Climbing the Pyramid…
Do you ever find yourself in situation where you are being paid well for doing something, you’ve got the job title and status and the money but you still feel utterly un-fulfilled. I’ve done it before in many aspects of my working life, where however much money I received or however much ‘status’ I earned I didn’t feel connected to the work I was doing or excited by my role. It made me think back to my university days and one of the human resources modules we’d done on motivating and encouraging employees that featured Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Maslow’s hierarchy considers what motivates people to operate – it starts at the very base with our basic, everyday need – those things we need to survive such as food and water, layered on top of those are security and safety. As you move up the pyramid you add more and more things to your life that help you achieve fulfilment and – ultimately- happiness.
When it comes to work and what you spend your time doing, it’s important that you travel up this pyramid because it’s only in the higher levels that you’re actually approaching enjoying what you’re doing. Of course, when it comes to psychological theories on human motivation there are many different theories and this is just one but it is one that’s stuck in my head all these years (many, many, many years since I was at uni!).
When I remembered this pyramid and Maslow’s theory is started to make sense to me why earning a lot of getting the big job titles didn’t really mean anything to me. To me money is security (so down the bottom the pyramid) – it’s important, I need it for bills and mortgages and other fun things but it’s not the be all and end all, what I need in my working life is strong relationships, recognition and praise. With those things in place I thrive and enjoy what I do. It’s not enough to just work every day you have to enjoy it and a big part of that is making sure your needs are met and to do that you have to understand what you needs are.
Have a think about why you work, what you need and how you can climb that pyramid to happiness.