Part 2 in this series (read Part 1 here)
PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
are inherent within the working of biological systems maintenance of the human body at its most basic level vital to survival such as the need for shelter, warmth, water, air, food, and sleep. All other needs become secondary until these needs are met.
SAFETY AND SECURITY
What keeps us safe and secure from harm including shelter, job security, health, our environment. If a person doesn’t feel safe they will seek to find safety before aspiring to higher level needs.
LOVE AND BELONGING
Social needs involve belonging, love, affection, as well as relationships with family and friends, companionship. A pleasing and fulfilling relationship implies acceptance by others. Having satisfied Physiological Needs, and Safety and Security Needs they can now seek Love and Belonging.
SELF-ESTEEM
This need begins to develop in the fourth stage with positive feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. Esteem needs are for a higher position within a group and act to foster pride in their work and themselves as individuals. (respect, achievement, confidence, recognition, and accomplishment)
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
The highest level in Maslow’s Hierarchy is Self-Actualization and pertains to what a person’s full potential can be. The desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming such as, realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, pursue talent, personal growth, peak experiences, creativity, etc.
Beyond Malsow’s five stage hierarchy of needs researchers have developed both a seven and eight stage pyrimid.
Additional states are: Cognitive Needs – the need to know and understand; Aesthetic Needs – the need to express oneself in pleasing ways, and Transcendence Needs – the need to help others to achieve self actualization.
For our purposes we will focus on the five-stage model.
How do you move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid?
With Motivation! It’s important to understand that motivation is the key to success in everything we do. It inspires us to move forward. We are either motivated by fear of pain or by desire for pleasure.
Fear of pain as a motivator
Fear means something important is about to happen. It initiates the fight or flight response. Embracing fear means embracing growth. Even if you “fail” you’ll be happy that you tried. Fear happens; it’s a good idea to make friends with it, every time you overcome fear, you are stronger.
A bigger motivator than fear of pain, is pleasure. As humans we instinctively seek pleasure over pain. We are either moving toward pleasure or away from pain.
Pleasure-Pain Principle
The pleasure-pain principle is the basis of your motivation. Understanding this principle means that you will successfully be able to adjust your levels of motivation at-will as you work toward the attainment of your goals and objectives.
There is an 8-step process you can use to allow you to successfully transform unhelpful habits, behaviors and emotions. You can use this process to help develop the motivation you need to achieve your goals and objectives. Keep in mind that you are in control of the direction of your life. You have the ability to assign the weight of pain and pleasure to every decision you make. This will allow you to successfully “tip the scales” in one direction or another that supports the goals that you would like to achieve or the changes you would like to make in your life.
Step 1: Prepare yourself – What goal would I like to achieve?
Step 2: Stir up the pain
Step 3: Break your unhelpful pattern
Step 4: Select a new empowering behavior
Step 5: Inspire within yourself proactive action
Step 6: Use Anchoring to condition a new behavior
Step 7: Managing the process of change – start making progress toward attaining the goal set in step 1.
Step 8: Develop a plan of action for moving forward – Plan of Action
We will continue building our foundation for success in our next article. In the meantime, here is a hierarchy worksheet and a worksheet illustrating a Hero’s Journey, for you to complete.
