Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman: Fresh Look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model is at the core of coaching, counseling, parenting, teaching and essentially every aspect of our lives. Yet, was Maslow taking this concept further at the time of his early (age 62) death? Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, author of the new book Transcend and host of The Psychology Podcast takes us on a deeper dive into this potential. Along the way, we discuss the difference between "being" and "doing" and much more in this engaging discussion with one of the best known individuals in the world of psychology.

If you're a health coach, wellness coach, life coach or performance coach, you will enjoy soaking in this special episode.

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You can access the brief video discussing doing/being here: https://youtu.be/ONMzSmUNi9A 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the latest episode of the catalyst, health, wellness, and performance podcast. I'm your host, dr. Bradford Cooper. And I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman is the host of one of the first podcasts I ever listened to the psychology podcast, as well as a professor at Columbia university and the author of the new book transcend the new science of self-actualization. I'll be the first to admit the word transcend had for me, a very kind of Hocus Pocus feeling to it until I met professor Kaufmann. He was one of the top minds in psychology and his excellent work has changed my perspective on that. He and I have been trading emails back and forth for exactly six months. And one day to get this lined up for you. I think it will be an eye-opener for many of our listeners, a brief note about educational options through catalyst coaching Institute. You probably already know about our health and wellness coach certification that is available right now, 100% at home, but you might not have realized that we have a full spectrum of accredited continuing education programs available all the details, catalyst coaching institute.com, and it might be worth a look if you're trying to find some ways to fill your toolbox a little bit, and you haven't checked out the free resources over at the new YouTube coaching channel, which is literally youtube.com/coaching channel. You may want to take a look in that direction as well as always emails, anytime with questions results@catalystcoachinginstitute.com. Now it's time to take a deeper dive into this concept of transcend on the latest episode of the catalyst, health, wellness, and performance coaching podcast. All right, Scott, thank you for joining us on the show today. This is fantastic.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Yeah. Great to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:48

So let's, let's jump right in the lead word in your book is transcend, which is in one of your presentations. You said yourself, it can kind of sound woo. Could you start us off providing some examples of transcendence in our lives and maybe a couple of key research items. So we know it's not really woo

Speaker 2: 2:09

By the way before I started, once I really loved you in the movie, a star is born

Speaker 1: 2:14

Well, thank you, sir. A lot of people forget about that one with all my other work, but thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 2:18

I mean, I was, uh, some people might say the hangover, but, um, but no, I think it started for, you were really top notch. So a hundred doc talking to you. Um, okay, so what was your question? Oh, let's just

Speaker 1: 2:32

Talking about your incentives in general. Yeah. You, you mentioned in one of your, your interviews that yeah. You know, the whole concept can kind of sound woo. Uh, just talk us through a little bit around some examples of transcendence in our lives and maybe, uh, just barely touch on a couple of research items. So we move away from thinking, ah, I don't know about this guy, what's this what's this transcendence thing.

Speaker 2: 2:56

So transcendence is, does sound like a weird word for sure. And there's a lot of wisdom in the Willow and I wanted to scientifically test this and see if I could come up with a definition that would be really helpful for people to come their best self and, and do so in a healthy way that they get their lower needs met as well as their higher needs. So unhealthy transcendence tends to be the kind of transcendence where you feel like you're above others, you're above the rest of humanity, or you feel like you're annoyed and in some sort of special privilege, privileged way that that no one else could possibly obtain. I think that healthy transcendence is one where you really integrate your whole self. You've really done the hard work of, of integrating, uh, all that's within you. And, and it's usually in the service of helping realize the potential of others. So the idea of realizing your full potential, I think Abraham Mazzo, the humanistic psychologists, try to make clear that we don't realize our full potential until we're somehow helping others realize their potential. And, you know, you could just realize your talents, uh, devoid of the context of other people and social conditions. And he said, that's an inadequate theory of self-actualization.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Excellent. Excellent. All right. So building on that a little bit, I was really captivated by what you said about transcendent is not escape from the self, but rather, and this is my little quote science here, a healthy integration of one's entire being. You, you touched on that in your, your answer to the first question. Could you expand on that a little bit for us? I find that really fascinating.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I don't, I think it's pretty hard to fully escape yourself unless you're doing LSD on a regular basis

Speaker 1: 4:54

Or even regular.

