Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who created the “hierarchy of needs.”  Maslow took a different tack than most psychologists, and instead of studying mentally sick people, he decided to spend his life studying very successful people. 

 What is interesting about Maslow is that he wrote that someone has to meet the lower needs on the hierarchy before the needs higher up on the pyramid will be meaningful to them.  So people need to have met their basic physiological and survival needs like breathing, food, and shelter before the esteem of their friends will mean anything to them.  Maslow did make the caveat that someone who has established the lower needs as being met will not necessarily regress.  For instance, someone who had a home and a loving family that was all swept away in a flood will not necessarily lose their current needs of esteem and love – they will maintain their current needs for some time even though they have lost their home and family.

1. Biological and Physiological needs – air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.

2. Safety needs – protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.

3. Belongingness and Love needs – work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.

4. Esteem needs – self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.

5. Self-Actualization needs – realising personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Something that I found very interesting is Maslow’s theory regarding self-actualizing people and trascendence.  You can read Maslow’s text regarding his theory, entitled “Theory Z” here.  The opening paragraph of the paper is:

I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds (or better, degrees) of self-actualizing (SA) people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central. As examples of the former kind of health, I may cite Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and probably Truman and Eisenhower.[Gates? --Ed.] As examples of the latter, I can use Aldous Huxley, and probably Schweitzer, Buber and Einstein. [Jobs? --Ed.]

A point that Maslow stresses in this paper is that the transcendent people are often “Yea-sayers rather than Nay-sayers,” they are also conscious of the current moment and not lost in thinking.  These themes also find purchase in both the Gestalt psychology of Fritz Perls and the spiritualism of Eckhart Tolle.   What does it mean to be a Yea-sayer and be in the Here and Now?  Well, it is really simple, you learn to be positive and not live in your head, by training yourself to be positive and be aware you are alive right here and right now.  Easier said than done – you might be thinking, especially after a life-time of focusing on thinking, believe me that in some parts of your life thinking is an enemy.  Most of your thoughts are probably repetitive and pointless, and focus on things you don’t have or things that should or shouldn’t happen.  The two most awful, negative words in english are “want” and “should.”  Because they both express a disharmony with the moment.

One thing that is great about Maslow is that the heirarchy makes sense within your own life, so if you are confused about what your current psychological needs are you could try and use his chart.  That way you can be objective about where you are.  The way I look at the chart I figure out what needs I have that are definately met, and then look and see if I am meeting the next set of needs.  The only problem is that it is a little weird to have a small chart explain your life!