a dark Trend I don't know you know it's an interesting question someone who scores very high in the dark Triad are they would they cheat to be light Triad or would they just be proud of being dark Triad I actually our research tends to show they're just proud of it so they actually don't tend to cheat because a lot of people ask us well don't drug try and people like cheat the to your psychological tests it's like no actually they're pretty honest with that they're pretty honest because they don't view um these things as negatives right so if you talk to someone who's very high in the dark trade and you say you know um you give them the item like I uh manipulate people to get what I want right they'll be like yes that's how you have to be in this world or else you lose and I only care about winning so that that's the you know thing um so one uh I don't feel comfortable overtly manipulating people to do something I want I prefer honesty over charm I would like to be authentic even if it may damage my reputation when I talk to people I'm rarely thinking about what I want from them humanism I tend to admire others raise your hand if you score high in this item I tend to admire others I tend to applaud the successes of other people I tend to treat others as valuable I enjoy listening to people from all walks of life by the way you know people who score high in the dark Triad do not enjoy talking to people from all walks of life who do you think they tend to really just care to talk to not the same but higher higher they're like it's like if they perceive you as the same or whoa where it's like oh yeah whatever what's your name again I don't even care anyway don't tell me but you know those kind of people they're like oh what's your name whatever and then but people so um people uh faith in humanity um one I tend to see the best in people I tend to trust that other people will deal fairly with me I think people are mostly good I'm quick to forgive people who have hurt me um uh this is also a really big what we find our research very very different than uh the dark Triad mentality they will never forgive and in fact they remember the smallest slight smallest perceived slights and they'll remember it and call you on it 30 years later they're like no I'm not paying for that bill because remember 1972 you didn't you'd cover my bill and it's like whoa you remember that so um now a really reasonable a reasonable thing uh that that someone could bring up here is like well okay well Scott like you're you're dividing people into like dark Triad people and white tried people that seems like a huge oversimplification like right weren't you thinking that back there you seem smart you know it's like it's like no that's a huge oversimplification like um aren't we all a mix of different characteristics in the part Being Human so we were like yeah fair enough Let's test that let's actually test to see whether that's true and so what we were able to do and this is what you actually can do when you take our test online and it'll tell you your composition of both within you what we're able to do is use a statistical analysis to uh called waiting latent class analysis who's with me who's with me who knows Wayne you know in class and all amazing so you can actually look within people and come up with different types of people you know based on multiple interacting characteristics it's a little bit more nuanced than just saying dark versus light turn and so we did this very large stage analysis I want to give a huge credit to Craig Newman who came over from the Dark Side to our research team because he he had been working on the cycle psychopath test for years and years with Robert hair the founder of the psychopath test and he emailed me on the blue he when he read my first paper in the late trial and he said can I can I he didn't say can I come over to the light side but he said can I do research with you on the light try that's a way it sounds way more interesting so he did a lot of these analyzes so I want to give him a huge huge shout out but we were able to actually identify that there are three subtypes of humans and again this is a huge oversimplification but we were we were able to do some lean class analysis to find that here do you want me to start with the good news of the bad news thank you okay we'll get the like the Band-Aid rip it off scott okay so uh the bad news is that there are people out there that are pretty pretty evil maybe the Evil's not the right word but they're pretty antagonistic they're pretty like almost pure pure Darkness okay you know like uh of like you know the the heart of their soul um and uh and but uh the good news is only seven percent of the general population um so it's the good news is I think that this shows most that Anne Frank was right Anne Frank was right most people are just trying to do their best you know they are maybe uh middle subtype which is a fair balance or even we found 50 one out of every two people are the are almost like pure light Triad you know they had very very low dark Triad traits and very very high light dry trades so that's also very that's very promising to know that one I mean I assume 100 of this room our Pure light Triad but you know it isn't that good to know that in the general population that one out of two you know that's that's that seems promising the thing that's really unfortunate though is that that that that that that seven percent they can really ruin it for the rest of society and it even takes just one really benevolent individual to really really kind of ruin it for a whole society as history has shown right I mean this is not theoretical um so we were trying to thinking how can we study this in a context uh where there's power so we looked at U.S senators what do you think do you think there's more light Triad or pure light Triad or pure dark Triad in the U.S Senate what do you think raise your hand if you think light Triad in the U.S Senate raising everything dark Triad in the ascent you just showed me whether or not you're light or dark Triad but your response just then wasn't that smart of me um no I'm joking um but um we the dark Triad is more prevalent and we did a real we did a real analysis objective analysis this wasn't self-report it's not like we went to you know like AOC and be like can you report your different characteristics but um we listened to um to hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio tapes of speeches and it was coded by multiple Raiders and then the Raiders it was correlated so there was inter-rater reliability all