Speaker 2: 4:56

Yeah. I mean, there is benefit to having a self-concept to viewing yourself in a certain light and in an accurate light. The ego is a particular part of the self it's. The ego, the ego are the aspects of yourself that want to be seen in a positive light, and always in fact have to be seen in a positive light. So you put up defenses. So you're constantly defending a certain image of yourself. That's the ego, as I see it. And that's, that's unhealthy really unhealthy in the sense, it really is detrimental to growth. It really inhibits growth and inhibits getting us outside of our comfort zones and trying things that could ultimately help us grow as a whole person and help us connect with others and help us master things in a better way,

Speaker 1: 5:46

Because if you're not willing to not look good in such and such situation, you, you never get out of that, that aspect. Is that kinda what you're getting to there?

Speaker 2: 5:58

Yeah, for sure. If you, if you only like I have a sailboat metaphor, if you're only in defending the boat, you don't move anywhere. You're safe, you're secure. You might, you might paint the boat and make it pretty. You might have this idea that you're the best, but if you don't actually move anywhere, you know, you can't actually test that idea. It might all be in your head in some false delusional way.

Speaker 1: 6:25

I love the sailboat neurology that you, you, throughout the book and in our conversations, since you've introduced it here, let's, let's jump into that. Can you share that analogy and how that fits into this entire conversation we're having?

Speaker 2: 6:41

Yeah. This idea that we have safety and then we have growth and both are important to integrate in some way, is depicted is represented quite nicely. I think by the sailboat, because we're all in our own sailboats going in our own direction, in the same sea, the same vast unknown of the sea. And the thing with a sailboat is that you don't open your sail and, and move anywhere until your boat is secure. And you have your basic needs met like your S your physical needs, your food, shelter, water, um, some sort of, uh, stability, uh, in your environment, connection off of steam. Once all of that is secure to a certain degree. Then you can open up your sale and, and really be vulnerable and be open. And you're not being held back in the ocean by your insecurities and your defense mechanisms. So it's a metaphor.

Speaker 1: 7:41

That's what we're trying to get to the, the transcendence or the, the act of pursuing this opportunity to transcend that is opening the sale.

Speaker 2: 7:50

Well, transcendence you don't, you're not trying to get anywhere this, again, this, this is a book about the psychology of being not doing the idea is to integrate yourself and become a whole person. And transcendence usually emerges as a nice property of that sort of integration. You know, it's like, if you're moving really flying in the ocean, you feel free. You feel this great peak experience use all your worries. You know, you have these moments of transcendence that are beautiful and they will come and they'll go. But I don't think that's the goal.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So if, if you were sitting down with someone unfamiliar with the, the role of transcendence in our lives, what questions might you ask them to bring out an interest without, you know what I'm saying? If they weren't familiar with you, what questions might you ask for that conversation to be spurred?

Speaker 2: 8:50

If someone wasn't familiar with me? Yeah. You just met him at the coffee shop. They're

Speaker 1: 8:56

Like, Hey, so what's your story, mr. And

Speaker 2: 8:59

We'll sign up.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Well, here's our chance.

Speaker 2: 9:04

Wait that we need to work on that with the ladies. How do I, uh, how do I become most attractive at first meeting with the ladies? Because I'm single. So it's a fair question. Um, I know that, wasn't your question practice. Here we go. Yeah. Well, the thing is, I, I, I'm not, I'm not a wonderful self promoter, but I think for me, you know, the kind of questions I've been deeply interested in are like, what are like, like talent loss is something that I found profoundly tragic. And I want to see how people can live their most self-actualized life that is full of meaning and purpose and transcendence. Um, these are most wonderful moments that make life worth living and how can people reach those States and do so while not neglecting their other needs. So really become all that they are truly capable of becoming. And I mean, my career was, I started off looking at students. So in elementary school, middle school, high school kids who have learning disabilities, but were also brilliant and creative in lots of ways. And how can they integrate their disability, where their abilities in, in really, uh, beautiful ways that where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. And this has been a common thread throughout my career.

