From Self-Actualization to Self-Transcendence
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Viktor Frankl
Last week, we explored the top of Maslow’s pyramid to Self-Actualization — becoming your highest self. But later in life, Maslow realized that there was a level even higher, broader and deeper to your soul and that is Self-Transcendence.
You don’t become your highest and best self on this earth until you give your self-actualized self away to others.
It’s not the next step or level after success, but it is the purpose for your success and self-actualization. It’s not the mountaintop. It’s the mirror.
That’s why so many people who climb the summit of success to self-actualization only have a brief glimpse of victory and celebration before they feel empty, down and alone on this summit as the celebration fades.
The mirror of transcendence reflects who you are — not when you look into it, but when others are changed by what they see in you.
Self-actualization is your calling. Self-transcendence is your contribution, your gift to the world.
Begin with the End in Mind
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Albert Einstein
Everyone sets personal goals, but wisdom says to begin with legacy. Ask not “What do I want?” but “Who do I want to become for the sake of others?”
When you begin with who you want to serve, everything you do and build is sacred and purposeful.
Self-transcendence doesn’t diminish you or your dreams. It highly amplifies them. It gives your growth and success meaning beyond just you and your name.
The Three Lenses of Self-Transcendence
Maslow: The Final Step Most Miss
Transcenders are consciously motivated by values which transcend their own self.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow describes the highest level of self as Self-Transcendence: “the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature and to the cosmos.”
This is when we:
Seek truth, beauty, and righteousness not for status or personal gain, but because they are fundamental values
Serve without recognition
Align with something larger than ourselves
It’s about giving and serving on your way down from the summit of success.
Frankl: Meaning Through Others
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself.
Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”
In the holocaust camps of WWII, Frankl found that survival often depended not on strength, but on purpose.
People transcended this personal suffering and hell by living for:
The person they loved
A mission they needed to complete
A vision that outlived pain and perhaps incorporated this pain into the marrow of their souls to give it meaning and purpose
You transcend by offering your pain, not but hiding or running away from it.
Campbell: The Hero Returns to Give Wisdom
The hero’s journey ends when the hero returns to serve.
The Hero’s 12 Step Journey ends when he returns to the Ordinary World from which he came, transformed by an insight in the New World and offers this wisdom to his Ordinary World. He returns not to claim victory or to take, but to share. Not to shine, but to reflect and uplift.
You become the medicine you needed and offer it freely to all those who need it.
My Moments of Transcendence
It only takes a moment of insight into yourself to transform you.
Dr. Kevin Ham
The Hill For Elliott
As my good friend Elliott lay dying from sarcoma at age 28, I decided to do a charity ride to conquer cancer, a two-day ride with each day 100 km. That was in 2008. I was very afraid of the hills on that ride and I had this insight that this fear paled in comparison to the hill that Elliott had to climb due to his cancer. So each pedal up that hill was symbolic of the fight each cancer victim had to take where the summit was likely death. Now I embrace each hill climb in honour and in memory of Elliott, my mother and everyone who has and is fighting this fight to conquer cancer. I am helping my good friend Dr. Azra Raza with her life mission of preventing, detecting and eradicating this vicious self-immortalized cell we call cancer.
Practices to Awaken Transcendence
Begin every day and meeting with Gratitude
My team meetings start this way. It opens the heart.
Give Without Credit
True giving leaves no mark
Ask Who, not What
Who can I serve today?
Let Pain Become Your Path
Embrace it and transform it with meaning
Build What Will Outlast You
Principles, wisdom, systems, people. Seed the future now.
Life Questions:
Answer these questions and write them down.
Am I living to be seen- or to serve?
What pain in my story could become someone else’s hope?
What would it look like to live as a mirror and not as a monument?
Final Thought
“Self-Actualization says to become your best self. Self-Transcendence say to give your best self to others.”
Dr. Kevin Ham
Your light was not meant to be buried deep in you. It was meant to shine through you to others.
The mirror of transcendence is clearest when someone else sees themselves more clearly because of how you lived.
Next week: The Three Core Inputs That Shape Your Self — Self-perception, self-talk and self-environment.
See you next Thursday!
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