Mindfulness and Self-actualization among Artists and Non-artists in India

Every one of us throughout the life has experienced a higher level of consciousness which in a way has helped us to face challenges, difficulties and misfortunes or has been a reason to overcome psychological or emotional problems with a high level of self-confidence and self-esteem. Although it might be temporary and not a permanent experience but that itself can be a reason to search and find out what are the exact reasons to be conscious and mindful and how can we achieve these characteristics through certain physical or spiritual practices. Ultimately this curiosity leads us to find out why some people are more charismatic, more mindful and self- actualized than others or why some people have higher level of vibration and certainly higher level of concentration. The purpose of this study is to explore the level of mindfulness and self-actualization among Indian artists and non-artists. The sample consists of 240participants, out of which, 120 participants are artists and 120 participants are non-artists. The sample includes 131 male and 109 female participants whose age ranged between 20 to 50 years old. A simple random sampling technique is used to select the sample for this study. The tools used in this study were a measure of actualization of potential which is a 27 item self-report that measures the level of self-actualization on two scales-openness to experience and self-reference. This scale was developed by R. Lefrançois, G. Leclerc, M. Dubé, R. Hébert & P. Gaulin, Sherbrooke Geriatric University Institute, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada.  Another tool is Kentucky Inventory of mindfulness skills (KIMS) which is a 39-item self-report measuring Mindfulness on four scales: Observing, Describing, Act with awareness, and accept without Judgment. It was developed at Kentucky University by Baer, Smith, & Allen in 2004. Results depicted that artists have a higher level of mindfulness and higher level of self-actualization than non-artists. For mindfulness the difference was not significant but for self-actualization this difference was significant at 0.01 level. The correlations are indicating that all the dimensions of self-actualizations have positive and moderate correlations with mindfulness. All the correlations are significant at 0.01 level.