did Maslow get it all wrong with his hierarchy of needs theory if so then how
do we self actualize in this video I'm going to show you keep watching this is
light mastery gym I'm Damon Cart and I teach people just like you
cutting-edge processes and techniques so that you can live a more fulfilling life
and take charge of your destiny so if that sounds good please click subscribe
to this YouTube channel I'm not old enough to have learned directly from
Abraham Maslow however my mentor the late Steve andreas was mentored directly
from Abraham Maslow he taught me what Maslow got right and when Maslow got
wrong and I'm going to share that with you in this video and by the end of this
video you're going to understand how to truly actualize your potential also by
the end of this video I'm going to show you how you can take this even deeper
with some free training real quickly I'm going to go over Maslow's hierarchy of
needs theory in case you're not familiar with it and if you are this will just be
a quick refresh and that brings me to a question how many of you out there are
already familiar with Maslow's theory if you are type in yes in the comments
below Maslow's theory is that we have levels
of needs and when those levels of needs are satisfied we have intrinsic
motivation to move to the next level which goes higher and higher and higher
until we get to self-actualization self-actualization being the total
fulfillment of your potential or any given individuals potential so that's
the height of the pyramid or the hierarchy and at the bottom the very
bottom is physiological getting our physiological needs met and then the
next level once we have our physiological needs met then we go to
the next level which is safety feeling a sense of security and for a lot of
people this might be in this day and age would be more probably financial
security and then the next level is love and belonging so you might think of this
as once you feel safe once your physical physiological needs are
down at the bottom then you need to insure your security and then the next
level would be then you turn your focus to love and belonging so this would be
like relationships community and this could also be connecting with other
people socially and then the next level is esteem esteem is right before
self-actualization so esteem being feeling good about yourself once these
all these levels stack up and then you get to the level where you can truly
actualize your potential and that might come out in terms of being an artist it
might be creating a business being an entrepreneur it could be being a great
parent all of these levels as they're satisfied lead you to be motivated to go
to the next level in the next level so if you think about it like at the bottom
level if you didn't have any food you're not going to be too worried about
relationships you're not going to be too worried about additional safety or
security you're not going to be worried about actualizing your potential you're
going to be more motivated to find something to eat
but once the eating has happened once you have food then you're probably going
to try to secure that food you're going to try to secure ongoing food so that
you don't starve and so that would be where the safety comes in and then the
next level would be the loving and belonging your satiated with the food
you have a secure the means in which to have food ongoing so your survival is
now secured now I can turn my attention to being in love creating a family
creating a community or being accepted into a community and once I have that
then I focus on myself as far as feeling good about myself by doing things that I
enjoy doing that's where the self-esteem comes from but it could also maybe be
also in terms of wanting esteem for mothers and then once I've got that then
I go oh okay well now it's really about me let's go and let's self actualize
I've got this potential I don't have to worry about those other things anymore
so let's go you're probably thinking yeah this sounds really good and it
sounds very logical and the first time that I came across it I thought the
exact same thing and then I started to try to reconcile that model with NLP and
Noor linguistic programming and also with other philosophies that I had
learned and there seemed to be some absent and I couldn't really quite
understand what they were and then when I found out I didn't even know Steve
Andre us my mentor had been mentored by Maslow someone else told me and so I
went directly to Steve and I said hey I heard you were had been mad you had been
Maslow student and he said yes and I said well I I'm trying to figure out how
to reconcile these models this philosophy and NLP and it just seems to
be these gaps and he said well stop frustrating yourself over it the gaps
are very real and this started opening my understanding of the self-concept
model which Steve Andre has created which starts to explain why Maslow's
model is something nice to aspire to but it's not how humans actually function we
don't function by a rigid hierarchy like this there's a lot more overlap that's
going on and your values will change rapidly it's not like you get to a
certain place in your life and then boom I'm self actualizing all the time yes
you do need to satisfy some of these things in your life in order to have the
the mental bandwidth to feel good about yourself and then to go for things so
yes you need confidence at a certain level you need food at a certain level
so none of these things are necessarily wrong it's just that it doesn't function
so simplistically as a hierarchy that once you get to these certain levels
you're done and then you finally get to a level of being a self actualized human
being so that everything you do is purely self actualized and you're
fulfilling your potential 100% we are more like what is called a header our
key and this actually exists inside our neurology it's not a one way upward
rigid hierarchy it's actually something that shifts and moves and so the best
explanation that I can give is a an analogy that Steve andreas would use and
he said that the I don't know this for sure but it still it serves the purpose
of the analogy that in the United States military we have say like troops you
know you can call it a squad or put and there is a person who is in charge
wherever the highest-ranking officer is or highest-ranking person is in charge
of the platoon but in the Israeli military whoever's in charge depends on
who is the most useful in that situation so if you're in a desert situation the
person who knows the desert terrain the best steps up and becomes the leader and
then if you switch to the ocean the person who understands the ocean the
