Anyone who knows me will know of my moderate obsession with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
It is my belief that at many times in my life and particularly over the last 10 years I’ve been able to get close to the top of the pyramid.
There is no doubt that many other times in my life I’ve been close to the bottom and I guess that’s how it works.
I don’t think you ever reach the top and therefore the quest is to get as close to the top as you can and create a life which can allow you to live close to the top for as long as possible.
You need the lows though to appreciate the highs and that is just the way of it.
The thing about climbing the pyramid though is that when you find yourself at the bottom in the ‘safety area’ it’s difficult to think about the fluffy stuff when your hair is on fire or someone has a gun to your head!
That’s what it feels like at the bottom of the pyramid.
As far as I can see it there are two ways for us in the west to generally rise up from the bottom of the pyramid because generally our safety features are affected by income and health and often our health is affected by our attitude to income.
The first way to avoid dropping into the safety area in terms of wealth is to win.
I’m not entirely sure what that means but when you have enough money that you don’t have to worry about money ever again and you don’t have to work and you can sit at home watching day-time TV, perhaps that means you’ve won (doesn’t feel like a win to me).
The second is to have enough.
The faster you get to enough, the quicker you rise up the pyramid.
One persons enough is usually different to someone else’s but the people I know get to enough quickly and I think they’re the ones most likely to ‘win’.
Blog Post Number - 2571
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