Speaker 1: 10:36

I love that. So the phrase you said right at the beginning, I want to make sure I caught it right. It talent loss. Can you walk us through a little bit more about that? I'm not familiar with that term.

Speaker 2: 10:46

It's a capsulate by the phrase that could have been somebody I could have, I could have, I had a talent, but a completely let it fall by the wayside. And how can we minimize losing the talents of people, which we were very good at doing that in education context. We're very good at having people focused on certain standardized tests and certain things that the educators are saying is important, but neglecting other areas and towns that people might have, or dreams, goals, and desires. And even as we get older, we might have certain dreams, certain things we want to pursue, but we're too scared to pursue them, or we don't have the perseverance to do it or the resources to do it. And how can we help people maximize their talents?

Speaker 1: 11:40

Okay, I'm going to want to come back to that, but first let's talk about, uh, if you're okay with this, one of the coolest things I heard in your TEDx talk, I mean, you're one of the most respected psychologists in the country. And as you stood there on that stage, and you talked about being relegated to special education up until ninth grade, that was, that was powerful. My friend, that could, could you share a little bit about that story with our listeners here?

Speaker 2: 12:06

Sure. Well, thank you. Um, I was essentially deaf the first three years of my life or so, and student teach teachers, students, everyone. My mom believed in me to me a bit, but, uh, but people thought it was really dumb. They thought I was a slow learner. It took me time to process things in real time. And I did all of that, a lot of observation and Marilee years and just became fascinated with individual differences. And my people are different from one another. And what, uh, what are the gifted kids in the gifted classroom have that we don't have in the special ed classroom? I was put in special ed and I, I remained in special ed all the way till ninth grade. When a teacher took me aside, special ed teachers had never seen me before. And she said, you know, I'm wondering, I was wondering why you here. No, no one had asked me that question. Wow. Nine grades. And so I never, I never asked myself that question and, and, and it just quickly changed to like, why am I here? And I took myself out of special education and signed up for as many things as I possibly could and just absolutely fascinated with what I, what I could achieve and what I could do. And, uh, I had a real burning desire to, to prove that I was smart in some way, and a lot of passion and I'd sign up for the score orchestra. My grandfather was a cellist and the Philadelphia orchestra, he taught me how to play. And that was a lot of fun. And I joined the orchestra and joined the school choir. I won the all music department award applied to Carnegie Mellon university my senior year, because I wasn't really college bound before ninth grade. Um, and I, but I was getting straight A's by that point in senior year of high school. Wow. When I went from a remedial students, a straight, a student and Carnegie Mellon, uh, psychology department rejected me. Um, don't think my sat scores were high enough, uh, to redefine intelligence, which is what I wanted to do in my personal statement. Thought that was ironic. Um, so I went to the opera program and I sang my heart out and got a partial scholarship for opera at Carnegie Mellon. And I transferred into psychology after a year of doing the opera major. And that was a real eye-opener for me to think to myself, well, I really want to help people who are on that other side crossover.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Right. Right. Well, and I loved your story about, I guess the departments don't really talk to each other.

