One of the biggest illusions about well-being is the assumption that it can only come after many other physiological, financial, and physical requirements are met.
Sorry, no sorry, but this is the misunderstanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you are ready, here is the biiiiig fact check.
There is no Maslow’s hierarchy of well-being.
What Maslow originally suggested is that deprivation needs can dominate human motivation when they are lacking. Therefore, these might prevent us from a psychologically fulfilling life. These deprivation needs are the ones that we cannot live with.
Like food.
Like shelter.
Like safety.
And then now we have time and energy to be happy. Right?
NO! Because we also have growth needs at each level. However, sacrificing psychological needs for the sake of deprivation needs is called controlled motivation, whereas the desired motivation is autonomous motivation, which brings us well-being.
Well-being is not five courses of dinner where one comes after another. Maslow himself self-corrects that it is not true that unless you finish your plate at one level, you cannot pass to the next level’s plate. This is a misinterpretation, he says. One can step up without being fully satisfied at one level. Therefore, it is not a pyramid that goes up linearly. This is why this so-called pyramid cannot explain why there is no causal relationship between wealth and well-being.
Have you wondered why there are many unhappy but rich people and why there are many well-functioning low socioeconomic people? Research shows us that there is something beyond money:
“Well-being!”
And this is not about attending a yoga club or sipping your smoothie. Even in poverty, when people are struggling to find a loaf of bread for their living, they still need those psychological needs. We need to feel efficient at what we do. We need to feel that we have a choice over what we do. We need to feel that we belong to others in what we do.
The problem with that very popular hierarchy of needs is contaminating the survival needs with psychological needs. This does not mean that money, shelter, and safety are not important. Indeed, they are a hundred percent important. Survival needs help to a degree to feel safe. For sure, financial stability is important. Yes, these biological or economic needs are important. We cannot survive without them. Yet, they do not make us happy and fully functioning individuals.
Surviving does not mean thriving and flourishing.
We are so good at delaying psychological needs. “I will do that after this” is like an energy leak that we ignore in our electricity system. However, vitality is the energy available to the self. Whether you have a very good physical health or a terminal illness, you wouldn’t let your blood, draining from a cut vessel. It should be stopped. It does not matter whether you live in a horrible condo or in a super lux villa; you wouldn’t let an energy leak in your house’s circuit system. It needs to be fixed to have lights up.
Why ignore the vitality leak in human souls?
In this sense, ignorance is not bliss. Rather, it has a very high price tag that goes beyond money: your vitality!
Vitality is one of the prominent outcomes of well-being. But what is well-being, then?
This is more than being happy, this is more than having what we wish to have, this is more than being problem-free. Another bunch of research suggests that there are six dimensions of psychological well-being:
Self-acceptance
Personal growth
Purpose in life
Environmental mastery
Autonomy
Positive relations with others
I hope it is clear that these might or might not be related to deprivation/survival needs. Also, these might or might not include fancy yoga pants or organic smoothies. Out of what you will experience, these outcomes can depend on your own sources. To be able to reach these, we need to focus on the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Psychological needs are like the sun, soil, and water to a plant, says Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, the motivation and well-being experts. We can live without them to a degree. Yet, we can only survive without them. I hope what you understand from living is not just surviving. This is why not the motivation quantity but the motivation quality of what we do matters. Therefore, what you have is not a pure determinant of how and why you have in life. This is why even if we have everything or if we lost everything during those early COVID-19 days, we met at this common point that our psychological needs are, in a sense, thwarted. And we need to relearn how to satisfy our psychological needs in another way, as those circumstances are novel (such as virtual meetings, homeschooling, job seeking, breadmaking, adopting new hobbies, struggling with social distancing, etc).
If you are doing yoga to have a certain image, this is a controlled type of motivation.
If you are selling a product to customers with a marketing strategy that makes them feel bad if they don’t/can’t buy this product, you are playing the frustration card, which will end up with unhappy buyers who can switch to your competitors any time when their reward or punishment override yours.
If you think that merely paying more to your employees will result in higher employee engagement, you have no idea why your turnover rates are that high.
If you are wondering why some children from undereducated families indeed have a bright academic life, try questioning maybe buying those expensive toys did not motivate those privileged kids to self-actualize their potential.
If you are questioning how some people can have resilience and hope under adverse conditions, consider observing what the protective factors are for their growth under those circumstances.
If you cannot believe your eyes, how some people do not have a fear of death while facing the end of their life, learn about their meaningful experiences in their life.
Let me tell you in a nutshell:
There is no hierarchy in psychological needs.
They are there.
In each level of other physiological, societal, and economic stages of deprivation or saturation, there still is a need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. You can decide which segment of deprivation needs you are at, and you better decide how you can satisfy your psychological needs at that level as well.
To what extent you are supporting those needs and to what extent others support your needs is the determinant of your well-being in every action you take. This is the essence of human motivation.
If you enjoyed this article, you might want to see my previous story about motivation misery; click here.
More readings:
Diener, E., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Beyond money. Toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1), 1–31.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2008). From ego-depletion to vitality: Theory and findings concerning the facilitation of energy available to the self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 702–717.
Ryff, C. D. (1989). “Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 57 (6): 1069–1081.
Comments