this nerdy stuff I'm saying right now just trust me it's good stuff good signs good science but um but so we basically so we looked in wisdom courage Humanity Justice Temperance Transcendence um a narcissism psychopathy and machiavellianism and yeah we found that the dark subtype was was more prevalent um and this is also really disconcerting and I wish I just had like great news to report yes they're all light tried and they all just want to do good in the world but we found that Senators with dark traits were more likely to stay in office even though they're less likely to get co-sponsorship for their bills so they're not really team players um yet they're charismatic enough to full and Machiavelli their their consistent constituency is that the word constituency so that that can be quite problematic but I'm going to give you some good news here um being a more pure light Triad is correlated with happiness something good here right it's you know everyone everyone asks do nice guys finish last or you know whatever do nice people finish last well look it depends on how you define uh you know what what's what's your goal in life right like to answer that question we found that by and large white Triad was correlated with um with a greater sense of purpose a greater sense of huge differences in life satisfaction um and um uh and and Universal values Universal values um for all um some of you actually might be curious is anyone curious if there are sex differences in the light burst dark Triad were you was anyone wondering about that well we have found probably the strongest effect in all of psychology we couldn't believe how striking uh the effect was um overwhelming uh um difference between uh sex difference and what direction do you think because you're probably right you think more men are light oh yeah yeah more men were dark Triad uh by a like a like a standard deviation of like two which is ridiculous like no one has ever found a sex difference that big um so this is um uh look you could see the implications for power structures you see implications for I mean you can just see it right and and I'm not trying to buy throw my sex under the bus right now by the way I'm I'm a man right like I'm not trying to say like oh all men are terrible but um it is interesting to think about um the ones who tend to pursue power um and how and and the a lot of the light Triad individuals um well there was a statistical correlation there much less likely to care about power but they're probably the ones that we want to be in power so I I think this has been a real conundrum for me to try to figure out how we can change the incentive structures in our society to allow um uh yes more women into positions of power and also allow um uh and not make women feel like um they have to be like men in order to be in positions of power like how can we just appreciate sort of light Triad way of being um you know in in and of itself is an important thing the way of being in our society if it was any answers to this question I would love to know and how we could study this and you also look at purpose um you know striving wisely is really important when you're striving for your purpose are you striving in a way that that is best for you or are you just striving because people tell you you wanna you should do something in your life I love this quote from mazzo what is not worth doing is not worth doing well um choosing the right goals that will lead to Optimal growth development and well-being and that fit your deepest values and then also being able to um have a good vision of what is that purpose going to look like as clear a vision as possible eat Paul Torrence the creativity researcher followed up Elementary School students their whole lives to see who were the ones that became most creative and he found that 25 35 45 they're still following up because 50 they just had the 55-year follow-up Torrance is long buried but um but but a lot of his researchers uh have have carried on the mantle and are still following up the ones who are still alive that initiated this famous study he found the elementary school students who fell in love with a future image of themselves um uh as he says life's most energizing and exciting moments occur in those split seconds when are struggling and searching or suddenly transformed into the dazzling Aura of the profoundly new an image of the future he found the these kids who fell in love with an image on themselves in the future were much more likely to be creative and to live a just a life of purpose and a life of meaning um so um to what extent do we really um assess in kids what are your character strands and by the way you can assess your character strands for free at this website here via character.org I think we should be giving these kinds of tests out more to children we should be more to in the workplace you know these sorts of things and I found that there are some character strengths I did an analysis and I crunched the numbers and I I was curious well regardless of your own individual individual character strengths are there some character strengths that just everyone should probably cultivate you know and I found the following were really really predictive of Life of well-being well-being being broadly defined as including meaning and purpose and positive emotions so gratitude seems to be a really good one especially existential gratitude being able to find meaning and even in the suffering you know kind of being appreciative of even not just the good happens but also when the bad happens um curiosity and hope hope was a huge one kind of keeping our minds of hope and love of course love has got to be in there um let's see um I'm gonna be done in a couple minutes right oh really and then we would do a little bit of a q a as well right okay cool so what are self-actualizing people like what what and that was another research question I had and I went in and I found Maslow's original paper that he wrote on self-actualizing people and I thought how cool to be to to do an update on that and and publish it in the same Journal he published as in with the title self-actualizing people in the 21st century you know adding the in the 21st century part um apparently I'm the only one who thinks that's cool but but what I did is I did this really deep analysis of um of all of his writings to come up with a test that measures um which one of his proposed traits of self-actualizing people actually hold up in a psychometric way that you can actually measure um and so yes I published this paper self-actualizing people