Hierarchy of Needs

In psychology class, many of us learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow discovered that there is a hierarchy to attain fulfillment in life. What he found was fulfillment actually has a natural sequence, there is an order to it.

For example: Physiological Needs come first, we need to satisfy these basic needs like having food, water, shelter, before we can seek fulfillment from Love and Belonging.

In our belief system, we have 4 relationships as the sources to attain fulfillment in life.

And these 4 relationships match up exactly with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Starting from the bottom level:

Physiological Needs and Safety Needs equate to the Self relationship. The self must be taken care of before we can seek fulfillment from family. For example, we must have food, water, shelter, security before we seek to have a family.

Next level of needs to attain fulfillment is our relationships with our family. This is the Love and Belonging needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Our relationships with our spouse, children, elderly parents, brothers and sisters, peers are a significant source of fulfillment.

The next level in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are referred to as Esteem needs. Why do people have the desire to make the world a better place or to contribute to the world, this is the desire to satisfy our esteem needs. This level correspond to the third relationship in our belief system, which is to express love to our environment. So when we engaging in a career that makes the environment or the world a better place, we are satisfying this level of needs.

The last level in Hierarchy of Needs is Self Actualization. This level has do with mastery of the self, transcendence, spirituality, and that sort of thing. But how does one achieve “self actualization?” How do we satisfy this level to attain fulfillment? The answer has to do with our relationship with God. Relationship with God is a source of fulfillment in life. Many people would agree that relationship with God brings them peace, joy, comfort, gratitude, and other positive emotions that lead to additional fulfillment.

God designed these relationships (sources of fulfillment/love) into the gameplay of life, they are embedded into our reality. Maslow’s theory is scientific, he discovered these sources of fulfillment through observation of the natural world, just like Newton discovered gravitation through observation.

Our belief system matches and agrees with Moscow’s Hierarchy of Needs. All the levels match up in the correct sequence. This is another piece of evidence to suggest our belief system is true as it is grounded in reality.