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PREFACE
The present book is not about academics, not even about success; it is
I about happiness which we all, in the ultimate analysis, are striving for. All our efforts, since childhood, have been directed toward obtaining that elusive happiness and to make it as lasting as we could.
Abraham H. Maslow in A Theory of Human Motivation', Psychological Review (1943) had argued that human needs are organized in a hierarchy of importance. Once one need has been at least partially satisfied, another emerges and demands satisfaction. The top rung of the ladder of human needs is self-actualization need which he defines as, “A healthy man is primarily motivated by his needs to develop and actualize his fullest potentialities and capacities.” Further he says, “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write, if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves," and, “What man can be, he must be.”
Maslow gave examples of people who met this criterion using biographical analysis. People who met this standard of self-actualization included: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William James, Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Spinoza, and Alduous Huxley.
Some authors have further suggested that a man tries to satisfy his self-actualization need in many ways: by playing music, involving oneself in social service, learning computer, getting an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, and so on.
A highly commendable description of human needs, indeed. But,
