Becoming You on The Road to Being

Maslow, a well respected Psychologist, proposed the idea of a Hierarchy of Human Needs. His work is well known, often quoted and sometimes misrepresented by many of the popular writers of psychological thinking.

In essence Maslow postulated the following ‘pyramid’ of needs.

At the base of the pyramid we find our ‘Physiological Needs’.  Meeting these needs leads us to the search for Safety and Security, the need to Belong, which leads to a development of Self Esteem and eventually Self-Actualisation.

Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1940-50s USA, and the Hierarchy of Needs theory remains valid today for understanding human motivation, management training, and personal development. Indeed, Maslow’s ideas surrounding the Hierarchy of Needs concerning the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfil their own unique potential (self-actualization) are today more relevant than ever. Abraham Maslow’s book Motivation and Personality, published in 1954 (second edition 1970) introduced the Hierarchy of Needs, and Maslow extended his ideas in other work, notably his later book Toward A Psychology Of Being, a significant and relevant commentary, which has been revised in recent times by Richard Lowry, who is in his own right a leading academic in the field of motivational psychology.

In my work on Motivation I have described a series of MOTIVES which DRIVE our behaviours at a very basic level. I have called these Biological, Physiological, Emotional, Social and Aspirational Drivers.

What ever we call them,  these needs or drives sit at the core of our being forming the basis for our behaviours – our motivations.

It follows then that Personal Happiness is a measure of how well we, as individuals, feel we have had these basic needs met.

If NLP does one thing well it does help us turn ideas into questions or statements and these formulations into behaviours.

So over to you….

WHERE are you NOW in terms of satisfying these needs (drives) and how are you expressing this in your life?

WHAT needs (drives) are still to be satisfied and WHAT can you do about changing your behaviours to acquire them?

HOW will you know when you have satisfied a particular need (drive) and having done so what will it enable you to do next?

Alan

Related articles

• Motivating Learning (alanjoneseducation.com)
• Self Esteem (alanjoneseducation.com)
• TRTZ no 44 The Brain The Mind The Self (therealtwilightzone.co.uk)
• Mind, Brain Education (alanjoneseducation.com)
• Taking Control of Your Life (mindalignment.com)
• Maslow’s hierarchy of internet needs (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• The 5 Step Motivation Model (mindalignment.com)
• Social Networks: What Maslow Misses (mprcenter.org)
• The peak experiences of Abraham Maslow (mindhacks.com)
• The Notion of Self-Actualization (listentomethunder.wordpress.com)

Tags: a well respected Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, Fundamental human needs, Human behavior, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, motivation, Personal development, Psychology, Richard Lowry, Self-esteem, USA

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 7:11 pm and is filed under achieving your dreams, Motivational Techniques, Motivational Theory, NLP, Self Assessment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.