What Is Personal Development Anyway?
It’s not the same as self-help
If you thought “self-help” and “personal development” are synonymous, then you were wrong. While they’re both on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they don’t cover the same levels on the pyramid.
According to Maslow’s theory, you have to meet your basic needs before meeting your psychological needs. And only after achieving both can you work toward self-fulfillment, or what Maslow called “self-actualization.”
When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem. — Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 1968
While Maslow didn’t originate the idea of self-help or personal development, he certainly helped the industry along in our modern age. His pyramid gives us the perfect tool to figure out what we need to do next in our journey towards self-actualization.
Feeling insecure and don’t have access to food? That’s a basic need. Go shopping, hunting, dumpster diving…whatever you need to do to meet that need. That’s probably…
