Hello everyone, in the previous topic we were talking about The best way to groom yourself in 2022. Today we are going to talk about Motivation. In this topic, we will discuss  What motivation actually means, Maslow’s hierarch of needs, and some glimpses of Maslow’s theory of motivation.   

What is Motivation?

Introduction

Motivation is considered one of the most important reasons to move forward. In our daily life, we need a daily dose of motivation to keep our minds sane. Sometimes it’s easy to get motivated and we will find ourselves wrapped up in the wind of excitement, but sometimes it is nearly impossible to figure out how to get motivated and we are trapped in a spiral of procrastination.

Motivation is the word derived from the word ‘motive‘ which means needs, desires, wants, or drives within the individuals. It is the process of stimulating people to action to accomplish the goals. In the work goal context, the psychological factors stimulating people’s behavior can be – the desire for money or success.

This site is going to break down the science of motivation with the help of MASLOW HIERARCHY(ABRAHAM MASLOW was an American psychologist who was known for creating MASLOW HIERARCHY). According to Maslow, Motivation states comes in various degrees of strength. The higher the degree, the more likely the state has an influence on behavior.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory of psychology explaining human motivation based on a different level of needs. The theory states that humans are motivated to fulfill their needs in a hierarchical order. Maslow used the terms-

Physiological, Safety, Belonging and Love, Self Esteem and Self Actualization to describe the pattern through which human motivation generally move. These levels begin from the most basic needs to the most advanced needs.

Maslow believed that a person needs to completely satisfy one level to begin pursuing further levels. The ultimate goal, according to Maslow’s Theory is to reach the fifth level of hierarchy that is Self Actualization. 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Here, We are discussing MASLOW HIERARCHY OF NEEDS in detail-

The Physiological Needs

The Physiological Needs are usually taken as the starting point for motivation. These needs are universal human needs. Maslow considered these needs as internal motivation. These needs mainly consist of firstly, the development of the concept of homeostasis (Homeostasis refers to the body’s automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the bloodstream) and second, the finding of the appetites (preferential choices among foods).

In simple words, Physiological Needs are the most essential things for a person’s survival. A person’s motivation at this level derives from their instinct to survive.

Example of Physiological Need– Air, Water, Food, Sleep, Health, Clothes, Shelter.

Safety Needs

If the Physiological Needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the Safety Needs. In other words, we can say that once the Physiological Needs are satisfied, we move to the next level which is Safety Needs. This need is more likely, to predominate in children as they generally have a greater need to feel safe.

Let’s take an example to understand these needs, We want to live without fear of being murdered or raped. But some of us can’t afford to live in good or safe places so we have to live in a dangerous neighborhood to meet our physical needs, but we will immediately move out from there once we afford to live in a good place. Here the fear of physical violence motivates us to do things for our safety.

Example of Safety Need– security, stability, dependency, protection, freedom from fear, anxiety, and chaos.

The Love and Belongingness Need

If both the Physiological and the Safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the Love and Affection and Belongingness Needs. Humans are social men that crave interaction with others. We get hungry for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in the group or family, and we will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal.

We will want to attain such a place more than anything else in the world. We want to try to be accepted in society. As a human, we have the need to give and receive love, to feel like we belong to a group. When we get deprived of these needs we may experience loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

Belongingness and Love Need outlines the need for friendship, intimacy, family, and love. 

This need for love may overcome the Physiological and Security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure. In contrast, for some individuals, the need for Self Esteem is more important than the need for Love.

The Esteem Needs

All people in our society have a desire or high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. These needs may therefore be classified into two subsidiary sets.

First is the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, or for confidence to face the world and for independence and freedom.

Second, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige, status, fame, and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity, or appreciation.

Satisfaction of the Self-esteem Needs leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability, and adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting these needs produces feelings of inferiority, weakness, and of helplessness.

