Focus and you will win

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It’s been believed that staying focused in life is the key to success and achievement. One who has clear goals and knows the place or position he want to reach in his life, he can attain it with smart and hard work. Achievement of goals and success is all about understanding the dynamics of life and having understood them, one can play in a way suitable for attaining those set goals.

Categorizing needs?

It is said that life is a mix of different needs. Many social scientists have tried to categories the needs in many different ways. In this article, I will take up one such model by Maslow named as Hierarchy of Needs. I will try to evaluate it and will put forward my point of view. Having read it, you will be able to at least look at things a bit clearer. As I had maintained in my previous article that thinking right is essential for success, so this article of mine might help you think right and achieve success in your field of interest.

Categorizing needs: A good idea for setting goals

Here, I feel obliged to point a fact that life generally and needs specifically are dynamic. Every individual is different from his fellow individual so do the needs. In light of such varying pattern, it is stays very difficult to predict and generalize the needs of all. In short, this scribe believes that it is hard to divide the needs in watertight compartments and visualize them in form of a set hierarchy but with a bit of conditioning, if we try to see them that way, it can help us look at life clearer. In fact, it help us can think right and by doing that we will be able to achieve something good in life.

The Hierarchy of needs

In above paragraphs, we kept talking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, let’s get to it now. In simplest possible words, we can describe this hierarchy of needs as a theory in psychology by Abraham Maslow that he proposed in the year 1943. This theory was proposed in a paper that he named as “A Theory of Human Motivation”. He proposed it by studying the great minds of the century including Albert Einstein, J. Adams, and Eleanor Roosevelt because to him, “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.” Maslow categorized the human needs under five heads and those five heads are in fact five levels of achievements. In those five categories the first four are related to physiological needs or named as Deficiency needs or D-needs and the last one is associated with psychological needs or growth needs. This theory is represented in form a triangle with basic needs at base. According to Maslow, the needs coming at higher level in the hierarchy can only come in focus when the needs at lower level are met. Though, a good deal of criticism is available in order to prove this theory void but still we can take help from this while thinking about our own needs and deciding about our priories in life. I have written the brief description of each level in this hierarchy that will help you understand it and then you can critically evaluate your personal priorities.

Here you go with the description of those five levels in hierarchy of needs:

1. Physiological Needs

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These needs are related to the essentials for the life like food, air, water, sex, etc. The needs included in this category are animal needs of all living beings required for maintaining life. According to Maslow, one can not move to the next level in hierarchy of needs until and unless he is not able meet these very elements related to existence of a creature.

2. Safety Needs

The theory of Maslow suggests that one the physiological needs are met, the individual moves to the newer level of needs that dictates the need of safety. This includes protection from odds in life including internal factors in form of disease and external factors in for enemies and environment. The financial stability comes under this category of needs. Once the safety needs are met, individual progresses to the next level of needs.

3. Love/Belonging needs

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After safety needs, there come the turn of very essence of human. As it is said that man is a social animal so once the above animal needs are met, an individual gets to become social. In that case he tries to find the sense of belongingness. It is due to this need of humans that they tend to organize clubs, organization and other such activities. The online social networks and other such tools like blogs are a modern form of this age long need of human beings.

4. Esteem needs

It is natural for all human being that they want to earn respect. This is why they try to put efforts in work and other such activities around. This use to motivate them in order to achieve a feeling that can be named as esteem and this need is on number four in this hierarchy of needs. At a lighter note, when I am writing all this for you, it do have two consideration, one, it has to do with this need of earning esteem from my readers and the second, it is related to the fifth level and top level in hierarchy of needs that is need of self actualization.

5. The Self-actualization needs

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It is said that when all the other needs are met, the self actualization need gets activated. According to Janet A. Simons, Donald B. Irwin and Beverly A. Drinnien, “These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless.” This restlessness manifests itself in form of some activities that are inert in someone’s personality. Maslow describes self actualization as a need to do or to be someone that he is born to do and to be. It is a need to create, to grow and to satisfy one’s self. In that case, it is said that a musician creates music and it offers him the self actualization experience. You can say if I am writing this article though professionally I am a doctor, it is fulfilling my self actualization needs.

