Are you operating in survival or growth mode?

A sense of well-being is aided by knowing and understanding yourself.  This includes understanding your psychological needs, how they might fluctuate over time and how they map to your values and behaviours.  It is a big subject but I believe understanding why you feel as you do is a good tool for managing yourself.  So her goes….

Basic needs: something that is important to get, have or have more of in order for you to feel safe, happy and comfortable in your existing physical and social environment.

Growth needs: something you would like to have to feel; a sense of being at peace with yourself, greater meaning to your life by making a positive contribution in your world.

We feel anxious or fearful if we are not able to satisfy our basic needs, but once they are satisfied, we stop thinking about them.

Growth needs are needs which do not go away; when satisfied they give us a deeper sense of meaning and purpose – allowing us to feel more fully who we are.

Maslow’s ‘Level of needs’ model

Maslow describes the relationship between our basic needs and growth needs in the following way:

‘Man’s higher nature rests on his lower nature, needing it as a foundation … The best way to develop this higher nature is to fulfil and gratify the lower nature first.’  

At any moment in time, your values are a reflection of your motivations, which are a reflection of your needs. Consequently, as you grow and develop, some of your values change in line with your changing needs. Others may remain at the core of who you are.

Two factors determine your needs and what you value:

• where you are in your psychological development i.e the Maslow’s level of need,
• your life situation at this moment in time. For example, you are in very different places if you have a comfortable home, happy marriage and just been promoted to where you would be if you had just lost your job.  In the later scenario you immediately shift to the survival level of consciousness and value financial stability.

Each of Maslow’s levels of need can be mapped to Richard Barrett’s ‘7 levels of human consciousness’ which expands on values and behaviours at each level.

Understanding your needs, values and behaviours goes a long way to appreciating how you might be feeling at a given time in your life.

More on the ‘7 levels of human consciousness’ and how to assess yourself, your manager and your company against it in the next post….

Richard Barrett’s ‘7 levels of human consciousness’ model

We are all leaders albeit of ourselves, a team or a company