Maslow Theory revisited, let’s all wish a productive and influential new year!

Another year has passed, and I was just trying to retrospect on the checks and balances of what I have accomplished and what I can carry forward to the New Year. Just like the way leave policies in certain organizations cannot be carry forwarded beyond a certain threshold limit, the valuable time we lost cannot come back, so we need to be greedier in terms of how best we can use what we have at hand today than worrying too much on whatever has been lost.

Okay, now the point is how to approach, as we all come to some level in our career/profession, it was definitely a tough question on how to take the thread from here, and do we need to reinvent anything new in our approach or does it require a complete makeover? This triggered me to go back and think little from the roots of our civilization and rewind on the way we evolved over a period of time. The first thing which came to my mind was Maslow’s theory of motivation, and it really gave a good 4 to 5 step approach starting from fulfilling basic needs, then getting onto society and security, further consolidating with respect to love, family and relationships before concluding with self-confidence and attainment. The last step is more of unveiling the creative self and start contributing towards the larger goal of the society we live in.

Though this all sounds logical, the transition from step 4 to 5 seems to be little quick and we may probably can spare more time and thought process on how effectively we can evolve from step 4 to step 5. The following diagram can quickly unleash some more insights on how this transition can take place.

Now we are at a stage where the ground is set for the majority of us on the basic needs, security, family/relationships, etc. However the last two stages of self-esteem and self-attainment are somewhat overlapping and may look ambiguous, so the attempt here to do some deep dive and see if the clarity gets improved. Is the success in the career can be called as self-attainment? Let’s try answering this question.

Let me pick the thread from a stage where we started the career and earning our livelihood taking care of self and the family/dependents. Then comes the question on what next, is this sufficient? Or do we need to think or do anything more?

1. Growing high in the career, scaling newer heights and becoming more successful. This definitely helps in enhancing the self-esteem of the individual which in turn helps him/her individually along with the possible extension of benefits towards the immediate family and dependents. The contributions may also help the society on a broader note as we pay taxes and help in the betterment of others lives in an indirect way. Again is this sufficient to leave it here? Though this is subjective I would like to put forth my views on what else can be done.
2. The other way to look at it is to approach this as per the above pyramid (see diagram) picking things step by step. Sometimes this may need additional conscious efforts or the same can be integrated with our on-going career setup, it all depends on how we factor these items in our flow.

a. Once we stabilize on the dependents and family, the other important thing to take care is the college/institution we studied in. Let’s try to be active with the college alumnus, do whatever small contributions we can in terms of sharing the knowledge through sessions, helping in refining the curriculum, mentoring students on all the possible areas and help them in getting the needed breakthrough, etc.

b. We can then broaden the scope from college/institute towards the native place/hometown, this way we can extend our contributions towards a broader audience covering various other establishments and people associated. This need not be restricted to education alone but can be extended towards any other voluntary effort which can benefit the people living in that location.

c. Once we habituate and practice the above two contributions at the college/institute and hometown level, we can work on discovering and realizing the potential of doing more to create further impact at the national and global level too.

Overall the objective is to show gratitude and give back to all those who helped in shaping us to become what we are today. This definitely is the need of the hour with lot of cynicism surrounding us in the society, and our small contributions is definitely going add value and can also help in influencing the future generations for getting onto the same thought process.

As mentioned in one of the famous quotes, our beliefs and thoughts are going to define the destiny both at the individual, and the societal level.

If our time is spent keeping in view of the above aspects, there is nothing to regret as we get into the next year with more satisfaction and contentment. Agree?