Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization

Last September, ParentWiser invited Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., to give a speech on how to help children realize their potential and thrive. Using his research, knowledge of science, and wisdom gained through personal experience, Kaufman offered insight into how our students can live a more creative, fulfilling, and self-actualized life.

First, there are three basic needs that our students need to be met before they can be happily motivated:

Need for Safety means no extreme poverty, food certainty, secure attachment, and no harshness or unpredictability in the environment.

Need for Connection means a student feels a sense of belonging, acceptance from others, intimacy, and relatedness.

Need for Self-Esteem means self-worth and healthy regulation of narcissism. Parents tell their kids they are enough instead of telling them they are the best. Being able to instill a basic sense of worthiness and competence is important.

When these three basic needs are covered, children eventually transcend to their potential/self-actualization and leading them to:

Need for Exploration includes students’ social exploration, adventure seeking, post-traumatic growth, openness to experience, and intellectually exploring in their minds.

Need for Love includes treating people as ends into themselves, universal acceptance of others, seeing the best in others, valuing the dignity and worth of everyone, forgiveness, trust, and healthy self-love.

Need for Purpose involves healthy goals & motivations, grit, equanimity, harmonious passion, use of signature strengths, hope, environmental support, and knowing when to move on.

Healthy transcendence comes because of the deep integration of all these different needs. If parents or adults can really help students integrate their needs and get them working on something that is deeply in line with their potential and their dreams/motivations, we can help children get to the Transcendent State of Consciousness.

There are a lot of things adults can do to help their children to fulfill their potential:

Passion

Making sure this is harmonious and not obsessive. Harmonious Passion involves a sense of freedom and flexible engagement. These are activities that reflect things children like about themselves, and the activities are so well integrated into their authentic selves that they are in harmony with the other aspects of their lives.

Instead, obsessive passion causes a loss of control over activities. Children feel pressure to engage either because of contingencies like social acceptance or self-esteem or because of an uncontrollable urge. The activities have not been well integrated into identity – ego depends on the activity, and rigid persistence frequently conflicts with other aspects of life.

Inspiration

Adults or parents also want to be able to inspire students. Inspire being spontaneous and without intention, going beyond self-serving concerns and striving to transmit, express or actualize a new idea or vision. Inspiration helps students have a more optimistic mindset about things and be in a state of positive emotions.

Imagination

It is important that adults appreciate openness to experiences as an important personality trait. Those who engage the imagination brain network tend to have a higher openness to experiences and higher creativity.

Perseverance

Instilling perseverance is key, as much as recognizing that efforts matter. Always reward effort because over the long-run, effort counts twice as much as talent!

The Achievement Formula: Skill = Talent x Effort; Achievement = Skill x Effort.

Hope

Give students hope to pursue the goal they really care about. This will energize them and give them the energy needed to get lots of different ways/ideas to achieve it.

Scott also talked about the importance of helping adolescents imagine possibilities for a better world and place for themselves and others. He spoke about targeting various aspects such as attitude toward learning, engagement, and giving students an “authentic voice,” in which they feel as though they are making choices that have a real impact on their desired future.

Lastly, he mentioned how much the environment matters. Having a setting or a culture where everyone has high expectations for success is only going to help raise the tide for everyone.

At the end of his speech, Scott emphasized that self-care is an essential part of this whole process, and there are a lot of methods to help when parents/ adults feel overwhelmed.

To check Scott Barry Kaufman’s fulllength lecture, please go to https://www. parentwiser.org/.

Scott Barry Kaufman, renowned humanistic psychologist and cognitive scientist. Kaufman has authored multiple books on intelligence, creativity, personality, and well-being. His latest book is Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic and Scientific American and the host of “The Psychology Podcast.”