in the 21st century integration with contemporary Theory and research on personality and well-being found out that mosul is a pretty sharp guy about 10 of his 17 proposed characteristics can be measured by modern day scientific tools and do all positively correlate with each other meaning that these 17 traits that I'm going to show you right now people who score high in one of them do tend to score high in the other 16. that's pretty cool that's pretty cool so I created the scale which you can take at self-actualizationtests.com or just directly go to self-actuallytest.com um continue okay raise your hand if you score high and continued freshness of appreciation and what this means is that you can appreciate again and again the basic Goods of life with all pleasure wonder and even dare I say ecstasy however stale these experiences may have become to others raise your hand if you can cultivate a continued freshness of beautiful beautiful you know every time you see a sunset do you say wow that's beautiful or do you treat a sunset like we often treat humans and say it's okay but if only I could change it a little bit and put the left Hue up a little bit and you know like Carl Rogers said if we treated people like sunsets we'd be able to see their beauty in them on their own terms and so I always thought of that I love that acceptance I accept all my quirks and desires without shame or apology anyone I'm not there yet but I'm raising my hand just to like you're there too well that's awesome yeah well I I hope someday to get to that point authentic I am pretty quirky so I have a lot to accept I have a lot within me I think except I'm pretty quirky um okay um I can maintain my dignity and this is authenticity and I Define authenticity you can Define authenticity in many ways by defining it in Eric fromm's way which is do you stay true to your values specifically environments that test it right where it's easy to be authentic when you're with every all your friends who are the same way right but raise your hand if you can maintain your dignity and integrity even environments that are undignified try you try if you try that's all you can do is try your best right Equanimity well I love this one because uh um this is in the phrase that the Maslow used but I I named it this because I'm such a big fan of this notion in Buddhism um of equanimity and I think that it's actually a better way of thinking about a particular way of being than uh than you often hear about grit you know and I love uh the researcher behind grit Andrew Duckworth she's a good friend of mine and I love the research she does but it's often misunderstood as like just doing whatever to get the weight of the top stepping over people or like you know so I like the idea of having grit with Equanimity right like Equanimity is um you you take a life's enable ups and downs with Grace acceptance and warmth and love it's sort of it's a way of being that you bring to your resiliency and two dealing with things it's not passive you know there's a lot of misconceptions I know not in this room but there are a lot of misconceptions that Equanimity or or even Zen Buddhism is a very passive thing like oh they never fight oh they never argue you know they just they just pushovers they just take everything it couldn't be farther from the truth it's a matter of the manner of being that in which you fight right that matters and I think that's really important in our society today um purpose how many of you feel a great responsibility in duty to accomplish a mission in life yeah these are all characteristics of self-actualizing people truth seeking how many of you are truth Seekers you really like to get at the real the real truth about people in nature yeah yeah yeah um how many of you have a genuine desire to help the human race this guy's on fire over here he's he's like I want to be his friend Mr self-actualized over here he's every single one he's like before I even finish the sentence he's like that's me to any meeting I didn't Equanimity oh you didn't raise her hand oh that's interesting no Equanimity but um well you have a you have a great way of being so uh you probably have maybe even more than you realize um Peak experiences um how do you have alternate experiences where you just feel like at the most extreme you feel kind of like one with the universe you feel one with everyone you know you feel New Horizons open up um how many of you feel like you have good moral intuition it's not the same thing as being moral it's uh bees usually correlated with being moral but it's actually just you feel you know when you've done or said something like you shouldn't have done yeah I think it's very important to kind of have that that compass in a way whether or not you act or not on that Compass to have that Compass is is really important people who score high in the dark Triad do not have that Compass at all they can't tell the difference between if they've done something to cause harm to someone else or themselves or or they haven't um hear it how many of you just have this General spirit in your life that pervades everything you do of creativity and playfulness cool okay excellent um so those are the characteristics those are 10 10 characteristics of self-actualizing people I found that you can like you can create an IQ score you can actually sum up those 10 and create a self-actualization score and interesting enough it's uh well we didn't look to see its correlation with IQ but I assume it's not strongly correlated with IQ it's a different way of it's a different mode of human existence right a different element or a thing to assess in a person um and we found that it was correlated with a creative achievement we found it was correlated with work performance um you know who would have thought that items such as freshness of appreciation could matter in the workplace you know like the you know some of this stuff sounds so hippie dippy right there's always some people see it say to me they're like oh no organizational psychologist is going to care about your self-actualization scale you know that's like for the hippies and it's like okay well that's you're wrong because we found that these things do predict um even ratings by supervisor of performance so these things really matter I'm kind of going to end my talk today talking about wrapping it all up and talking about what I've talked about today is a really healthy form of transcendence not what I call a spiritual narcissism you often will see a more vertical than horizontal form of transcendence my former Transcendence that