Honest question: Do you feel happy and do you feel fulfilled?
Happiness and fulfillment are things that we all seem to be searching for.
Some of us might've found it while others have not.
And for those of you who haven't found it yet, that's okay.
Today I'm going to share the actual foundational needs
that every human being needs to have in order to feel fulfilled.
It's a concept in psychology that breaks down exactly what you need.
And with this video, I'm going to share a free downloadable worksheet
that you can use to reflect and do this exercise
to help you understand yourself
and find more meaning and fulfillment in life.
Hey guys, welcome back to Lavendaire.
So today I want to talk about happiness and fulfillment.
It might be strange talking about these things
in a year where it might be harder to find happiness and fulfillment,
but that is why we need to understand this concept even more,
so that we can find those positives in our situation.
The concept I'm sharing today is Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
So you might've heard of this before.
If you've studied psychology, you've definitely heard of this before.
This is something that I learned about first in college,
and I realized I never talked about it on my channel.
And it's a very important, the foundational concept that I feel we should know.
It's something that we should all know.
You don't have to agree with it 100%,
but at the very least you should know this.
So for those of you who've never heard of this,
who don't know what Maslow's hierarchy of needs is,
this video is for you.
What this hierarchy of needs basically explains is
what every human being needs, as simple as that.
There's an original version of this pyramid,
and then there's an expanded, updated version.
The original pyramid has five levels.
The basic level, the first level on the bottom, is Physiological needs.
We need to have the basic things to survive–
food, water, air, shelter –
basically anything that you need to survive physically.
The idea is: you need to have your basic needs met
before you can move up to the levels above it and fulfill those needs.
On the second level is our need for Safety,
and that translates into feelings of safety, feelings of security,
feeling some level of order, predictability, and control in your life.
So financial security would fall under this second level need,
the feeling that you don't have to worry about how to pay for your next meal
or things like that, because that is a safety concern.
Above that, on level three, is our need for Love and Belonging.
We humans are social creatures.
We need to feel loved.
We crave love.
So human connection, interpersonal relationships
with your family, friends, peers,
and just feeling accepted and feeling like you belong.
And as you go up these levels,
you can kind of look back at your life for when you had these needs.
Like Physiological: You had these –
I mean, you always have these needs,
but they were met ever since you were a baby.
And if you're in the first world,
you have had these needs met basically all the time.
Second level need is Safety.
A lot of us have dealt with that as well.
I mean, honestly this year with the pandemic,
our feeling of safety – it doesn't feel as safe anymore.
So that has been impacted,
which is why a lot of us have a harder time
feeling happy and fulfilled this year.
So that third level Love and Belonging,
I feel a lot of us start dealing with this in our childhood,
whether it's in school, whether you really want to belong in a group
or whether you've had like difficulty in family,
feeling like you belong in a certain family,
feeling loved and accepted.
Moving up to the next level: our Esteem needs.
Self esteem is super important.
It's the feeling that you have value in yourself.
I would put self worth and self love also in this category.
And then there's also this part of self esteem,
this desire to be respected, desire to have achieved something,
to have other people see your worth.
That is all under the level of Esteem needs, and that is a big one.
A lot of us are working, still working,
on building that feeling of self worth and self love within us.
And so the last level on top is called Self Actualization.
And that is the level where you are striving to achieve your fullest potential,
where you're all about personal growth and doing things
because you are motivated to grow.
It's not because you're lacking in any area.
It's just because you want to.
You want to see how far you can go.
So those five are the original five levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
And I didn't know this until I researched for this video,
but there is an expanded version of this pyramid,
which includes eight levels, so they've inserted three more levels.
So after the fourth level of Esteem, the fifth one is Cognitive Needs.
So that is the need for knowledge, information, learning, curiosity, exploration.
And if you think about it, it’s true: Knowledge is power.
And the more knowledge we have,
the more confident and certain we are in our life and our choices.
I have noticed that a lot of the high achievers I know in my life are thirsty for knowledge.
They are curious.
They never stop learning.
They're always exploring.
And I talk about this on my channel,
how important it is to continue learning
and to always stay humble and recognize that you don't know everything.
So it makes sense that knowledge and understanding are important for a person's fulfillment.
You know, we need to exercise and work our brain.
And if you want to exercise your brain and continue your quest for knowledge,
I recommend you check out Skillshare.
Thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this part of the video.
If you guys haven't heard of Skillshare –
which I'm pretty sure you have, because I always talk about them –
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes
to help you fuel your creativity and curiosity.
There are classes in design, business, writing, art, lifestyle, and so much more.
There's something for everyone.
And there's always something new to learn.
A class that I found that you guys would love is this one by Emma Gannon.
It's called “Discovering Success: Seven Exercises to Uncover Your Purpose, Passion, & Path”.
So this class has great exercises on finding your path,
breaking free from expectations, rethinking success,
and gaining confidence in your direction in life.
It's super helpful if you need help on finding a fulfilling path in life.
There are no ads on Skillshare, and they're always adding new Premium classes.
And a Premium membership is less than $10 a month.
For a limited time, you guys can use that link in my description
to get a free trial to Skillshare Premium.
Moving on to level six of the expanded pyramid, we have Aesthetic needs.
So Aesthetic needs are our human need for beauty and form and balance.
And this one kind of surprised me.
I'm like, “Do we really need aesthetics?”
But me as a Libra, I'm like, “Okay, I'm not surprised. Yes, yes we do.”
And that is something that I think you guys can all see.
People naturally want pretty things.
