Your Hierarchy of Needs

About two million years ago when I was working for a management consulting company, I was introduced to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow came up with the Hierarchy of Needs in the 1940s and his theory of human motivation still holds water.

According to Maslow, our lower motivational needs must be satisfied before we seek to satisfy "higher" (on the scale, not value) needs.

Imagine a pyramid. On the first tier lie the physiological needs: air, food, water, sex, sleep; the stuff that keeps us ticking.

Once those needs have been satisfied, we move up a tier to safety needs: personal security, employment, familial security, healthy, safety of our property.

On the third tier we seek to satisfy our need to love, to be loved, to belong: friendship, family and sexual intimacy fall into this level.

Moving up another tier we come to the esteem needs: confidence, achievement, respect of others, and our own self-esteem.

And finally, at the top of the pyramid is the much misunderstood "self-actualization." This is the level at which we achieve creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, acceptance. This is the level at which we do things just because the doing feels awesome.

Maslow's theory holds that if a lower need is not being satisfied, higher needs become irrelevant. As life throws its many curves at you, you may move up and down the pyramid as you seek to re-establish equilibrium on a lower tier because something has changed. Lose your job and you're back to the Physiological tier because your primary concerns become finding a way to keep a roof over your head and food in your tummy.

You can live anywhere, of course, that you can afford to pay for. If all you can afford is a small room in a rummy part of town, your next tier will kick in when you seek to ensure your personal safety. This is one of the reasons people move out of neighbourhoods into "better" neighbourhoods: they're looking for a way to increase their personal safety. It's also the driving force behind a simple cell phone plan and having an emergency fund.

Are you a bit of an Internet junkie? It may be your need to belong that you're seeking to satisfy. Ditto if you accept multiple invitations to eat out, go bar hopping or head off to a movie with friends.

While I believe that Maslow's hierarchy is still valuable, I question why it is that people are now seeking to satisfy upper level needs at the cost of their lower needs.  I've met folks whose need to socialize is circumventing their lower needs – to have money to pay the rent, to have an emergency fund saved.  And my Princesses clearly show that the need to belong and the need to be admired by others is far outstripping even their base physiological and security needs.  Is it that these folks are so delusional that the "normal" motivational factors don't even apply?

If you were to look at your life in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, what needs are you seeking to satisfy?  And are you a big enough dope to focus on the needs that should only be satisfied after your most basic needs have been met?

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