Last week, we discussed how to motivate yourself by knowing yourself, or more specifically, by knowing your level of morality. If you missed that, check it out.

This week, we’re going to talk about another area of life to look at when learning to motivate yourself. This area comes down to a simple question: are you taking care of yourself?

Again, we’ll look at a framework that will help us assess whether or not your needs are being met.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In 1943 or so, a fellow named Abraham Maslow wrote a paper titled, “A Theory of Human Motivation.” In this paper, he set forth a hierarchy of human needs we tend to experience, starting from basic physiological needs and ending in what he termed “self-actualization.” Starting with the lowest:

• Physiological: Focused on food, water, sleep, etc.
• Safety: Focused on personal, financial, and emotional security, general wellbeing, etc.
• Social belonging: Pertaining to friendships, family, and other relationships.
• Self-esteem: Respect from others or self, or a sense of self-worth.
• Self-actualization: Becoming the most that one can possibly be, whether artistically, athletically, etc.

The main idea is if a lower need isn’t being met, we’ll tend to focus on that rather than the higher ones. For instance, if you’re starving in the streets, you’ll probably tend to focus on getting food and shelter rather than on becoming a world-class theremin player.

Are Your Needs Being Met?

If you have set goals for yourself and made a plan to achieve those, but have trouble getting yourself to actually do those things, you may have some unmet needs.

For instance, suppose your resolution for the new year was to be able to lift 400 pounds over your head while singing the national anthem. This requires consistently working out, eating right, taking vocal lessons, and so forth. That all takes work, and it’s focused on maximizing your physical and artistic capabilities. Your resolution is more or less an attempt at self-actualization.

Suppose you’re completely alone in the world, though. You have few friends, and the ones you do have are pretty scarce in your life. You don’t feel like you fit in anywhere, and as a result you suffer from soul-crushing feelings of loneliness. It becomes difficult to get yourself to the gym or to put much heart into your singing lessons.

What do you do in that case?

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

In this scenario, it may be worthwhile to spend some time trying to make friends before you go after your resolution. Chat with people at the gym. Serenade some random passersby. Give your mom a call. Host soup nights where everyone comes and brings soup and you all just chat about life and the universe and stuff. Get yourself a social group. Once you feel like you belong socially, the motivation to go after higher objectives will generally become easier.

So, if at first you don’t succeed, take stock of whether you’re meeting key personal needs. Are you fed? Are you sleeping enough? Do you have friends? Do you remember how awesome you are? Is there some other thing that needs to be brought to light that hasn’t been?

Do you have soup? Soup has an amazing way of meeting many human needs.

Maybe just make yourself a giant pot of soup and see where that goes.

Thoughts? Condemnations? Congratulations? Let me know in the comments! Also, you can help meet the author’s needs by contributing to The Astral Wanderer on Patreon. All proceeds go toward making soup for lonely singing bodybuilders. Really.