I mean, maybe it's not important for everyone,
but at a certain point, if you have all the needs below that met –
like if you have the safety, security, self esteem, belonging,
if you have all of that – then the next level up above knowledge is Aesthetics.
At this point, I want to point out that these levels don't have to be so rigid.
It's not that you have to have self esteem
before you have knowledge, before you have aesthetic.
I feel like towards the top half, it's pretty interchangeable.
Some people care more about certain things than others
and you guys can let me know your opinion on this down below.
When I read “Aesthetic needs”, it brought me back to a memory when I was a kid.
When I was young, we didn't grow up with that much money.
My mom was a refugee.
My dad was broke, he came from China.
And my mom was the youngest – second youngest –
sibling out of 11, so I have a huge family.
And my grandma's house and my house,
we would all just have hand-me-downs.
My clothes were hand-me-downs
and everything that we used was just hand-me-down.
Or it was just old and cheap from Chinatown.
And I don't know, nothing was very pretty.
Everything was just practical.
And I just thought that was how everyone's house was.
It was just that, you know?
And then I went to a friend's house and I was like,
“Whoa, why is it so clean? Why does this look so pretty?
Why does this look like it came out of a magazine?”
I thought magazines were fake.
And so I realized, you know, the differences in certain people.
Once they have certain levels met, they have enough money,
they have this-this-this-this, then they care about aesthetics.
And when I was young, I didn't realize that aesthetics was even important
because my family, my parents were just struggling to make enough money
to feed me and my brother and blah, blah, blah.
We were in different stages in the hierarchy of needs.
So after Aesthetics, then it’s Self-Actualization, which we've already talked about.
And then after that, there is an eighth level called Transcendence needs.
So Transcendence needs are needs that transcend the personal self.
They would be like spirituality needs,
things that are in the mystical realm, service to others,
moving beyond yourself and the material world, even to the next level.
There is a higher level beyond all of this
that we are living and struggling with right now.
Define that how you want, but I also want to point out that
the bottom four needs are called Deficiency Needs,
and the upper four needs are called Growth Needs.
Deficiency Needs means that you need it.
The less you have it, the more you need it.
For example, the longer a person goes without food,
the hungrier they become.
The longer someone goes without love, the more they deeply crave it.
The upper four levels are called Growth Needs
and those needs are motivated by a person's desire to grow.
And they're not motivated by a lack of something.
It's just the simple desire to have something better,
to improve from where you are now.
All right, so now that we've talked about the eight levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
now it makes it easy for you to go into each level and reflect:
Are your needs being met?
What is lacking?
What are you missing?
What are you craving?
So this is what the exercise is helpful for,
the downloadable worksheet that you can get
by clicking the link down below.
That worksheet will help you look into each level,
analyze, and self-reflect, and then see what you can do
to give yourself what you need,
because now it's more clear what you would need.
This is the beauty of this exercise.
You guys know, I always talk about focusing on what you can control
and not worrying about the things that you can't control.
This is where you use that concept.
You recognize that there are certain things that
you're probably craving that are out of your control.
You can't control other people.
You can't make this person like you, if they don't like you.
So you want to ask yourself: What can I control?
What can I actually do to give myself what I need to meet these needs?
But now I want you guys to comment down below with
which level of need you are struggling the most with.
What area are you lacking the most in?
For me, I was struggling the most with the level of Esteem,
because for so long, I struggled with self esteem.
I didn't have self confidence.
I was insecure.
And so working on self worth and self love was huge for me for many, many years.
And obviously I had to do a lot of work in each of these levels,
and it still goes on. It's always going on and on.
And I want you to know that even though
you've worked on certain things – say the upper levels –
it doesn't mean that, the bottom levels are good.
Things happen.
Life happens that throws us off our balance.
For example, the pandemic has shaken up #2, our need for safety.
We don't feel safe in this chaotic world,
because of the situation we're in, but that's okay.
You know, sometimes things shake up our foundation,
but just know that those things are temporary
and for you to acknowledge it and be aware,
“Okay, this need is lacking. Maybe I can do this to help me feel more safe.
Maybe I can do that to feel more love and belonging.”
So all these things are just to help you become
more aware of what you need and what can help you.
Lastly, and this is my opinion,
but I don't think you need all of these levels
in order to have happiness in life.
I think happiness is much simpler,
and sure, these eight levels might outline what a human needs for fulfillment,
but I don't think you need all of these things to be happy.
You can have less and still be happy.
Happiness is a mindset.
It's a perspective, really.
You can be happy if you just focus on gratitude, for example.
Having gratitude for what you already have
and having perspective so that you don't see life in terms of negative,
but you see it in terms of positive.
I think those two things can bring you happiness
before you even reached the upper levels of this hierarchy of means.
Another journaling exercise you can do is
deconstruct your own happiness so that you understand
what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy.
It's really simple.
Just ask yourself: When I'm happy, why am I happy?
And then list out all the reasons or the moments,
the things that happened in your life, where you were happy.
And then ask yourself: When I'm unhappy, why am I unhappy?
So list out all the things where you're unhappy.
And from there, you can kind of find the core things that make you happy,
and the core things that make you unhappy in your life.
And then you recognize those are your values.
At the end of the day, I hope that you find what makes you happy and fulfilled.
Once you find those core things that matter to you,
you can hone in on them, cultivate them, grow them,
surround your life with them so that that is what makes up your life.
Let me know if you like today's video and exercise.
Again, click down below to download that worksheet
and I will see you next time.
Love you.
Bye!