best now steps up and he becomes the leader so it's not based on who's the
highest-ranking person it's based on what needs to be done here and who has
the best information at this time in this place what better way to describe
how humans function has a lot to do with context and what it is that you want in
that particular context it's not going to be decided by one single hierarchy in
every single situation so right now my hierarchy or my values right now are
dictating that I'm creating this video but if I suddenly got really hungry well
then my values are going to shift and I'm going to want to go and eat and
maybe come back to this later and then if suddenly I get a phone call and
there's an emergency that I drop all of this and then that emergency becomes now
my highest priority so we are much more a conglomeration of many of these
hierarchies that are shifting all the time depending on where we are in our
lives and the situation at hand and what we value most in that situation well
Maslow's hierarchy of needs sounds really nice and logical and there's a
simplicity to it that's very attractive this is not actually how we work I think
that's why this model is so popular because it is very simple and easy to
understand but if we go deeper into this we find that in every context we have a
different hierarchy of values so Google defines header Archy as a system of
organization where the elements of the organization are unn
meaning they're not hierarchical or where they possess the potential to be
ranked a number of different ways so this is much more reflective of how the
human neurology the human mind works you have all these potentials that are the
potential for all these qualities within you all these values within you to be
ranked once you step into a particular situation or once there's some call to
action or a call to a desire or you value something you see something
suddenly and you go oh yes I want that well then then value suddenly rises to
the top it gets ranked that way and then there
might be more information that comes in and you make another choice or you walk
into a different context and that again changes so this hierarchy is always
shifting and changing and that's normal and I think people beat themselves up a
lot when they don't stick to something one of the problems that comes with
committing to something and trying to stick to it is reconciling your your
human nature which is your values will change considering when you start to
consider other information and you step into different contexts in different
situations and so this is the hard part of sticking to something we're just not
that rigid but if we can understand this and we can begin to accept our human
nature that way and work with it then we can learn to commit to things and stick
with things a lot better to summarize all this Maslow's hierarchy of needs is
a nice model to aspire to but you want to hold this loosely you want to hold
the model loosely and not get too caught up in being rigid about it and just
understanding that it's nice to review and look at it and reflect upon it in
your own life but it's not how you should necessarily live your life no one
should be that rigid Maslow's model is very well intentioned so I'm not
doubting him in any way and he made many contributions to psychology especially
with shifting the perspective of psychology from being a study of what's
wrong with humans to shifting to what's right with humans and how do we
capitalise on that so he influenced the human potential movement significantly
so not taking any of that away from him but in order to meet the changing
demands of life and to be flexible and adaptable you need to be thinking more
in terms of header our key rather than hierarchy so how do you do this how do
you shift from thinking from hierarchy to header our key well one of the ways
is to elicit your values and not only to elicit your values like overall in life
which especially if you're doing a value solicitation for the first time is very
very difficult what I recommend you do is take a context an area of your life
and then ask yourself well what do I really want in this situation what do I
want in say my career or what do I want in my marriage what do I want out of my
business and start there and so when you contextualize it it makes it a lot
easier to elicit those values and then once you elicit those values then you
can rank them in order of importance and when you go really with these really
high level values there they really become Universal they become very very
general and that allows you to plug them in anywhere that this allows you to be
more flexible and more adaptable rather than being in a rigid hierarchy your
values are the key to your motivation they're also the key to your potential
and you can take those values and create a vision out of it and a powerful vision
will guide you to where you want to go and it's vague enough that it doesn't
doesn't dictate exactly how you have to do it it just gives you the direction
it's sort of like shining a light in the darkness and saying okay if I long as I
go in this direction it doesn't matter if I do it by car or boat or by walk I
will get there eventually so you want to create a vision for yourself that way
in summary choose a context elicit the values of what you want the the
experience you want to have in that particular context then rank those
values and then create a vision of what it would be like based on your values to
have the kind of experience you want to have in that particular context and then
once you do this with enough context it'll be easier to create an overall
vision for your life of how you want your life to be what is the life
experience you want to have so now you know the problems was
trying to apply masses hierarchy of needs theory to your life and if you've
tried doing that before now you understand why it doesn't work out so
well you're just not we're just we just don't
function this way if you're still interested in self-actualization I've
created a free four part video series on how to elicit your values and create a
pathway to self-actualization so if you're interested in that you'll find
the link right here below in the description also put it in the comments
and I'll link it to the video as well click that link opt in over 4 days
you'll get the four-part video series which will show you exactly what I'm
talking about here how are you working toward your self-actualization I'm
always curious about the pathways people are creating for themselves to actualize
their potential tell me about it in the comments below and remember to take
advantage of this four-part video series that I'm giving away if this video was
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