Psychologist Abraham Maslow: Identify Your Core Values


A great place to start when establishing core values that stick and resonate is the work of Abraham Maslow.You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, but did you know that Maslow spent his final years diving deep into what feeds the human soul? He called these values that resonate deep within us Being Values or B-Values. He never got to finish a definitive list, but he identified some helpful starting places:

Being-Values:

WHOLENESS
unity; integration; tendency to oneness; interconnectedness; simplicity; organization; structure; dichotomy-transcendence; order

PERFECTION
necessity; just-right-ness; just-so-ness; inevitability; suitability; justice; completeness; “doughtiness”

COMPLETION
ending; finality; justice; “it’s finished”; fulfillment; finish and telos; destiny; fate

JUSTICE
fairness; orderliness; lawfulness; “oughtness.”

ALIVENESS
process; non-deadness; spontaneity; self-regulation; full-functioning

RICHNESS
differentiation, complexity; intricacy

SIMPLICITY
honesty; nakedness; essentiality; abstract, essential, skeletal structure

BEAUTY
rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity; richness; wholeness; perfection; completion; uniqueness; honesty

GOODNESS
rightness; desirability; “oughtness”; justice; benevolence; honesty

UNIQUENESS
idiosyncrasy; individuality; non-comparability; novelty

EFFORTLESSNESS
ease; lack of strain, striving or difficulty; grace; perfect, beautiful functioning

PLAYFULNESS
fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor; exuberance; effortlessness

TRUTH
honesty; reality; nakedness; simplicity; richness; “oughtness”; beauty; pure, clean and unadulterated; completeness; essentiality

SELF-SUFFICIENCY
autonomy; independence; not-needing-other-than-itself-in-order-to-be-itself; self-determining; environment-transcendence; separateness; living by its laws

Which values resonate most with you? Your organization?

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