Abby Falik on Flipping Maslow’s Hierarchy
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Abby Falik, Co-Founder of The Flight School and creator of the Taking Flight Substack, shares insights from her career in reimagining learning as animation, co-creation, and liberation. Abby focuses on educating for more than just test results, prioritizing knowledge of our own minds and hearts, and the wisdom to be found in transitions. Abby joins Zoe fresh off a 10-day silent meditation retreat, and her clarity and presence are palpable in this episode. She and Zoe discuss:
- Inner Connection Can Become a Foundation for Outer Change. Abby challenges the assumption that meaningful change always begins by identifying an external problem. Her experience with contemplative practice has led her toward a different insight: learning to relate more wisely to our own minds may help us connect more authentically with other people and the more-than-human world. This shifts the work from simply fixing what is wrong toward cultivating the qualities that make wiser action possible.
- Education Might Be Starting in the Wrong Place. Rather than treating purpose, self-knowledge, and emotional development as luxuries that come after academic fundamentals, Abby asks what might happen if we reversed that order. Learning one’s mind and heart, discovering what animates us, and developing a sense of purpose could become the foundation from which literacy, numeracy, curiosity, and sustained learning grow.
- Systems Change Requires More Than Helping Individuals. The conversation explores Abby’s concept of systemic altruism: the recognition that much suffering is produced by structures rather than isolated events. Compassion therefore asks more of us than responding to symptoms. It invites us to understand the systems producing harm and develop the capacity to change them at their roots.
- Achievement Without a Moral Compass Can Become Destructive. Talent, ambition, and determination are not inherently forces for good. Abby reflects on the danger of ambition separated from ethics and asks what should come before action, influence, or achievement. Her answer points toward values, moral reflection, compassion, and a deeper understanding of what our abilities are ultimately for.
- The Work Is Not Self-Optimization, but Self-Revelation. Contemplative practice can easily become another tool for productivity or achievement. Abby offers a different understanding: the purpose is not endlessly improving ourselves, but learning to see, befriend, and ultimately love who we already are. From that place, striving can soften and a more grounded form of service can emerge.
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