Have You Had Your Moments?

Trouble with being self-actualized is, you don't always know you're there until someone else tells you. But if you do know before someone else tells you, that is self-actualization!

So I create these online products. Here's a comment someone left at my online store. This one is made in regard to my quizzes on To Kill a Mockingbird. (Go and see for yourself, if you'd like):

This is perfect! The sections are broken up just as I would have done it myself and the questions are straightforward enough for me to hold students accountable for their outside of class reading so that we can dig deeper during class discussions. Thank you!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-Six-Reading-Quizzes-Answer-Keys

If you go to the product listing and click "Ratings and Comments," you'll find it.

Here's another comment on my Julius Caesar study guides:

Excellent! I have used this in regular, honors, and inclusion classes. Works wonderfully!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Julius-Caesar-Unit-80-plus-Pages-Answer-Keys-Hardcore-Common-Core

Yesterday the Ravens beat the Forty-Niners in a Super Bowl. Are the Ravens self-actualized, or does it take a trophy and a championship ring to make them feel self-actualized?

In the case of my educational materials, I knew they would work. I knew something was perfect about them. I had my moments. And I have new moments of self-actualization whenever I do a close reading of a great piece of literature. I can sense it happening to me.

I sell those products. That's "basic"! The money helps to pay my bills!

But the moment I uncover something I've never seen before in a great story, or rediscover something that I knew was somewhere in there, but was unable to find while talking to my students in class one day, that moment, of getting the knowledge and ascending the proof of that knowledge, and formulating questions that will give students that same ride, is transformative, transcendent, and yes, self-actualizing.

The sale of the product? The comments of my customers? Well, they're extremely gratifying! It reinforces what I knew was true, that this product has merit, that no one has put together anything quite like this before.

Did the Ravens do something transcendent? Did the Forty-Niners?

Both teams had their moments, but certain individual members of each team experienced a tremendous exhilaration the moment they first knew, while practicing that aspect of their game, that this would work! They didn't experience it for the first time during the game. Their greatest knowing happened during football practice! I coached football for over twenty years. I know the feeling. As a player, as a coach, you know when you've found something that will work!

Those that were surprised and delighted that a strategy worked during the game are not self-actualized. That is not self-actualization, not the score afterward, not the trophies or the money, but the knowledge, during preparations, that this will work.