Take home message

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Dynamism of life is a reality. To achieve satisfaction and success, acting smart and hard is required. Those who are good managers tend to prioritize their needs and this offers them the ability to focus on their goals and this can serve as a rule of thumb, be it one’s personal or private life. Hierarchy of needs is concept that can help you prioritize things around. It can provide a frame of reference and you can grow accordingly towards the success in your life.

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“Of the things we think, say or do…

• Is it the Truth?
• Is it Fair to all concerned?
• Will it build Goodwill and Better Friendships?
• Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?”

Thought process behind Four Way Test

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In describing the thought process behind these lines, Herbert J Taylor said, “To win our way out of this situation, I reasoned we must be morally and ethically strong. I knew that in right there was might. I felt that if we could get out our employees to think right they would do right. We needed some sort of ethical yardstick that everybody in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said, and did in our relations to others. So one morning I leaned over on my desk, rested my head in my hands. In a few moments, I reached for a white paper card and wrote down that which had come to me – in twenty-four words.” He was right and he proved it with kind of success he achieved by making his colleague at work place think right and with thinking right they happened to do right. It was his recipe of success that helped him sail smoothly.

In the light of four way test and this statement of Rotarian Taylor, we can clearly see the relationship between thinking right and doing right. If we see it a little deeper, we can conclude that until and unless, we will not think right we will not be able to do much in our lives.

Having realized that we need to think right before doing right, we need to train ourselves in a way that we should start thinking right since it is the best thing that we can do in order to achieve success in lives both professional and personal. It is here this four way test can be used to tell us what is right and what is wrong. No matter what we are doing, if we will adopt this test as the guiding principle, we will start thinking right and it will take us to a path that is of victory and glory.

Take Home message

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Thinking right is the key to success because if you are not thinking right rest assured you can not act right and success never comes to those who do not act right.

Next article
In my next article, I will discuss about human needs in the light of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs its impacts and its role in our lives. It will provide answers to your so many questions that we use to face in our day to day life. So be right back!

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My friends know that I love words, for whatever I am; I am all because of them. Yes the words, words of my father, my mother, my uncles, my teachers, my friends and so many others that have kept me moving ahead and helped me with knowing the unknown. From the time I started understanding things, my elders taught me to learn to respect the knowledge and education. I followed their teaching and I started respecting knowledge and its pursuit brought me to books. I was fascinated; I got impressed and started loving them like anything. I felt very good when day after day I continued reading them. It was a pleasure to be in the company of great minds through their write ups of all the times and I use to feel a strange satisfaction.

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I can recall my School days when I started writing for the first time. The habit of writing was something rewarding and in due course of time, I realized that the strange feeling, pleasure and satisfaction that accompanies writing is something which comes with the knowledge that you are creating something. It is nearly a similar feeling that a mother carries when she feels her child in her womb. This realization was enough an incentive for me to continue writing and I achieved the land mark of getting published in a prestigious pure literary magazine when I was in my 11 standard. It was a short story in my mother tongue Sindhi. I was received by men of letters with open arms due to my approach, standard of writing that was considered rare for my age.

My love for reading and writing grew stronger with each passing day and today, I know the significance and sanctity of a word both written and spoken. You might be wondering to what has happened that I am writing all this. I would like to say one thing that yes, something has happened and I will let you know about it but for that you will have to stay patient. This is a series of articles in which you will learn something out of my mistakes and experiences that will help you in your life. For today the take home message is as follows:

“Words are the vehicles for communication. Imagine this world without words and you will find that it will be a world without education and this world without education will be no more than a jungle with ignorant beasts”

Next article:

In my next article, I will be sharing some experiences related to some very important principles of life. I will also be sharing some details of “Four way test” that can provide you the basic frame work for your life and business. So be right back soon.

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