The New Science Of Self Actualisation - Scott Barry Kaufman - #156

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh yes, hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast, psychologist at Columbia University and writer. Today, we are talking about his new book, Transcend, The New Science of Self Actualization. We all live in a world where there are quantifiable metrics of success, these objective measures of happiness or wealth or power or whatever it might be. And some of us spend a lot of time chasing after them. And yet so many people feel unsatisfied and deeply unconnected to the world and those around them. So why is that the case? How can we transcend our nature, become more than we are and maybe more than we could ever hope to be as well. And today we get to go through some amazing exercises from Scott. He has a beautifully calming voice. So if you're feeling a little bit anxious at the moment with the state of the chaos that's going on outside, I'm confident that Scott's calming dulcet tones are going to help you wind down. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by da da da da, Surfshark VPN. Surfshark VPN, you will know by now, is a service which allows you to change the location of where you are browsing from. Why would I want to do that? Well, there's a few reasons. You might want to make sure that you're not getting split tested on prices from Amazon. We're not going to be buying any flights anytime soon, so that's out of the window, but first and foremost, it allows you to change the location of where you are browsing from so that you can access other countries' Netflix libraries. If you're in the States, you can access the UKs or Russia's, if you want to watch Russia's, and if you are anywhere else in the world, you can access America's Netflix, which is an absolute treasure trove, especially seen as we're all locked down at the moment. The price of, I think, it's £1.59 a month to supercharge your Netflix. So just go and do it, you won't regret it. Surfshark.deals slash Modern Wisdom for 83% off and an extra month for free. That's Surfshark.deals slash Modern Wisdom. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Scott Barry Kaufman.
Scott, welcome to the show.

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (2:38)
Thanks Chris, so great to chat with you today.

**Chris Williamson** (2:40)
Really excited to speak to you today. So we're talking about transcend. We're gonna be speaking about self-actualization. Kind of at the moment, I suppose, the way that people view their own lives and what they can do with them is probably a pretty timely topic at the moment, right?

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (2:58)
I would say so. I think people are struggling in a lot of ways that they are perhaps losing sight of the self-actualization that's possible within them. It can be very easy to lose sight of the greater possibilities for yourself and for your fellow humans when you're pitched in a state of insecurity.

**Chris Williamson** (3:22)
So I know that you're a big fan of Maslow and you base a lot of what you do on top of some of his work, I guess.

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (3:30)
He's okay.

**Chris Williamson** (3:31)
He's all right. He's pretty cool.
I'm going to guess that at a time like this, where people are very concerned about some real basics, the bottom of the pyramid, who worried about the health, the family's health, there's food and water shortages. You see these images of Costco and everyone's ripping shit off the shelves and stuff like that.

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (3:51)
I know, and toilet paper, they're ripping the toilet paper.

**Chris Williamson** (3:54)
The toilet paper is the maddest thing because it doesn't affect your digestion but we could go on forever about that. How does that relate, do you think, to the way that people are seeing their lives at the moment, the fact that their more immediate primal needs are kind of brought to the forefront?

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (4:11)
So what is the question exactly? How do I perceive the situation?

**Chris Williamson** (4:15)
So at the moment, we're going to be talking about self-actualization and transcending. Is there an upper bound that's being placed on that by the immediacy of people's concerns at the moment?

**Scott Barry Kaufman** (4:26)
But I see what you're saying. Well, there certainly is.
And that's the great tragedy of falling prey to insecurity and uncertainty. What I mean by falling prey is there's always going to be uncertainty in our lives. It's funny, people are just acting as though this situation is like the first time in their life that there's great uncertainty. I mean, there's equally probabilities, actually greater probabilities of things when you cross the street every day in your life. You don't think about all these things, you know? But here, there's a thing we could see on the media. There's a thing we can see on TV where people are talking about it every day as this is the thing. But it turns out, and I hate to break the news, you hear, breaking news, Scott Barry Kaufman, breaking news. You know how CNN is like breaking news?