Turning Maslow on his Head!

taken from "How to win from the start" by David Royston-Lee

Even today we look Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs’ as a way of understanding human motivation.

He talked about human needs and identified that human’s have basic needs that once satisfied allows them to move on to higher level needs culminating in something he called Self Actualisation. So at the basic level the ‘Biological’ one – our needs is for food and water. Once we have this we look for shelter and safety, once this is satisfied we move to finding love – another human being to share our life with and in work after that we look for respect and esteem. Eventually reaching, in Maslow’s terms, a state of 'self actualisation' where we are happy, with all our needs satisfied...

I don’t believe that this model works in today’s society. Things have changed... so going back to the first diagram – Maslow’s  theory goes as far as objectives... but no further... The journey he proposes where we have to go through these distinct need states and only find ‘self actualisation’ (in our words – purpose) after we have worked through lower order needs states is not acceptable – why ‘should’ we wait? Wouldn’t it be better to understand what ‘self actualisation’ looks like before we embark on our journey through life?

So my proposal is to turn Maslow’s theory on its head and start with finding what ‘self actualisation’ looks like, our purpose, first:

  • We need to examine the themes in the ‘good at enjoy doing’ exercise
  • What are the constant ones underlying everything...?
  • What are the talents we are using constantly from the ‘lifeline’ exercise?
  • Which talents are those we can’t stop using?

In other words, what are those aspects of us that are immeasurable because the more we use the talents the more we want to use them, the more we want to use them, the more we realise we need to learn and the more our appetite becomes insatiable. In effect, the more we become addicted to doing certain things, in certain ways with certain people... When we become aware that there are certain things we do in certain ways that energise us then we have broken through the ceiling above objectives into the area of our aims, our insatiable aims which are never satisfied and therefore cannot be measured.

These aims have something to do with our purpose... and actually we don’t need to know exactly what they have to do with our purpose to accept them. Once we are aware of our aims, whatever life throws at us, however many crossroads we reach along the way, we have an internal compass that tells us which road to follow.

A Thousand Times Your Income

This exercise can help you identify what's most important to you, thus allowing you to work out your purpose.
Exercise: A Thousand Times Your Income