Maslow's Theory of Self-Actualization and Giving Up on Dreams

As we can see, in the daily life we are living in, people always give up on their dreams very easily. It is usual for us to hear someone say that, "I quit. I can not do this any more." Some people do so because they are tired of what they are doing, and others may just give up on their dreams because of their own personality problem. In my point of view, it is not a good or healthy thing to do because in the end, people may regret for what they decided to do. They may feel unhappy or even depressed. This can increase the number of people who have melancholia, and it also increase the rate of suicidal behavior. So, in my point of view, dreams, the life goals of individual's, should never be given up.

This is not a new born problem that people sometimes abandon their dreams. It happens throughout human history. A famous psychologist Abraham Maslow has a theory (Fig. 1) which is widely accepted by people. That is we are having different levels of needs. Some of them are basic, and some are at a higher level. Our behavior of chasing the dreams can be understood as fulfilling the "Self-Actualization Needs". Once we feel that chasing this particular dream cannot satisfy the needs, we give up, and look for other things to fight for. He believes that this happens all the time because it is more influenced by the individual himself or herself than the external environment. Besides, Carl Rogers, who is also a famous psychologist, had theorized that we have a "real self" and an "ideal self". In his theory, our dreams should be defined as our "ideal self". If there is a major difference between those two, we feel insecure, depressed and generally unhappy. This also happens when the "real self" cannot meet the "ideal self," and this is...

... middle of paper ...

... follow their dreams" reason. In China, the government had offered the governmental coupons to the public to help people go through this bad time and expand domestic demand. As for the first solution, people cannot be forced to do so, but it is still a worthy way to try because all an individual need to do are to call for an appointment and go to meet the doctor.

In the end, I want to stress that living in the life with this bad economy, everything is somehow more difficult to do than before, but it doesn't mean that we would have to give up on what we really want and stop trying. In fact, the truth is our dreams should never be given up because if we do so, it can lead to some bad aftermath. I think those two solutions listed above can really help with this problem, and people can live much happier when they finally achieve their dreams and get what they want.