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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how to use it to self actualize in this episode I'm going to explain a bit about Maslow's hierarchy of needs but more importantly I'm going to tie it in with something that I see as being a really pervasive ubiquitous problem in society and not only in society but really probably in your life so the problem is is that society is stunted I don't know if you've noticed this but our society is stunted people are stuck low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you can think of this hierarchy like a pyramid or a staircase that people ascend as they mature in life and as they develop themselves psychologically and that really your job in life is to ascend to the top of this pyramid as quickly as possible but before I start talking about all that let's just introduce the pyramid so here you go on the screen you should see the pyramid so in this pyramid let me just go through and talk about the different rungs here there's going to be five of them and actually there's also a sixth one which I'll I'll briefly mention for is yet so the first rung is physiological physiological means that you have physiological needs you need air you need food you need water you need sex you need excretion these are basic biological functions that are necessary for you to even stay alive for more than a few days if you don't get these things for more than a few days or a few weeks then you will die so that's the very basic stuff pretty obvious once you've got those satisfied then what happens is that the human or now has a new set of needs that open up to it the second tier or the second rung and these are safety needs so these include physical safety like a shelter these also include stuff like employment having resources in order to sustain yourself and being able to secure and protect your own property also pretty obvious stuff we would think that this is necessary for a happiness in life so most people get that stuff handled and then they move up to the third rung or the third tier and that is love and belongingness this includes having good friendships having good family and having sexual intimacy so you might recognize that a lot of people are busy attaining and chasing after these things because these are very real psychological needs and so once you fulfill those then you move on to the next rung which is the esteem needs and this includes having a healthy self-esteem having high confidence having achievement having respect from your peers and also giving respect to your peers so there's that rung and then only after those are satisfied do you really get into some really cool territory and this is the self-actualization needs and they are needs and this includes stuff lofty stuff like morality creativity discovery acceptance of facts truth awareness and contribution and you might think that that's where it ends but actually towards the end of his life Maslow added one final last step to this pyramid the very pinnacle you might say and that is called self transcendence and what that is about is that's about true spirituality that's about enlightenment that's about transcending the self which I won't get into here because that's a really big hornet's nest so basically that gives you overview so you see the picture you see how it works pretty obvious stuff now what's the problem with this well the problem with this is that most people like I said are stuck quite low on this pyramid most people have their physiological needs met but then even at rung number two which is their safety needs which includes shelter and employment and resources and property a lot of people even here they have gaps and what you could actually do is you can actually sit down and kind of just do a self-assessment ask yourself okay which of these things do I have really locked down in my life and which are these things on the pyramid do I kind of have problems with and I'm not really secure that I you know have attained that thing so you're probably cool with air and food and water maybe sex is something you're struggling with maybe you don't have sex in your life at the level that you want umm then you go to the next level you ask yourself okay how about physical safety do I have a shelter that I like okay well maybe you do maybe you don't employment how's my employment doing ah maybe your little spotty on that one how about your resources how about your property how about your bank account how's dad doing yeah maybe a little spotty on that one to see so already pretty low we're still very low on the hierarchy but already you can start to see that you probably have some gaps in your life but then as we move up and up and up you probably see that you know even more and more problems come about maybe you have problems with making friends maybe have problems with your family if you have problems with sexual intimacy or with confidence or with achievement or respect or anything else and so basically if you have too many gaps if your pyramid looks like a I like a triangular piece of Swiss cheese with holes everywhere then we can make a pretty good guess that you're not self actualizing or you're not spending the majority of your time thinking about self-actualization which means that really your morals are a little shaky you're not really doing anything creative with your life your life is not about creative contribution you're probably not going out there and disc offering new cures or new scientific advancements because those things are not even on your radar screen you probably have difficulty accepting facts and being truthful and being honest with yourself because you need to really develop yourself to the highest levels of the human psyche in order for that to to remedy itself because there's a lot of self-deception going on within your worldview so you probably have that gap and your awareness is probably a very spotty and very poor you have very low consciousness in the way that you live your life and quite frankly you're not contributing to society or to the world in any really meaningful or positive way and in fact maybe what you're doing is you're like a leech on society sound pretty accurate uh for most people that's exactly how their life is right why is that because they haven't taken the time to handle the basic [ __ ] they need to handle their life so what's the lesson from all this the lesson is get your [ __ ] handled get your basic needs handled that's your whole game in life right this right here this pyramid this is like your game plan for life if you're born you should be thinking okay how do I get the first rung handled as quickly as possible then the second one then the third one then the fourth one until I can get to self-actualization than self transcendence right this is your goal in life or it should be most people though you know they don't even understand this model they don't even make these distinctions so they're basically stuck very very low and this creates for a low consciousness low quality society and all the