Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. The more we forget ourselves by giving ourselves to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more we actualize ourselves.
Book: Man's Search for Meaning
The true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within a person or their own psyche, as though it were a closed system.
Viktor Frankl termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that human always points, and is directed, to something (a meaning to fulfill) or someone (another human being to encounter) other than oneself.
The more we forget ourselves by giving ourselves to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human we are and the more we actualize ourselves.
What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.