I'm just presenting today in which I've tried to study is very horizontal in the sense that what is automatically good for you is good for the world there's really no boundary between self and world or at least the boundary between self and world is is minimized so you're kind of one with others as opposed to a vertical form of transcendence which is there's actually a phrase in Psychology called the I'm enlightened and you're not effect and it often happens when someone does like maybe one weekend they did a a silent Meditation Retreat for the first time and then they come back and they cancel half of their friends know they're like sorry sorry Jody you're not as enlightened As I Am anymore you know I did this the weekend uh silent Meditation Retreat um and uh and and that's that's like a verdict you know I mean that's like vertical that's like oh you're you somehow you've gotten higher than others as opposed to um I really like to focus on integration with the world um in a way that um you're transcending the boundaries of yourself that's how I view it that's how I view it so I actually Define how the Transcendence as an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of cultivating the good Society it's a mouthful it's a mouthful but um I think it's a healthier foreign Transcendence that can really improve the world and um are we my colleagues and I have been looking at various can you know there's a Continuum of transcendence uh uh Andy Newberg and David Yeadon are on the Forefront of This research on the science of transcendence um and I've been blessed and lucky to work with them um but you can have various different states ranging from a flow state where you just feel really absorbed in what you're doing to mindfulness to this kind of existential gratitude I was talking about to the love experience to the feeling all in Wonder for the world to feeling inspired and then all the way up to the great mystical experience that's something that should be within the purview of science we should be able to understand that as well and I just view it as a extreme uh part of the Continuum but still part of the same Continuum at its most extreme level you're they're you're one with everything you know that's said that that's that's it right you're being one over there if you can get to that state where you're like and you can get you can be assisted by it with various uh drugs but um uh I do think that we can get there even without the drugs right I do think that we um that that a lot of spiritual practices can get us there prayer meditation um uh even just uh sometimes going to a concert and being super connected and feeling Transcendent you hear a beautiful I love chill concertos that's my thing like if I hear like an Elgar child concern I'm like Snapped into a state of like Transcendence so I think there's lots of little things we can do in our lives um I've been studying the all uh way of being uh with with some research and we created you can take this on our I put all my tests on self-actualizationtests.com but I would create an all experience questionnaire we had people fill out lots of different uh times in their life they felt the sense of all and wonder and even reverence for something greater than themselves and we found that there were six main components of the all experience one is you tend to time changes you send a test you sense things momentary slow down you feel like a sense of being connected to everything you feel closer more closely connected to humanity than maybe you ever had before you perceive something much larger so there's a cognitive component to all and there's a physical component to all you'll probably feel chills or you feel a little shiver or something down your spine when you're kind of in this in the throes of this experience and then there's a real assimilation thing where you're trying to somehow understand the magnitude of what you're experiencing we found that these six components are part of the all experience and then finally Maslow very the very very end of his life he had argued that Peak experiences were important for most of his life but he argued towards the last couple years of his life really What mattered the most for Transcendence wasn't Peak experience like the one off the daily the daily seeing the miraculous and the everyday and he uh uses the frame the plateau experience but he actually co-opted that and took that term from someone he was deeply deeply influenced by called UA as Rani and I found very few people alive today who have ever heard of him has anyone in this room ever heard of him because I I know um and you know I feel like part of my mission is to bring it back you know as well as Maz will bring both these cats back right and uh um but uh that's right did talk about this this mystical State of Consciousness where we do we're able to perceive them miraculous in the everyday but we're also able to simultaneously have a buoyancy and appreciation for the moment as well as see The Eternity in the moment right so I can simultaneously really appreciate that I'm here that I'm giving talk and it's such a beautiful opportunity for me I feel blessed I feel honored I can also realize simultaneously that 300 years from now none of us will be here I'm sorry to break that news to anyone sorry if that was like Santa Claus moment for someone but uh 303 I'm giving you 300 years though okay give me I didn't say like 50 years right 300 years from now none of us will be here but there'll be someone a pro some probably some look something like me you know someone else you know some quirky you know like 43 year old giving a talk about something somewhat related what I'm talking about standing in this exact spot you know like we keep there we're all part of something much bigger than ourselves we're all part of you know each one of us as unique as we think we are right like we're part of something in the universe that keeps will will keep creating itself over and over generation Every Generation Um in in various ways so there's so that's the best way I can describe the plateau experience it's very uh hard to describe because it's it's complicated it's in the way it's been described by mazzo and Israeli it's clear they don't even fully understand it but there's just this beautiful sort of like um poignancy and appreciation of your mortality and the and and it makes you appreciate the moment even more than than even the peak experience um so yeah um the Patel experience it's often thought to be more enduring and cognitive it involves seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary um it's related to the idea of unit of Consciousness um the simultaneous perception of the Sacred and the ordinary at the same time right like you know there's one sense of well you can appreciate your standing in front of someone when you're talking to them who's just made of Flesh and Blood and they're mortal but also there's something incredibly sacred about every individual every human there's something so profoundly sacred about it and being able to honor their own unique um with dignity and Grace and respect understand that unique seed in their soul within each person whatever word you want to use is but how can you see both at the same time right like that's what's so fascinating about this and it also becomes a witnessing and appreciating which however have a quality of casualness and of lounging about that's a quote from Maslow he said the plateau experience is like being in heaven but not getting so excited about it it's like the experience right is you're like experience right the potatoes do you like that reenactment the reenactment of the big experience I'm so quirky but the hotel experience is more like there's a more poignancy to it right it's almost like less superficial in a way and when you think about it you can just be with someone and feel chills and and and and even tears in your eyes right and it's like as I'm feeling right now in this moment describing it and it has a different quality than than the you've got to the top of the mountain you know you know and it no it's like maybe you're not the top of the mountain but maybe you realize just how profound it is just walking down the street and being alive right so um and he found that mortality awareness was a big trigger of plateau experiences he realizes personally in himself this is a quote that I think is beautiful the death experience makes life much more precious and poignant and more Vivid and you're required to appreciate it and hang on to it with surf you sense a contrast between your own temporary nature and the surf's eternity the fact that it will be there always was there always and that you are witnessing something that's a million years old and will be there a million years from now I'm thinking of the surf I realize I in thinking of the surf I realize I am mortal and the surf is not this makes a strong contrast um so what is it like to become a transgender you know I want to leave you all today thinking of yourselves as you're all transcenders this is what I call people who graduate my uh transcend course that I teach I'm like you've now graduated you're a transgender but I think there's a certain way of being in a way of thinking that incorporates this Plateau experience into one's life when they're a transgender um so transcenders Peak experiences and Plateau experiences are become the most important things in their lives transcenders can sacralize everything at will they can perceive everything under the aspect of Eternity they are more consciously and deliberately motivated by higher values things like truth beauty goodness Etc they transcend the ego more often and more easily um these are the characteristics of transcenders that Maslow put forward that I've been trying to study mystery is attractive and challenging rather than frightening transcenders find it easier to transcend their identity and go beyond self-actualization they're more wholehearted and unconflicted in their love acceptance and expressiveness they have greater dichotomy Transcendence they can see things that a lot of people in society put as dichotomies good versus evil selfish versus unselfish even male versus female kind of seeing it as a larger par everything is part of the larger whole to be able to see that larger hole is a higher level of wisdom in my opinion that transcenders have yeah these are just some of the dichotomies we have in our society today which perhaps we can transcend um I should add that too yeah I should add that too yeah yeah good good one good one um so anyway I just want to end by saying I wish you all good luck be coming and thank you so much for listening my talk and I hope you're all become transcenders if that's what you want to be thank you thank you uh thank you so much for uh for your talk I really appreciate it my name is mihir um so one question that I have is um in the uh I guess science of uh figuring out dark Triad light tried Etc uh in your research is that something that is predetermined when someone is born um and can it be proactively changed over time or is it something that I'll give an example of this uh just like as an example uh I'm sober and so like myself pre-sobriety and post-sobriety is very different but the question I always have is that was that always inherently in me uh was I always inherently in me or like in the post sobriety self or did I just change uh completely um so that's some like context beyond the question it's a wonderful question and it requires so many layers of nuance to answer that question um sometimes it would take a whole course like I've taught a whole course on this topic so that's not my cop-out answer but I I want to say that everything is a combination of Nature and nurture but it's usually nature via nurture I'm not nature Versa these things nature nurture are not opposed forces we tend to have genetic dispositions that make us attracted to certain options over other options whereas someone that does not have those genetic positions might not be as attractive as certain stimuli but we also um that that goes to show as well the importance of the environment that you have and you can actually have a small genetic proclivity towards alcoholism and in you can there's a behavioral genetics heritability behind alcoholism but if you've never encountered alcohol in your entire life you may not even know that you've had that genetic disposition inside you men are you discover that that's something that you might be interested in and it also doesn't mean that if you have predispositions to things that you can't change the question you asked which is so profound which is like did I change myself when I became sober you don't realize how profound that question is because it it starts to make you think think well okay do we think that all we are are our genes you know like who is the real you it raises lots of questions um and my the way I conceptualize that is no you um you changed who you wanted to be you know you changed uh who you know we we all changed a lot in so many different ways none of us are the same person we were um yesterday you know you can wake up at any