Speaker 2: 14:42

No, that's true. I mean, I had where I was rejected. I was rejected from Carnegie Mellon and then they gave me a partial scholarship. So I was, what is, you know, what's the deal here, folks, my smarter am I not smart? And well, that's been the theme of my life is, am I smarter? I mean, not smart. And it turns out you can be smart and not smart. You can be really dumb and lots of things and really brilliant in lots of things. And we need to break down all these Dyke false economies.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Speaking of dichotomies, you talk about the distinction between the psychology of being in the psychology of doing. Could you expand on that a little bit for us? Just let the thoughts go in those two areas,

Speaker 2: 15:25

The psychology of doing as a, as a real rich track to field, there's a lot of research on the psychology of achievement and, um, and grit. And that's all great. That's a that's important research program, but I'm not so interested in the psychology of achievement as I'm interested in the psychology of self-actualization. I think that we could become very high achieving and not self-actualized and we'll be deeply unfulfilled. And I'm very curious in how we can live a life of deep fulfillment, not momentary fulfillment. It, it, it might be quite gratifying to win the NBA championship. I imagine that's quite gratifying, but you'll always want more and you will eventually retire from the NBA and then say, well, now what do I do in my life? So, I mean, I'm not just, I'm just the dad or the NBA, examples on my mind watching the last dance on ESPN. It's a great series. Yeah. Yeah. I've been watching that. And, um, but I just think about all our aspects of our lives. Like we want to be in a continual state of self-actualization our entire lives, not just, uh, not until you reach a goal. So the psychology of being is not so go, so goal oriented it's being oriented. They were quite put it that way. But what I mean by that is what revolves around our day and our actions or decisions revolve around. What's going to bring out our best self what's going to help us maximize our talents or strengths or character in ways that offer most utility to the world or most impact on the world, but also make us become what we're most uniquely capable of becoming in this world. And sometimes those decisions might not overlap with achievement decisions, but they're ultimately more satisfying.

Speaker 1: 17:24

I'm trying to put this all together in my head. There is an overlap though. I mean, it's, there's, there are times when the pursuit that involves the doing moves us toward that self-actualization or is it hard to have them overlap? I mean, can there be overlap where that pursuit of a results in enhanced? Yeah,

Speaker 2: 17:47

Absolutely. Yeah. I, you can, you can still strive for greatness and strive for self-actualization at the same time. I think that's, that's very true. Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Okay. All right. So you basically picked up where Maslow left off what seven years ago with his unfair finished theory when he died of a heart attack. I didn't know that story. That, that was interesting to start with. So folks that aren't aware of that look it up. It's, it's jumps off the page. What took you down this path and what practical benefit do your findings offer us? So people listening and they're thinking, well, this sounds kind of cool. Well, first of all, what took you down that path? And then second of all, on a practical level, what can folks get their arms around in this?

Speaker 2: 18:30

You like the practical stuff though here?

Speaker 1: 18:32

I really that's kind of what this whole podcast is about. We emphasize the practical stuff. So you'll hear me probably come back to three, three, four more times while we're talking, but yeah. Why don't we just start off the first part? Cause that was a long question. What took you down this path initially? What, what was the draw of, of Maslow and his story and hierarchy and all these things?

Speaker 2: 18:49

Well, I was, uh, teaching positive psychology at university of Pennsylvania. It was, uh, uh, Angela Duckworth was working on her book, her book grit. And she asked me if I wanted to teach the course that she usually teaches. And that was a real delight for me. I ended up teaching it for four, four years or so. Wow. And when I was researching the intro, the history of positive psychology, I came across the writings of humanistic psychology in the fifties and sixties, like Abraham, Madison, and others, and just fell in love with their way of thinking about human nature, the way they're thinking about, well, what, what is life all about? And, and discovered Maslow's personal journals and realized he was working on a theory of transcendence before he died. And he was a lot of his work was misrepresented. A lot of people talked about self-actualization as the pinnacle of humankind, but he argued that it was really transcendence, not self-actualization. And so I got, I was just really got really excited by that. And I realized that his framework of deficiency versus growth, um, or the, the D realm of existence human existence in the B realm, the being realm of human existence was a framework that could be applied to anything in one's life. And you start to see the whole world in a different way. You start to realize that nothing in your life is, or a characteristic is objectively good or bad in itself. What matters is the flavor of it? So you can take a good aggression. You can have deficiency motivated aggression, uh, and you can have growth oriented, aggression, humor, deficiency, oriented, humor, authenticity. You can have D authenticity and be authenticity and be again, means being, um, so deficiency authenticity is like saying whatever you want in your mind to, to fulfill a need. Uh, whereas with B authenticity, you really are about, Oh, who you show yourself to at what moments in time. So I lead to optimal growth for yourself and those around you, and to grow as a whole person. And you can go right down the line and a, B and D B and D on self-esteem. You can have deficiency, motive rated self-esteem, but where you have a insistent assessing pursuit of the feeling of positive self-esteem, or you could have a being oriented for self-esteem that's grounded in, in your real self or your best selves. And best selves is mastery a real, authentic mastery and real authentic connections with others. And that's what it's grounded in. And not. I can just go right down the line.

