19 Characteristics of the Self-Actualized Person

1. Clear perception of reality: including a heightened ability to detect falseness and be a good judge of character.
2. Acceptance: of themselves and things as they are.
3. Spontaneity: a rich, unconventional inner life with a child-like ability to constantly see the world anew and appreciate beauty in the mundane.
4. Problem-centeredness: focus on questions or challenges outside themselves—a sense of mission or purpose—resulting in an absence of pettiness, introspection, and ego games.
5. Solitude seeking: enjoyed for its own sake, solitude also brings serenity and detachment from misfortune/crisis, and allows for independence of thought and decision.
6. Autonomy: independence of the good opinion of other people, more interest in inner satisfaction than status or rewards.
7. Fresh Appreciation: Self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.
8. Peak or mystical experiences: experiences when time seems to stand still.
9. Human kinship: a genuine love for, and desire to help, all people.
10. Humility and respect: belief that we can learn from anyone, and that even the worst person has redeeming features.
11. Interpersonal Relationships: Self-actualizing people have these especially deep ties with rather few individuals. Their circle of friends is rather small. The ones that they love profoundly are few in number.
12. Ethics: clear, if not conventional, notions of right and wrong.
13. Means and Ends: They are fixed on ends rather than on means, and means are quite definitely subordinated to these ends.
14. Sense of humor: not amused by jokes that hurt or imply inferiority, but humor that highlights the foolishness of human beings in general.
15. Creativity: not the Mozart type of genius that is inborn, but in all that is done, said, or acted.
16. Resistance to enculturation: ability to see beyond the confines of culture and era.
17. Imperfections: all the guilt, anxiety, self-blame, jealousy, and so on that regular people experience, but these do not stem from neurosis. Awareness is the first step.
18. Values: based on a positive view of the world; the universe is not seen as a jungle but an essentially abundant place, providing whatever we need to be able to make our contribution.
19. Resolution of Dichotomies: The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because in principle every act is both selfish and unselfish.

So are you a self-actualizer?

Dr. Maslow also advises: "If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life."

-Abraham Maslow
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