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Rosalyn’s goal is to bring results-driven focus to help individuals and organizations to improve the effectiveness of their message. She is a professional speaker and has a few TED Talks under her belt. She is the author of “Random Acts of Kindness,” "Dogs and Roses: Reducing Stress and Anxiety in Today’s Troubled Times, " and her newest work is "A Message For Tomorrows Leaders." She has a program called “Reach out vs Strike Out.” a program directed towards stopping school violence. She teaches Public Speaking and has taught Interpersonal Communication. She earned a master’s degree in Speech Communication from Cal State Northridge and earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara.

My guest today, is Rosalyn Kahn. She is definitely a self-actualizer but possibly has moved into that realm of self-transcendence.  

One of the most well known, American psychologist’s was Abraham Maslow who was best known for creating the hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, that peaked with self-actualization. This refers to our need to realize all our potential, to become everything that we can be. But toward the end of his life, Maslow began to have doubts about this model.

 He had realized the hierarchy was incomplete. In his personal journal, published only after his death in 1970, he described Self-actualization wasn’t the final level but instead — self-transcendence. Even though the term “self-actualization” was most associated with Abraham Maslow, it was originally introduced by Kurt Goldstein, who was a physician specializing in psychiatry during the early part of the 20th century. Goldstein (1939, 1940) viewed self-actualization as the ultimate goal of every organism, and refers to our desire for self-fulfillment.

Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence. When a person’s “ideal self” or who they would like to be is congruent with their actual behavior or (self-image). And then Maslow described several characteristics of self-actualized people, but realized that he had bundled the characteristics of self-transcendent people with those of self-actualized people. He thought that self-transcendence was more defined by peak experiences than self-actualization. Maslow theorized that we have a strong need to become all that we can be, but once that need is met, some continue to feel needs beyond the self, to pursue goals that may in fact have little to do with the self at all. In simpler terms, it is the realization that you are one small part of a greater whole, and acting accordingly. it is other-focused instead of self-focused and concerns higher goals than those which are self-serving.