Speaker 1: 21:28

Got it. So you've, you've started down that path with the practical stuff. Anything else, since we were laughing about that, anything else that you'd like to bring out in terms of how this helps folks on a daily basis, weekly basis in a practical sense?

Speaker 2: 21:44

Yeah. I mean, my, my book has a whole appendix of, of growth challenges that people can engage in to help them get outside of their comfort zones and grow out. I hope my book, I think it is an immensely practical book. Think it's a book that people will read and be able to immediately apply it into their lives of how to grow the growth is the goal here. It's not, it was just an ongoing process. It's not, not happiness or necessarily high achievement and or high performance, but peak experiences. And then a lot of that takes really getting to know yourself really well and your strengths and weaknesses. And you can take my free tests, that self actualization tests.com. I have put them online. People can really use that to fully understand who they are and as a path to growth and change, we have to really peer deeply into who we are in order to change and, and also opening ourselves up to connections and, and meeting new people that we might not think we would agree with, but we ended up agreeing with and liking. So yeah, lots of discussions and exercises on how we can be more open to our experiences in life. And, um, as Viktor Frankl said, say yes to life,

Speaker 1: 23:14

Okay, well, let's jump into that self-actualization test because folks enjoy the online assessments for those listening itself, actualization test.com and then Scott with that as they go through and complete it, they are looking at the value of trying to figure out each of these levels. Here's, here's where you were in these different aspects. What, what would you suggest as a next step? So somebody goes to self-actualization test.com. They take it. What would you suggest as the next step for that person that wants to that route

Speaker 2: 23:46

By my book? And I have like a whole thing of, of road challenges and exercises and that process Oh, absolutely. Or enroll at Columbia university and be my student.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Okay. Everybody got those instructions. Everybody got that down. Just re-enroll.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Yeah. Uh, I might, I might do an online course as well, but I think, I think the pen, the growth challenges in the appendix a wouldn't be the best order to read the book and, and really, um, I don't really take it seriously and really try your best to make decisions during your day. Do you know, choose growth? We can constantly go back towards fear or we can move, choose the growth option. We have to keep choosing the growth option over and over again, day in and day out and know that it's okay to fall back and we go two steps forward. And one step back is as a normal part of human life, but we have to keep choosing the growth option.

Speaker 1: 24:47

I love that. Choose growth. I mean, that is, there's so much power in those two words. I agree. Good. Good, good. All right. I love it.

Speaker 2: 24:55

I'd put a bunch of, thank you. Thank you. I put a bunch of free excerpts from my book, my column at scientific American beautiful minds. So people can check that out over there. I have an article called choose growth. Excellent.

Speaker 1: 25:06

Love it. Love it. All right. So as you took a deeper dive into his research and writings, what surprised you? What jumped out where you went for? I had no idea that was true or never thought he'd take that route again. You were already engrossed in this, and now you take this deeper dive. What, what surprised you as you went deeper?

