“‘self-actualisation [the full realization of one's potential]…rarely happens…certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.’[8] The fact that ‘most of us function most of the time on a level lower than that of self-actualization’ he called thepsychopathology of normality.[9]

Maslow considered self-actualizing people to possess ‘an unusual ability to detect the spurious, the fake, and the dishonest in personality, and in general to judge the people correctly and efficiently.”[10]

Common traits amongst people who have reached self-actualization are:[11]

  • They embrace reality and facts rather than denying truth.
  • They are spontaneous.
  • They are ‘focused on problems outside themselves.’[12]
  • They ‘can accept their own human nature in the stoic style, with all its shortcomings,’[13] are similarly acceptant of others, and generally lack prejudice.

For Goldstein, self-actualization was a motive and, for Maslow, a level of development; for both, however, roughly the same kinds of qualities were expressed: independence, autonomy, a tendency to form few but deep friendships, a ‘philosophical’ sense of humor, a tendency to resist outside pressures and a general transcendence of the environment rather than ‘coping’ with it.[14]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization