Needs
If someone is without food or shelter, we don't ask them if they're sure they require these things - we simply suggest they get those needs met. No one questions whether the need is real or not. Maslow theorized only once those physiological needs were met could we look toward the next level of our development, yet was careful to outline each level was, in essence, also a need - much as food and shelter. So it is with achieving one's full potential. According to Maslow, it's not just, "nice to have," but rather, a need. Like food. Or water. Or shelter. And that's what so many of the vapid quotes from mindless self-help books posted on Facebook either don't realize, or don't articulate - that these are needs. Its not Maslow's hierarchy of wants, or hierarchy of desires, or even hierarchy of unnecessary things to think about, but hieracrchy of needs; that which is required.
Another thing those dime-a-dozen self-help books (and subsequent flowery quotes on Facebooks) get wrong is failure to disengaging being at peace with ourselves from being at peace with not having those aforementioned needs met. Even when I was not aware its what I was doing I've been on a multi-year quest to get my needs met while simultaneously wanting to contribute to something greater than myself in a reciprical relationship. But to read those quotes all one would have to think they'd need to do in order to receive enlightenment is to be at peace with oneself. I am a peace with who I am, but have been unfulfilled in other ways which aren't as easily addressed. What I have learned is having a willing partner helps to develop those things. We should turn more things into experiments, then ceaslessly test that experiment, record the outcomes, adjust the variables, and test again.
I wish more people would be willing to do this.