Speaker 2: 25:26

Well, it did surprise me that his notions of self-actualization or not individualistic and selfish by any stretch of the imagination, but what really blew my mind is his writings on the importance to have of having dichotomy transcendence. And we've a lot of false dichotomies in our society. And like one would be the difference between selfish and unselfish at the highest level of human motivation. What is good for you is good for society simultaneously. There's a great synergy there. And, and, and you, you, you really decrease that connection between self and world, and it's a beautiful thing. And at that level, though, the term selfish just doesn't have any meaning anymore because what's what, what brings you up and brings you joy simultaneously. It brings others others' choice as well. So it doesn't make any sense to be selfish and, and yeah, good versus evil was a false dichotomy that, that really blew my mind. A lot of his writings about evil and, and towards the end of his life, his reconciliation of evil and in really interesting ways that that made him, um, made Mazza, uh, realized that we have this false economy that people out there other than ourselves, they're the narcissist, not us, but we have all these tendencies. They're a part of human nature within ourselves. And now maybe not fully expressed, like there is support. We have these tendencies and getting to know who we are and, uh, is really important. And, um, brilliant, just delighted at the writings of these humanistic psychologists and their, their deep abiding appreciation for humanity and what it means to be a human being, uh, and, and to reconcile with are the paradoxes of human nature. Um, th the things that within ourselves, we are being pulled in multiple directions and, you know, we want to live, we don't want to die, but we, you know, we want to connect with others, but we also want to be unique beings. Um, we, we want to find a meaning in a world that seems meaningless. And, um, there's so many paradoxes and it's just, I guess it surprised me that we can reconcile these paradoxes and become a whole human beings. I hope that we can,

Speaker 1: 27:50

That leads nicely into my next question. You, you talk about this best self, this whole being, doing that to raise the bar for the whole humanity is a quote that you've got. When you say harnessing all that you are or realizing this best version, how do other areas, things like sleep, activity, level, healthy, eating, kind of the things that we would put in the more health and wellness wellbeing do you talk about, or do you think through, how do those feed into this process of pursuing transcendence?

Speaker 2: 28:22

Oh, big time, big time. I'm big into health and wellbeing for sure. Uh, the themes of your podcast. Um, no, um, I, I have this chapter on the safety needs and I fold the physical needs along with the psychological safety needs, because we need to feel safe and secure in, in healthy ways. We need energy, we need, um, good metabolism. We need, uh, we need to reduce our stress so that our Epogen stress affects our epigenetics that affects, um, at a cellular level, but it also affects of psychological we're prediction machines. If we can't feel like we have any sense of control in our lives or prediction, we go into a state of deep uncertainty and anxiety, which has an effect on the body. So I think the body and mind are deeply, deeply connected in the more that we can do more than we can control ourselves, um, for having optimal health. Um, it'll just, it'll feed the brain. The brain is a glucose. Well, it's a oxygen consumption machine, you know, oxygen and yeah, it's easily. This is deeply intertwined and connect them, getting, um, daily exercise or movement movement is so important as a, as a route to reducing stress. I mean, that's why it's connected. We can't, we can't talk about it as something separate from the mind, the body can't be treated as separate.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Right. Absolutely. Well said. All right. So on that topic, let's flip the mirror for a second. If you don't mind, we'd like to ask our guests since this is a health wellness and performance podcast, ask folks, what about you, your wellbeing right now? Is there a direction that you're taking, you said it's really important to you, but we all have gaps obviously. Is there something you're doing on a personal level that represents a change in your life, but still lives in that being side of the coin versus the doing, or maybe there's a little over?