In simple words, Esteem Needs are related to a person’s need to gain recognition, status, and feel respected. Once someone fulfills their Love and Belonging needs, they seek to fulfill their Esteem Needs. In this stage, we want to achieve mental satisfaction.

Examples of Esteem Needs are- Self-respect, Status, Confidence, etc.

The Self Actualization Need

Even if all these above needs are satisfied, we may develop a new discontent and restlessness. Unless we are doing what we individually fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

What a man can be, he must be. We must be true to our own nature. These needs are called Self Actualization. This need is the highest stage of the hierarchy. We here try to excel in our field and improve our level of achievement.

Examples of Self Actualization are- Pursuing Goals, Utilizing and developing talents and abilities.

Some Glimpses of Maslow’s Theory of Motivation

The Individuals as an Integrated Whole

Our first proposition states that the individual is an integrated, organized whole. This theoretical statement is usually accepted piously enough by psychologists, who then often proceed calmly to ignore it in their actual experiments.

That it is an experimental reality as well as a theoretical one must be realized before sound experimentation and sound motivation theory are possible. In motivation theory, this proposition means many specific things. For example, it means the whole individual is motivated rather than just a part of him.

Classified The Motivational Life

Classification of the motivational life is referred to as the construction of the fundamental goals or needs, rather than on any listing of drives in the ordinary sense of instigation(to “pull” rather than to”push”).

It is the only way to remain constant through all the flux that a dynamic approach. Certainly, motivated behavior is not a good basis of classification, since we have seen that it may express many things.

The specific goal object is also not a good basis of classification for the same reason. A human being basically has a desire for three things food, clothes, and shelter. An individual who is going through the whole process of desire, courting behavior, and completely lovemaking may actually be seeking self-esteem rather than gratification.

This drive as it appears introspectively in consciousness, the motivated behavior, and even the explicitly apparent goal objects or effects sought for are none of them a sound foundation on which a base of a dynamic classification of the motivational life of the human being is found.

Relationships of Motivation

A man is a wanting animal and rarely reaches a state of complete satisfaction except for a short time. As one desire is satisfied, another pops up to take its place. When this is satisfied, still another comes into the foreground, etc.

It is a nature of a human being throughout his whole life that he is practically always desiring something. We are faced then with the necessity for studying the relationships of all the motivations to each other and we are simultaneously faced with the necessity of giving up the motivational units in solitude if we are to achieve the broad understanding that we are seeking.

The appearance of the drive and desire, the action that it stimulates, and the satisfaction that comes from attaining the goal object, all taken together, give us only an artificial, solitary, single instance taken out of the total complex of the motivational unit.

This appearance always depends upon the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of all other motivation that the total organism may have, i.e., on the fact that such and such other popular desires have attained states of relative satisfaction. 

Environment

So far I have spoken only of the nature of the organism itself. it is now necessary to say at least a word about the situation or environment in which the organism finds itself. We must certainly grant at once that human motivation rarely produces itself in behavior except in relation to the situation and to other people.

Any theory of motivation must of course take the amount of this fact, including not only in the environment but also in the organism itself, the role of cultural determination.

Our central object of study here is, after all, the organism or the character structure. It is easy to go to the extreme in situation theory of making the organism just one additional object in the field, equivalent with perhaps a barrier, or some objects that he tries to be obtained.

We must remember that the individual partly creates his barriers and his object of values, that they must be defined partially in terms set by the particular organism in the situation.  

Means and Ends

If we examine carefully the average desires that we have in daily life, we find that they have at least one important characteristic, i.e., that they are usually means to an end rather than ends in themselves. We want money so that we may have an automobile.

In turn, we want an automobile because the neighbors have one and we do not wish to feel inferior to them so that we retain our own self-respect and so that we can be loved and respected by others. Usually, when a conscious desire is analyzed we find that we can go behind it, so to speak, to other, more fundamental aims of the individual.

So, that is all for today guys see you in our next blog. If you like our article please don’t forget to share with others & follow our Instagram page for your daily dose of Motivation.

Thank You,

Regards

Grooming Urban

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