morning and decide that you're going to start moving down a different pathway moving down different Pathways eventually starts changing odds starts changing uh you know on the Long Haul maybe if you want to lose 50 pounds I'm not saying one day at the gym is has but you're but but that one day of the gym is important because that one day in the gym is is you're committing yourself um at least you're starting to go down a different path and sometimes that's the most important thing in your life is just is doing the thought experiment of like wait what path am I going down where's this going to lead if I keep making this Choice every single day versus thinking yourself you know maybe there's a different sort of thing I want to change those odds so who you are as a legitimate person who you are right now is legitimately you you know um and um and you know I think you should also give yourself a lot of credit for having made certain choices that you want to kind of go down a different path and and to be able to enact that and use your will in a way to enact that I think is really commendable and uh and that that will is you and you know I think deserves some credit so this might be easy and not easy quick answer to a very complex question thank you thank you thank you yes come on down the Price Is Right do you know the Price Is Right music what's your bid oh sorry I just might be this my question my bid is my question but um anyway thank you Scott it was so much food for thought in your talk um but uh it was really interesting this point about Maslow and that uh his thoughts on Transcendence came after the near-death experience or however you'd want to describe it but it was post that and that's when he really shifted his thinking and so uh and I've certainly seen that in in others that I've encountered in my life that after such a thing they have a very different take on life and then in in those who take up spiritual paths and so on often there's initiation rituals or there's things where you sort of leave behind a certain kind of life and then you Embrace a new kind of life or individuals often talk about crises they have they were going along with their D kind of life and they had a crisis and then they went more towards a b kind of life and I didn't really kind of see that so much in the rest of your talk it's like okay we know that was for Maslow but how about the rest of us so is it just like you can buy osmosis go from D to b or does it need some kind of crossing of the chasm in your thoughts what do you think about that um yeah it's a terrific question it's one that requires a lot of unpacking and an acknowledgment that there are um there are like there are systemic structures that can inhibit our um our feeling of safety can inhibit our feeling of a lot of those deprivation needs there's not like a magical thing you just snap your finger and you go from one to another so I want to also clear it's not just purely an individual decision we make we can also have more self-actualizing societies and less self-actualizing societies and that's another topic I'm very interested in um so yeah maybe that's why I didn't go too deep into this into that in this talk is because it's it requires lots of uh integration at multiple levels of analysis but I do think and individually we can make decisions to through mindfulness meditation through other spiritual practices to remain so deeply in the moment that we are seeing people and things through a lens of reality as clearly as possible and we're not tainting the filter of our you know our own uh my friend Elizabeth our perception boxes we all have our own different perception boxes and um and I think that we can train ourselves to really broaden that perception box as much as possible so we see people and things in nature on their own terms despite how much we may be suffering because what often happens is when people suffer a lot is that they can have a very narrow view of the world and it can cause us to kind of make other people into one-dimensional characters you know who are obviously multi-dimensional characters we can make them into one-dimensional characters unfortunately and that I don't think is helping us it's not helping the world when we do that it's not easy I also realize a lot of people are in pain a lot of people are in suffering the worst thing you can do when someone is suffering is to say them just like oh just get into the be realm you know what's the matter with you I don't recommend that I recommend that you have to gently you know you can't pull off the defense mechanisms of people they have to be ready they have to be ready um so I'll just pause there and and say that yeah okay thank you thank you yes come on down thank you um I had a few questions on the talk um self-actualization an event or a process and can you actually say that uh like I saw that like you had given a lot of attributes for what self-actualization is but is there like some kind of a definition that you had in mind because like maybe I missed it or I didn't like find it in that talk definitely a process it's definitely a journey um an orientation to our life and I would say a way of being you know when every time that you're choosing the growth option you are self-actualizing and but you never reach self-actualization it's never the stage like I said earlier in a cheeky way I said you know it's like if you finally become self-actualized what do you do the minute after you're self-actualized you know like um what do you what are you working toward um but I also don't view self-actualization as equivalent of achievement and I don't view the equivalent of happiness um I think those are often misconstrued a lot of people will reach the top of that mountain and feel like they have reached their highest level of achievement um and then they they're like wait a minute why am I so depressed why am I so I don't feel actualized at all you know maybe you actualize one part of You by achievement by achieving something but self-actualization is about all of you you know it's about like becoming whole becoming your whole wholeness and integration are the two words I use a lot when I refer to self-actualization not happiness or achievement they confuse you even more no it's okay is there like some X Factor for self-actualization just one single determining criteria or like single thing I I like you just mentioned it's a process but then is that at all any X Factor at all that you can say um you know I I outline those 10 characteristics of self-actualizing people obviously all 10 of those are X factors