Speaker 2: 30:21

A lot of the answers are pretty obvious things like I've been trying to meditate more and, uh, practice cognitive behavioral therapy techniques so that my private eye, you have to know what you're prone to. And I know that I'm prone to catastrophizing and, and, and very much so I'm prone to black and white thinking interests. So I either am a total slob, you know, eating horrible food, or I'm worthy of being on the health and fitness podcast and eat broccoli all day. And then, so I get mad at myself when I slip, but when I do a good job, I get manic. Like I'm the best. What I need to do is not be black and white in my thinking. I've been really trying to work on that. And that's a cognitive distortion. So I think we can learn to identify our cognitive distortions come to a more realistic, uh, integrated view integration looks. What does that look like? That means that I, you know, I just, I have a ratio of naughty eating to good eating, but it doesn't mean I can pull you eliminate the naughty eating. You know, it just means that I have a balanced, healthy ratio of the two. And just those sorts of things I can build up from food to other things in my life where I just, uh, realized that it's not, you're not either all good or you're all bad. Uh we're we're in these integrated human beings. Okay.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Always changing. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I, that fits so well into this. The folks that typically listen to this podcast, it's that idea of nobody has it figured out we're all growing, we're all learning. We're all. But it's really interesting to hear you talking about from your perspective and good example there of, it's not going to be perfect all the time, but there's ways I can improve it. And that reflection piece of realizing where my gaps are, where my strengths are, is quite helpful in that process.

Speaker 2: 32:17

So hopeful self-reflection people have a lot of time for self-reflection these days, but I think also we, there's a limit to self-reflection. You have to, sometimes you have to experience and you have to just jump into the stream of life and not be afraid of it.

Speaker 1: 32:36

Let's talk about reflecting just for a second. I've just got one more question for you after, but the idea of reflecting someone listening to this there, they find themselves on the other end of the spectrum, they're just constantly doing, they're moving and they're thinking, you know what? I could use a little more reflection in my life. What would it be a good starting point for them?

Speaker 2: 32:54

I think self-actualization test.com.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And that's not a self-promotion thing at all. I think you're right. Having gone through that, it forces you because to do that, self-actualization test.com process to go through that process. You have to reflect, or you can't really answer the questions.

Speaker 2: 33:13

Yeah. What are your greatest sources of self-actualization and how can you harness more of those in your life, on your path to self-actualization make things in your life conducive to making, you know, making decisions that will bring out those, those best sides of yourself.

Speaker 1: 33:31

All right. Last question. My friend en just wide open any additional words of wisdom for those who were either health and wellness coaches, they're trying to help other people, or they're just looking to develop their own wellbeing in ways that maybe we haven't discussed yet, but you think we'd like to throw out there?

Speaker 2: 33:47

Well, I think health coaches are, are amazing people and their greatest strengths tend to be strength, spotting. And that's being able to, that's a phrase in the field of positive psychology that I work in of being able to really see what was selling's greatest strengths are usually the things that people don't see themselves, but I don't know if positive psychology or wellness coaches are just as good at spotting the strengths within themselves. So they need to give themselves that permission and insight into realizing that there's a healthy balance between self sacrifice and helping others and finding strengths and compassion for others and having compassion for yourself and seeing the best in yourself. So I really recommend people try to strike that balance in a healthy way. Beautiful, healthy, integrated way.

Speaker 1: 34:42

Yeah, absolutely. Scott, what a great way to wrap. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. I know how busy you are with the release of your book and everything. Thanks for jumping on. And we really, really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 34:52

My pleasure. I really enjoyed chatting with you. I hope it's of value to your listeners

Speaker 1: 34:56

Positive. It will be great job. Oh, that was fun. One of the things I love about the opportunity to do this is you get to go beyond the sound bites and really start to get to know the guests on a deeper level. Having listened to professor Kaufmann for years, I came into this interview with that feeling, but getting the chance to hear him discuss his years in special education and where that eventually led as he began sharing his black white perspective and how that's influenced him in his own health and wellbeing. So interesting. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoy the podcast, please share it with others. You may also to check out the new health wellness performance coaching channel on YouTube. It's literally youtube.com/coaching channel. As we have a number of resources that are available completely free of charge there, we'll provide a link to that channel and the description of this podcast folks. Now it's our turn our turn to take that step toward a better version of ourselves while contributing to a better version of our community and the world. This is dr. Bradford Cooper signing off, make it a great rest of your week. And I'll speak with you soon on the next episode of the catalyst, health, wellness, and performance podcast, or over on the new YouTube coaching channel.

Speaker 3: 36:22

[inaudible].