crap that happens a society all the negative stuff basically is a result of this people being stuck very low on their foundation being effective and successful is the foundation of everything else in your life what I find is that most people really struggle with the employment piece of this pyramid finding employment and I don't just mean having a job that's obvious enough you're pretty much obligated to in this world but I mean finding your dream career I mean finding your life purpose a lot of people really get stuck there I'm going to go to that problem and a little bit more depth here but before I do I just want to mention that it's interesting that even though there is this hierarchy and it seems it's like you're climbing it in is kind of like linear sequence you're climbing these rungs it's not actually strictly true that you have to go through all the lower stages to get to the very top in fact there's examples of like Yogi's in India who will go and just meditate in a cave they're called ascetics and they'll do that you know without without sex and without much food and without much of the luxuries or shelter or other kind of stuff that you would think that they would need and then they transcend itself so basically what they do is they kind of short-circuit this whole process and that's certainly doable and that's a very valid way to go the problem is that it's a very hardcore way to go and that most people including you probably don't find the prospect of going living in a cave and meditating for hours and hours for years very appealing so that being the case we need a more gradual and easy and more comfortable path for you so what does that involve well that involves putting together the foundation create the foundation for your life right once you've got that then you can tap into those beautiful things at the very top because that's what life is really about is getting to the very top that's when life takes on its sweetest flavors that's when you can appreciate the love and the beauty that's around you until you get to self-actualization here I can appreciate that stuff you're going to be petty you're going to be worried about stupid things and basically you're going to squander your potential that's as as blunt as we want to put it here so the thing is that we as a society actually need you to be successful don't just think of success as a way to build a cushy life for yourself like Oh all success you know maybe you are personal really value success and you want to put together a cushy luxurious kind of life and you kind of are shooting for that or maybe your person kind of thinks of success and making money is like oh well you know what's that really going to do for me well I want to change perspective of what success actually means so here's how we're going to do that let's take a look at one of the biggest problems that we have in society today here it is it's a very simple problem and it's also quite easily remedied but the problem is that people don't understand what's going on and then they don't have enough um determination to want to go remedy it here it is people haven't found their gifts and talents when you don't find your gifts and talents then you can't live a passionate life and so in general people don't find their gifts and talents and then they don't know how to live their passion their top passion they're not living it by which I mean their career is not their top passion they're just working a dead-end 95 job then what happens is that because of that they don't master anything in life they don't become a master in any domain in life they don't become very good at anything they're just mediocre worker bees that's what most people are because of that they don't ever develop a dream career and they never get a life purpose so their lives have no purpose or really deep meaning or significance because of this this type of person cannot get motivated to do anything really significant or worthwhile in life what does this person do this person lives for comfort and luxury that's it and also to avoid pain and discomfort that's a miserable very miserable way to live life and so they're very frustrated and unfulfilled on top of that this person because they haven't mastered any domain in life and they're not called cultivating their gifts and talents and their passion what's happening is that this person cannot create massive value for the world and for society they could if they found their passions and cultivated them but they don't so they're not able to generate massive value how can you generate massive value when you're not a master of any domain in life you can't so then these people can't truly become successful and they struggle even to pay the bills because they don't master anything in life and they're not really generating any massive value and they're not contributing in any way you're not able to contribute effectively to the world when you're not passionate about by your work and also when you haven't mastered anything and that means you miss out on some really beautiful stuff also it means that the goal of raising one's awareness is that of the question for you in a sense you could say that the entire objective of human life is to raise ones awareness higher and higher and higher until you get to the ultimate stages of enlightened awareness that is what you should be doing that's what every single human being should be doing and solely concerned with on this planet now how many human beings are actually concerned with this less than 1% it's it's a pitiful number why is that well because they're so low on the on the hierarchy that this stuff to them seems uh you know it seems airy-fairy it seems so lofty it seems so abstract and so such a luxury that they never get to this point and because of this they never reach the highest levels of contribution and fulfillment that are possible in life and that's a very sad thing and that's why I work on actualized Oregon I shoot all these videos and I do all the work that I do is because I am really passionate about correcting this problem so you see here in a sense the biggest piece of the myth of the puzzle that's missing is life purpose people do not have a life purpose they don't have their dream career they're not living and working their passion and so because of this this creates a ripple effect that basically creates for a mediocre life here's a little anecdote that I like an image if you will imagine a man running through the jungle and he's being chased by a bloodthirsty tiger now this man is he's running away he's you know he's panting he's sweating he's running for his life he's running away from this tiger and then as he's doing that he he sees a tree stump in the jungle he sits down on the tree stump he pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil and he starts composing some poetry very jarring scene it's ludicrous right it's ridiculous it's really that would never happen why is it ludicrous it's ludicrous because intuitively each one of us understands Maslow's hierarchy we understand what comes first saving your