okay yeah it's like us making a soup you know you never say to your mother's delicious chicken soup you know like uh the only reason why it's good is because you added uh salt you know the salt was important but it's insulting to the mother to say it was just the salt it was just the everything the love that the mother put into it the uh all the the special thoughtfulness of the ingredients you know so those 10 characteristics of self those are the 10 x factors there if you really want okay thank you yeah never quite used that an analogy before the mother cooking soup but my mother might watch this tape and she she makes good soup so I want her to know that hello come on in come on down why do I feel like it's the microphone because that's the microphone that's why I'm thinking about prices right now um Scott that was amazing thank you so much I I think my mind was blown the entire time um I'm shuchi um I have two questions and a thought um my first question is with the um dark Triad and light Triad studies that you conducted I was just curious like even someone who's very very dark um how do they behave when it comes to their own um and is there light there and then secondly um when someone with who may be really light how do things like um negative self-talk and you know imposter syndrome and all of that play into answering some of those questions so are you able to get an accurate reading because of those two things oh well what great questions very thoughtful what's your profession I'm an entrepreneur um the thing with uh yeah what you find with people who score high in Darkrai traits and how they treat people when they're in group it's uh this may surprise you but they're equally as horrible with people in their own group as they are with anyone else they tend to they'll be the first ones to throw someone from the end group under the bus if it'll get them ahead you know if it allow them to advance their own like even their child or well I mean I don't want to speak for all dark Triad people that sounds funny to say that but I don't want to like stereotype a dark type there could be a good psychopath out there um who wouldn't throw their child under the bus but um uh all I can say is on average um when in terms comes to group dynamics you do there is research showing that people who scored high score score higher on dark tired traits are less loyal to their group and their morally could have throw group members under the bus if it will advance their own individual power uh that I can say I can't speak too much more than that yeah right and then the second part of the question was yeah the Imposter syndrome question is um uh you know I could teach a course on every single one of these questions they're so nuanced and deep and um we we found surprisingly that the Imposter syndrome was correlated with narcissism and we didn't expect that we thought that narcissists would have less feel less imposter syndrome um but I think on retrospect when you think about it um narcissism is really about putting on a mask at all times when you really think about it that's really what you're not being authentic when you're being narcissistic you're not being vulnerable um and um there's even a form of narcissism called vulnerable narcissism where people feel um so fragile that they feel entitled to things you know just because they're fragility not because of anything they've done to earn it you know but because they just feel like uh um there's shame um and and those people are hurting I mean I think we need to show compassion for uh these things not just reduce people to labels but they do score high in posture they do score pretty high in imposter syndrome we found extremely high correlation between vulnerable narcissism and imposter syndrome and we found which was surprising we expected the vulnerable and but not the grandiose narcissism correlation but we found that even grandiose the chest thumping I'm the greatest I'm the greatest those folks scored high in imposter syndrome and we hypothesized it's because they really don't um they really don't ever feel like they are being themselves they are always playing uh protecting a certain inflated self-image at all times and that must be exhausting these poor grandiose narcissism must be exhausting to constantly try to put out this I'm the greatest thing and they're defending it like a fort 24 7. you know and um I don't know if I'm answering your question at all yeah I meant more so like I was like I mean I feel like a lot of women have a little bit of imposter syndrome right where it comes from self-doubt or all of that actually narcissist yeah yeah so I was wondering as you were asking those questions I was like no I mean I have an answer but I'm like could it also be this right and so then I kind of caught myself and I was like I don't know if everyone's answering these questions like uh authentically they might be doubting themselves oh wow what a good question um there are a lot of people it is to be human a lot of people feel imposter syndrome as a but it's also a self-handicapping principle um to be to use uh to say oh I suffer from imposter syndrome is actually a strategy to manage other people's expectations of you if you really think about it from a social psychology perspective when there's a lot behind the the feeling the need to tell someone that you suffer from imposter syndrome like you'll see it a lot with people who accomplish great things especially women you're right you're absolutely right though they'll almost feel need to downplay themselves in some way right they'll like win an amazing award and you tend to see a lot more women will go up and accept the award and be like oh gosh I feel imposter swimming right now and where a lot of men will go out there but here's my award okay calm down Joey but uh it's like yes I've been I've been waiting for this award for 20 years I knew I deserved it um so but so how can we help people uh get to a point where they feel they they deserve their accomplishments they feel um as though they you know rightfully so you can have a little bit of Pride you know I know pride is a sin in the Bible but researchers have defined different kinds of Pride um a a hubristic pride and a authentic pride and there's nothing wrong with authentic Pride we should encourage more people to not feel shameful over having authentic Pride for something you've done beautiful in this world right something that you've contributed it's the hebrewistic pride that's problematic you know right so and my other question sorry was um great questions you had