What drives us?

We are driving by things we need, but what are needs? We all have needs, right? But do we all have the same needs and how similar are they? This were the questions that professor Maslow was thinking about when he first introduced his theory for hierarchies of needs. It’s best known as the Pyramid of Maslow. It’s a theory that has many myths about it, but the most important question is: Why should you know and understand the Pyramid?

The Pyramid shows the human needs in a hierarchy. This means that it literally shows an idea of how we work, why we choose certain things over others in certain situations. This might sound a little vague, so just take a look at the Pyramid first.

As you can see, the lowest level is our basic needs. Things we really need to survive or else we will die. We need this first because without it we can’t develop the other levels. Then we need safety. Without safety, we can’t start friendships and feel like we belong. If we have safety we can start creating friendships and relationships. Once we have this we start developing Esteem. And when we have Esteem we can start self-actualizing ourselves.

Now in this way, it sounds if you fully need to complete one level before starting the other one. This is not the case. You have to imagine that every need can be fulfilled from 0 to a 100 in quality. Food is a good example. You can just eat whatever and then still feel safe, have friends and self-esteem. The quality of the fulfilment is just less. And I would argue because of this, you won’t feel completely safe. Quality is like a building block, the better the quality the more to build on. So the better the quality, the better you can fulfil higher needs as well. But you can work at multiple levels at the same time, shown in the image below:

Okay, I hear you thinking this sounds very interesting and stuff. But I enjoy eating whatever I want. So even developing higher levels, what does it give me?
Well, good question. Maslow was always interested in human potential and how we fulfil this. He argued that fulfilling our potential makes us happy. We have the drive to fulfil our potential as soon as we fulfil our lower needs. The better the needs below self-actualisation are fulfilled, the more motivation we have to fulfil our potential is what Maslow argued. And by doing so, we become happy.

A little bit more practical
Now I will make this a little bit more practical for you. Whenever you want something or whenever you don’t know what you want. Just look at the pyramid and think to yourself either, why do I want this. So which need is driving this motivation? Or if you don’t know what you want you can look at the pyramid and ask yourself, what would I like to develop more? There can never be a moment that the thing you want doesn’t relate to one of the needs. It’s just how we as people work. And by understanding why you want something, you can ask yourself the question:” But is this the best way to fulfil that need and doesn’t it get in the way of fulfilling my other needs especially the once beneath the one I’m fulfilling. Because if you sacrifice a need lower level need for a higher level need. You Pyramid will be out of balance, you just removed some building blocks. And we all have played the toppling tower game when we were younger, you can’t keep taking blocks from the lower level, to put on top.

I hope you enjoyed the article. For questions please contact me, leave a like, share or comment. Also, check out my other articles.

O.Booij