虽然相对不太认可马斯洛对其他需求层次的划分，但很喜欢他在作品中关于“自我实现”的描述。
找到自己，摆脱规训，一定是痛苦的，但痛苦之后，是创造了一个新的生命阶段。马斯洛认为，每个人生来就是完整的，只是一部分自我被抑制，故而从众，卷，迎合他人的期待。
他毫不客气的评价从众者，说那些对现实世界过分顺应或顺应良好的人，意味着不断抵制了自己许多深邃的人性，也意味着人的割接，这样做损失是很大的，牺牲了很多能力的源泉，包括创造力的源泉，他们就成为了平庸的、密闭的、僵硬的、淡漠的、拘束的、谨小慎微的。成为了不会笑，不会欢乐和爱，成了愚笨的人。他的想象，他的直觉，他的富于情感，全都逐渐弱化。
他认为，自我实现者，首先强调的是人格，而不是成就，成就只是人格放射出来的副现象。他们寻求成为自己，而不是任何社会身份，将“应然”与“实然”高度整合，充满创造力的，勇敢、自由、无畏、无束。
自我实现者在很多方面有儿童般的无忧无虑的创造性，他们是快乐的，自发的，摆脱了陈规和陋习的自由，是由无抑制的自发性和表现性组成的。不怕未知，主动进攻，并全神贯注的思考它。能安于混乱的，无秩序的状态，但这种状态对绝大多数人来说，是苦恼的，内耗的。
对自我实现者来说，这种愉悦的激励性的挑战，是他们生活中的高潮，而不是低谷。同时，有强整合能力，被描述为有最强烈的自我和最具明显个性的人。同时，他们也能达到没有自我，超越自我，和以问题为中心的人。在创造性的活动中，达到“心流”“巅峰体验”。
做自己，成为自己，创造自己，实现自己。
Abraham Maslow quotes on motivation and personal growth：
It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; but also upon actual accomplishments, achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues.
Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
Whereas the average individuals "often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are," self-actualizing individuals have "superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general.
(Some people) have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.
I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capabilities.
When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.
