Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
Today I'm talking about what drives you
and gives you motivation.
There are several theories
that explain what drives your behavior.
The leading motivational theory
was developed by Abraham Maslow,
called Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
This hierarchy is illustrated as a pyramid,
with the most basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid
and more advanced needs at the top.
The idea is that our needs are progressive.
Your lower-level needs must be fulfilled
before you're motivated to move to the next level.
Here's the pyramid.
At the bottom, you have physiological needs
like the need for food, water, sleep and shelter.
The next level is a need for safety and self-preservation.
This includes feeling emotionally stable, independent
and observing law and order.
These two levels are your basic needs,
and when these needs aren't met, you feel severely deprived.
The next level on the pyramid
is the need for affiliation and belonging.
This is where you as establish intimate relationships
with family, friends and romantic partners,
or you connect to a group or a cause.
So for example, even if you're someone
who doesn't like being around people that much,
or you have no friends,
this need could still be fulfilled
by having a parent who cares about you,
or being a proud Jets fan, or a Catholic.
In other words, this level includes affiliating
with an entity bigger than the individual
that allows you to feel like you belong to something
and are not completely alone.
The next step up on the pyramid
is the need for status and self-esteem.
With these needs, you're motivated
to establish self-respect, recognition
and a mastery of something.
These two levels are your psychological needs.
When these needs aren't met, you can feel empty,
detached, devalued, inferior and undeserving.
The last and the highest level
is the need for self-actualization.
This level is about personal growth.
These are things like recognizing
and fully utilizing your talents to the greatest benefit,
feeling like your life and actions have meaning
and create value, or experiencing contentment
that you have a life that's well-lived.
And you don't have to be 80
to feel like you've lived a good life.
This is a relative judgment.
At this level of self-assessment,
you're looking at what you have been
and are currently doing, and how much that matters to you,
even if you have more that you want to do.
In fact, having more to do or more to look forward to
is a good place to be
because then you still have other options
to keep you growing.
This last level is a self-fulfillment need.
We started with basic, progressed to psychological,
then to self-fulfillment.
Another way to group these needs
is to consider the first four deficiency needs
and the last one a growth need.
Why does any of this matter?
Because you can get stuck on one of these levels
and feel deficient or unsatisfied and not know why.
You don't have to meet your needs 100% at each level
before you move on to the next one,
but they need to be predominantly satisfied.
For example, let's say you're 35,
and you don't have a life partner like you thought you would
by your late 20s or even early 30s.
And that may be a sore spot for you
and make you feel discontent
with where you are in your personal life,
but it doesn't keep you
from feeling accomplished professionally.
Here's another way that this can play out.
Your personality can make you
prioritize certain needs over others.
For example, according to the pyramid,
the need for intimacy comes before the need
to be accomplished and well-respected.
But let's say you don't see relationships
as important and focus more on being financially successful
and a guru in your field.
But even when you get to the point of making a lot of money
and being promoted in your field,
it still feels empty and you're not satisfied.
You think it's because there's still another level
that you haven't reached in your profession,
or maybe you're in the wrong business
and need to start with something else.
In this hypothetical example,
you never really get to the point
of feeling satisfied with your level of accomplishment.
Maybe it's because you skipped over the belonging
and love needs.
You're chasing money and recognition to fill the void
of not being connected to someone
or something that's meaningful to you,
and the job or business
just doesn't meet that intimacy need.
This is a simple example of how recognizing your needs
and taking an inventory of what you have
and what's missing can help you get unstuck
if you feel unfulfilled.
According to Maslow, most people don't live
in the self-actualization level,
but instead hover around the belonging and status levels.
He proposed that self-actualized people
have certain characteristics,
and here are seven of them.
One, they are accepting of themselves and others
and have a democratic worldview.
And this is democratic in the general sense,
like anti-authoritarian.
Two, they embrace the unknown and can tolerate uncertainty.
Three, they prioritize the journey over the destination,
so the experience matters more than the outcome.
Four, they establish deep relationships with a few people
and need their privacy and alone time.
Five, they are concerned
with the welfare of humanity as a whole.
Six, they have a nonhostile sense of humor.
They can laugh at themselves,
but they don't find humor in jokes that are hostile,
which are jokes that make fun of other people.
Or they don't find humor in jokes that are superior,
which insult or demean people.
Number seven, they're problem-focused
instead of self-focused.
Becoming self-actualized is a goal to aim for,
but not getting there doesn't mean you've failed in life.
It's more about being self-fulfilled
by whatever means works for you.
Watch this video for more on doing things that matter
or how to find meaning and value in things
as a way towards self-fulfillment,
if you haven't already seen that video,
and then watch this one
on how being excessively positive
is damaging to your self-esteem.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.