ass comes first everything else is a luxury compared to saving your ass and then you know if your ass is safe and you're not about to be mauled by Allah by a tiger then you're gonna worry about stuff like finding a good job and um procuring a house or shelter or something like that you know once you got that then you're gonna worry about maybe socializing with your friends and maybe getting a better relationship then once you got that handle you'll start worrying about stuff like you know how do I become more confident and have higher self-esteem and have a certain reputation my community and then once you got that handled then finally you'll come to the point where it's like okay what do I want to really get done in the world what I want to create what do I want to help discover how do i how do I want to advance Society how do I want to contribute I don't want to give back to people how do I want to help my community do I raise my awareness maybe you're going to start getting interested in philosophy or science or mathematics or poetry right that stuff is like the icing on the cake you need the cake first as the foundation so what I propose to you is that you take success very seriously in your life and you don't just treat it the way most people treat success here's how I think about success for me low personal success means that I'm going to be so busy being selfish and petty that I'm going to squander my potential in life so success for me is like air that I breathe right without air I can't live and without success I really can't live I mean you can live but the kind of life you're going to be living I believe this is a Seneca quote he says something like you are alive but the kind of life that you're living it's as though you're already dead and that's basically what's going on with your life isn't it is that what what's going on um so don't think of success as building a cushy life for yourself I see a lot of people making this mistake like oh I'm going to become successful and buy myself a nice uh you know high-rise apartment with a view and I'm gonna go travel and I'm gonna go take my you know I'm gonna go take my spouse on some cool vacations I'm gonna go eat lobsters and sushi and I'm gonna go like go buy myself a yacht this kind of stuff no that's a that's a misuse of success to me what success is about is growth and expansion I have a very different picture of success then um you might think growth and expansion you know this is challenging stuff it's not always cushy why because the highest level of fulfillment in life is not going to come from a cushy life but from getting to those South self-actualization flavors and to that self-transcendence flavor and you could only really do that once you're successful I mean you can try to short-circuit it but you're going to struggle you're really going to struggle and until you've you've gotten yourself some success in life then you're really just going to be crippled and you're not going to be able to self actualize and a lot of these videos that I shoot all these cool concepts and distinctions that I share with you these are just going to go over your head you might even think they're cool but you're just not going to be able to mobilize yourself to act on them to actually realize them because you're going to be so concerned with petty stuff like how do I get my friends to like me or how do I get some sex or how do I get you know my landlord not to kick me out of my house kind of thing ah so this notion of success it's not just a personal selfish thing but actually it's something that we need for Society in the world at large we need it because most successful people once they've achieved their success they naturally want to advance society and contribute back to society and to be good because what else honestly are you going to do at that point I mean you've got your shelter you've got your sex you've got your food you've got your friends you've got all that stuff handled and that stuff is okay but you know it's not really fulfilling the really fulfilling stuff is at the very very top so that's what's going to be on top of your mind is that stuff you will naturally want to do that stuff and the most important thing you're going to naturally want to do is you're going to actually want to expand your consciousness your awareness level and this here is the mother of all problems in the world is lack of awareness so if we can get more people to be more successful and raise their awareness then that's going to be like a route fix for many many many problems that we have in society it'll fix stuff like wars and genocides and rape and murder and all the other problems that we have the socio-political economic problems that we have a lot of them stem from lack of self-awareness so in a sense this this idea of success is not a luxury but this is a real necessity especially now in the 21st century where we're at this turning point in human history and the history of the world where we have the power to really make the world a very great place or we have the power to completely obliterate it and ruin it for future generations so now more than ever it's important that you wake the [ __ ] up and you start plugging every hole systematically in your swiss-cheese hierarchy triangle fill every hole you can until you get yourself to the very top or if you want try to short-circuit and get to the very top I don't really care how you do it but for most of you it's probably going to involve a slow and steady systematic plugging of every hole and that's a really good strategy for self-actualization and it really is that simple right this is a very simple model and I want to give you a couple of exercise questions that you can use to figure out exactly what your next step should be right so we talked about the theory how do you actually now take this and turn it into a practice well I'll give you one really big clue if you don't have your life purpose together get that together that is one of the biggest missing pieces in most people lives in most people's lives I find but you know everyone's a little different so maybe you even have your life purpose together but then you have some other element like your relationship or your lack of sex or lack of friendships that are holding you back so here's the question I want you to ask yourself get a piece of paper and write this down question number one is where am I stuck on the hierarchy where am i stuck on the hierarchy so you're going to write down that question then you're going to sit down at the end of this video and if you want generate a small list of stuff and then circle the one thing that has you stuck the most what is it is it lack of sex is it lack of food - lack of shelter is it lack of employment is a lack of life purpose is it lack of friends is it lack of an intimate loving relationship what do you got going on so that one and then the second question is what must I do to get myself unstuck once and for all and so you're going to select with your first question you know the biggest thing that keeps you stuck and