three questions well I've never had a three question one before I think this is my second I don't know that was like a two-part first question this is the second one one part yes I think so um the second one the concept of the plateau is really interesting to me I'm currently reading Pema children's um book called uh latest book called How We Live is how we die and I was wondering if there is a correlation between that concept of um thank you plateau and uh Equanimity like I mean I've also done vibasana and I know that like the Detachment from um uh basically the objective objective observation of your thoughts and emotions so I'm just wondering if so intimately tied so ultimately tied I you know some people talk about mindfulness as though it only exists and during the meditation you know it's like like you have your like five minute app on the phone right and that's meditation and then the app's done and now you're done with meditation no it's a way of being right it's like um you know me and you are cultivating mindfulness with each other in our conversation right now you know I'm trying to concentrate on what you're saying and I'm also um uh also I often like to just reflect on my own mind and I like to reflect on uh and see all the different uh crazy patterns going on in my head you know um and be like oh that's an intro but without getting a done without identifying with it I think that that is a really key part to a lot of this is not identifying with your thoughts and not identifying with your emotions um and uh and yet still appreciating those things you know if you can cultivate that state I think that's the plateau experience to a large degree that's why Maslow said it's more cognitive than emotional there is an emotional poignancy there as well my good friend my good friend I'm doing it now my good friend Susan Kane the best-selling author um no I adore Susan Kane so much but she just wrote a book on Bittersweet which um we actually in my colleagues and I helped create her scale the Bittersweet scale for her book but um I think she really gets at uh that what it feels like when you're in the plateau experience it's a very Bittersweet feeling you recognize the impermanency of it right there's like a it's going to be over someday but you also realize you're actually able to have the privilege of experiencing it though right now that contrast and then my last thought was I mean you mentioned apps and I was wondering if a question no I'm just it's just it's just an observation it two questions on the thought so this is the thought um it's a thought not a different category you mentioned uh you mentioned apps and I was just wondering if the self-actualization test could be given to like dating apps because I think it would save a lot of people a lot of time that's it I'm done I love that maybe even more importantly the dark versus light Triad before dating apps interesting I think that's even more relevant and important because I think a lot of people want to know whether or not the person they're going to date with is a psychopath or not thanks for your wonderful questions oh so it's so insightful yeah do we have time for more I'm I'm happy to keep going we have another question anybody else I know great so great excuse me yes um this is a weird request but would you mind taking a picture of me on my phone this is like an amazing experience for me and I want to like write about it yes so Dr Kaufman my name is to meet you yes you too thank you uh this Maslow's self-actualization is it similar to Nirvana and Buddhism self-realization or some other experience in Hinduism I such a good question I think that there are a lot of similarities also because a lot of humanistic psychologists were influenced by a lot of that thinking so I definitely think there are a lot of similarities um perhaps one uh difference is that it gets a little bit more um independent of the notion of compassion um in in in in the humanistic psychology world or in the uh in the psychology world something that I like from a lot of East Indian traditions of uh and Notions of self-realization what I really like about a lot of that is that it's so deeply enmeshed in Notions of contemplation it's enmeshed in Notions of reducing suffering in Notions and I love that and I I want there to be a greater integration between these things and I think that Maslow was on to that in the last couple years of his life I won't say the first couple years you know of his research if he like his theory of motivation really talked about it but I do know for a fact during the last couple years of his life he became very very interested in integrating these different perspectives and part of my calling I feel like part of my calling is is to tell people that and to uh and to try to integrate those things as much as possible the reason why I was invited here today was because I was part of this conference uh spirituality and uh purpose and an attempt to integrate ancient uh Indian texts with modern Western thought and that was the whole purpose of this conference and uh your Your Leader what do you call him Swami yes um I I well am I honestly we hit it off we hit it off you know when we we met it was just uh it was like finding a brother you know a long lost brother and we sat at the table and and then he was gracious enough to invite me to speak here today but that was the context behind where I met met him uh and and that was a beautiful event because we all try to think through and talk about how these things can be integrated but I think more people need to be talking about how these things can be integrated yeah thank you thank you so maybe one there because that's that was a very positive note I like ending on a positive notes you know Scott I think on behalf of all of us we are extremely grateful that you and Swami actually met at that conference and and he was so eager for you to come and talk to us and I think we can all understand why and thank you so much thank you we'll go to gratitude thank you so much you're very grateful I am very grateful [Music]

Channel: Vedanta Society of New York

Views: 9,449

Keywords: vedantany, vedanta society of new york, sarvapriyananda, swami sarvapriyananda, sarvapriyananda lectures, swami vivekananda, vivekananda, vivekananda teachings, vedanta ny, vedanta, vedanta lectures, belur math, jnana yoga, hinduism, spirituality, enlightenment, higher consciousness, meditation, mindfulness, realization, consciousness, moksha, nirvana

Id: owRwRO-jnVY

Length: 83min 2sec (4982 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023