Self-Actualization
The Way To Happiness
The way to happiness is to become that which you are, to develop your unique potentialities and turn them into actualities through the process of self-actualization. Fame, power, wealth, prestige, all of the commonly agreed indicators of happiness, they might eventually become byproducts of your self-actualization and they might not, but if you make them your focus rather than making your own self-actualization your focus happiness is sure to slip through your fingers.
This is because there will always be internal conflict, even if you hit all of those societal targets, conflict between what you have become and what you were supposed to be, between what you are and what you potentially are. You’ll experience malaise, a sort of uneasiness that you can’t put your finger on, like an itch that needs to be scratched.
You’ll try to silence that voice calling out to you to walk your unique path, and that’s the problem. The voice calling out to you is the real you. The you walking around who has spent all that time chasing this or that societal marker is a facsimile, a house without a foundation, and at some level you know it. Is it any wonder that you feel deep unhappiness despite surrounding yourself with all the conditions that were supposed to make you happy? These conditions, no matter how ideal, can’t make up for betraying who and what you really are, and in fact they act as unconscious reminders that you have done just that, that you’ve chosen the superficial promises of happiness instead of listening to your deepest Self. The way to happiness, the only way, is to become that which you potentially are. All other ways end in failure.