then you're going to sit down and brainstorm how do I structurally change my life around so that this gap is permanently plugged in the hierarchy so that I never have to worry about it ever again so you know if you've got a problem with money ok that's your problem some money how can i generate so much money that I won't ever care about money ever again or how can I take away my crippling need to have lots of money right you don't necessarily need to make lots of money to plug that hole there are other ways so think about that and then commit to working on that that should be the thing you're working on the most right now in your life that should be your number one goal for the next six to 12 months is plugging that hole so whatever else you're doing that's the wrong thing this is the thing you should be doing all right so that's the exercise and now I want to briefly mention the self transcendence part of the the pyramid the very very top self transcendence this is really what life is about self transcendence it seems counterintuitive that you live your life and you know you spend a lot of time worrying about yourself selfishly putting together this like cushy lie of having money and having a spouse and having security for your family and having a shelter and and having friends and and having respect in the community all this stuff like you fiendishly selfishly put all this stuff together and then someone comes along and tells you hey buddy there's something bigger out there for you is called self-transcendence but the problem is that once you've spent 30 to 40 years of your life building this some this massive ego worrying about protecting yourself then at that point a lot of times what happens is you kind of forget about the whole thing about self-transcendence and you're like self-transcendence i don't really need that sounds kind of fruity sounds kind of new-age sounds kind of low and spiritual so let me just forget about that and let me just focus on building the cushiest life i could possibly build for myself and when you do that you have completely lost your way the whole point of this journey was to get you to self transcendence so you know some of you might already be very successful and if you are then what I encourage you to do is to not get stuck at that place of material success and not get stuck in your own dogmas and ideas about life and your ego and all that stuff but to have the courage to throw all that aside and to go explore this new territory called self transcendence which it took Maslow his whole lifetime to finally add to the top of the pyramid right what I suggest you do is that you spend your early 20s and your early 30s in life putting together this foundation then in your mid-30s and into your 40s 50s and 60s what you do is basically you try to dedicate as much of your time as possible to self transcendence that's the game plan that I personally have set up for myself that I'm going to be following because this is the game plan that will create the most fulfillment in your life there is no question at all that this is the game plan that will create the most fulfillment in your life and there is no even comparison to other potential strategies there is no better strategy if what you want is the most happiness you could possibly have this is the best game plan that not just I have found through my research but that sages and philosophers and wise people have found for hundreds and thousands of years all right this this path is is well known um by those who actually care about creating a really fulfilling life now those people that are just [ __ ] around and are deceiving themselves well they think they can do that through a cushy kind of life and that's just not going to happen so that's it one thing that I want to mention is that I did just recently release my life purpose course which is specifically designed to address probably the number one gap that you have in your life which is a lack of purpose a lack of understanding your own gifts and passions and how to take those and actually translate them into creating your dream career that's something that I've struggled with for the last five years in my life even even further back even in college I was struggling with all this stuff right because I knew that I needed to get this piece of the puzzle into place otherwise I couldn't get to the higher stages I just kind of had that intuition in me I hope you can see that this is very important for your life I hope you can see and you have that same kind of intuition that you know you're trying to get to self transcendence and if you want to get there creating a life purpose creating your dream career understanding who you are at a deep level discovering your top values and passions and some strategies and ideas for how to actually use those to create your dream career that that's going to be a really really big step in that direction all right so if you're interested go I encourage you and check out my life purpose course I'll have a link down below that's it I'm done for this one I'm signing off go ahead post me your comments down below click the like button please share this video with a friend and finally come check out actualize that org right here I have a free newsletter there that'll keep you up to date with all the videos I release on a weekly basis but also there's the life purpose courses there I have my book list there some other cool resources there so check that out and I'm adding more and more stuff there every single month as actualized that org grows but the reason really you want to stay onboard is because man this this journey of self-actualization and ultimately self transcendence this is uh this is a long road it's like a marathon it's more intense than a marathon and you need to know how to keep yourself motivated how to keep yourself inspired on this journey you need to know all the little distinctions and all the concepts and models that are out there that have been discovered by scientists and psychologists and you know researchers and and many many people who devoted their entire lives to studying this stuff um you want to get some of that wisdom you want to get some of those techniques and ideas they're going to be very very helpful for you on this journey because this journey is so long it's very easy to get sidetracked even if you think you're on track right now a month from now a year from now ten years from now you might not be so the whole purpose of actualize that org is to help you stay on that on that narrow road and help you to ultimately get to self-actualization and self transcendence because I know that when you get there you're going to finally feel like you've you've gotten to the pinnacle of life like you've actually lived life and then you died having savored everything there is to savor most people they died some were very low on the on the hierarchy and they never get to the very top and to me that's a very regrettable and sad thing and I don't want to see that happening to you so sign up stay tuned follow along every week and I'll see you soon you