Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs: Overview And Reflection
According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are five levels of basic needs that we need in our lives. Psychological needs, safety needs, social belongings, esteem and Self-actualization. The first level which is the psychological needs revolves around the basics of our lives that we simply cannot live without like food, air, drink, warmth, shelter and sleep. These psychological needs influence us because when they are deficient, it is unpleasant to us and we innately cannot live in a healthy way without having these options available to us. The second level is the level of safety needs. This level plays a crucial role as it contributes to your well-being and basic health. This also relates to your physical and psychological safety, such as feeling protected from violence, feeling safe and free to access health care services and growing in an environment where there is zero tolerance to bullying. This level influences our life positively because if we have this safety level met then we would be living with beneficial social norms where fear does not exist. The third need in our lives is social belongings. We need intimacy with others like family connections and friendships, connections with one’s own religious community or even romantic relationships. Social belongings influence our lives because having this need met can help us in overcoming a lack of our daily needs like famine, pain and emotional stress. This level often gives people support to keep them going through strength in their relationships with others. The forth level of our basic needs is esteem. According to Maslow, we usually care about how our peers see us and we always like to know that they respect and appreciate the work we do.
The more respect and appreciation we get, the higher our self-esteem gets because we start to feel that we’re doing something special that people are noticing it. Still, some people are able to have their esteem goals met without being exposed to the others’ opinions. They just believe that each individual has his/her own source of strength that makes them feel unique in his/her own way. Esteem has a great influence on our lives because without it we’d feel useless, helpless or inferior. We can build it to ourselves or others can build it to us. The final level of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self-actualization. This level is about your own needs that makes you feel important as a person. It is about knowing what matters most to you, achieving it, and finding satisfaction in that. This level is important to our lives because it involves a high level of one’s feelings and motives about the self, and it is different from other needs on the hierarchy, it cannot be achieved without a person’s basic needs being met.
At this point of my life, I see myself in the self-actualization state as I started to understand that I have to believe in myself and my own abilities before I expect others to point out the positive sides of me. I have to know what matters to me the most and the things I like in my life that would make me feel deeply satisfied about my existence as a person. At this point, my life is more than just a self-acceptance. My life is about a tougher concept of self-actualization. This level of Maslow’s hierarchy affected me positively because I started to understand that no one would ever respect and appreciate you unless you do first. If you describe yourself as a worthless person, it would be hard for others to point out the unique abilities that you have as a person because you are not making it clear to them. I want to achieve a professional control of my own independency, problem solving skills, creativity and spontaneity. I want to love myself from the inside out and simply eliminate any source of prejudice that would take control over my life.
I remember myself when I was at a very lower point of self-actualization. I would always feel embarrassed of who I am. I used to isolate myself from people and underestimate my abilities because there were a lot of emotional accidents taking place in me such as, measuring myself against others, not accepting myself holistically and thinking that I’m not in control. This has affected my self-actualization negatively because I always felt like a finished product as I always wanted perfection in my life and was so naïve to know that humans naturally lack perfection. It took me time to grow up and realize who I am as a person and what my unique powers are. I realized that this feeling of depreciating the self was basically more than torturing so I wanted to move on. Since then, I decided to conquer one thing in my life and move on to the next. The key was a higher self-actualization within the self that made me free from these torturing ideas dancing in my heads. The way I planned my goals and worked so hard to get to them and how I was satisfied by the results were the turning point of my self-actualization.
References
- Kay Green, R. (2017, October 02). The 5 Levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and How They Affect Your Life. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from https://www. oxford-royale. co. uk/articles/5-levels-maslows-hierarchy-needs-affect-life. html
- Lilienfeld, S. O. , Lynn, S. J. , Namy, L. L. , & Woolf, N. J. (2016). Psychology: from inquiry to understanding (3rd ed. ). Boston: Pearson.
