In this episode Julia first wants to make sure we don't mix up our term of desires with needs and necessities, because it surely happens in life. Material stuff does not give lasting satisfaction, the thrill will fade quickly and we want more stuff soon. But experiences have different effects on us.
She will introduce a new way of thinking about our needs, that will help us think about our lives differently later on. Our social circle and communication cushioning is a park around the Tower of our Needs we will build in our imagination.
She will guide you through all the floors and what they include, how they expand your life and your possibilities. They are the reasons we live, and we get up each morning.
We are also thinking creatures who can get motivated when we know reasons. It boosts internal drive and cooperation when employees, students, even children know the reasons of decisions and actions!
We are parts of our communities and we need that to stay healthy. But we are the only species on earth that can cooperate in the millions without knowing each other and we do that through our cultural stories. With that we are given stereotypes that are cultural shortcuts and can be very dangerous. On top of that Julia will talk about the issues between generations that can be regarded as prejudice, ageism; judging just by the year someone was born in. It is dividing and hurting our more important issues and causes! Racism, political injustice, cultural biases, these are all the issues we need to step up against in unison.
We hope it makes you think deeper about these issues.
In this episode Julia first wants to make sure we don't mix up our term of desires with needs and necessities, because it surely happens in life. Material stuff does not give lasting satisfaction, the thrill will fade quickly and we want more stuff soon. But experiences have different effects on us.
She will introduce a new way of thinking about our needs, that will help us think about our lives differently later on. Our social circle and communication cushioning is a park around the Tower of our Needs we will build in our imagination.
She will guide you through all the floors and what they include, how they expand your life and your possibilities. They are the reasons we live, and we get up each morning.
We are also thinking creatures who can get motivated when we know reasons. It boosts internal drive and cooperation when employees, students, even children know the reasons of decisions and actions!
We are parts of our communities and we need that to stay healthy. But we are the only species on earth that can cooperate in the millions without knowing each other and we do that through our cultural stories. With that we are given stereotypes that are cultural shortcuts and can be very dangerous. On top of that Julia will talk about the issues between generations that can be regarded as prejudice, ageism; judging just by the year someone was born in. It is dividing and hurting our more important issues and causes! Racism, political injustice, cultural biases, these are all the issues we need to step up against in unison.
We hope it makes you think deeper about these issues.
Title: Build Your Own Tower of Needs and your Life
Chapter 1: Hello and Welcome back To Let Your Genius Emerge podcast Season 1 Episode 3. This is your host here, Julia Bright. The title of this episode is Build Your Own Tower of Needs and Your Life.
I posed a question at the end of the last episode, and that made me think further about wants and desires. From the late seventies on, self-help gurus and motivational speakers were all over us about manifesting our dreams and desires. We had to write them down, remember them every day to eventually manifest everything we wanted. And as human nature goes, they were mostly material stuff, like I want to live in a big mansion with a swimming pool, with an underground garage and fifteen cars in it, I’ll have a driver, a cook, and a maid. Now I will let you in on a secret. Those people you would have wanted to hire, also dreamed of winning the lottery and wanted to hire you as a servant. How about that for a vicious exploitation circle! These gurus did not care about us, about what we really needed, how to structure a healthy balanced purposeful life, they went for profit. And they sucked every gullible creature in.
Back to my questions from the last episode, now starting with the people who feel the need to look after others: Do you usually give up your needs just to serve someone else first? Are you the devoted wife or mother who gets up early and goes to bed late, neglects her looks and her health just to give the best to her family? We idolize this behavior but it isn’t healthy for anyone! instead we would need to be asking for balance and bend, or change the culture so husbands and the children would naturally look after themselves!
Or you may not have a family and you like to skip your needs for something you desire, but it is really not necessary. You could have already overspent knowing that you would not be able to pay your credit card balance on time, or might have gone out instead of studying for the next exam. You might have even excused yourself that you just had to see your friend one more time instead of getting your laundry done for the next workday or skipped your workout three days in a row. We are really great at excusing ourselves!
I live in the beautiful capital city of Canada, and there is a huge mall downtown with five floors of fancy lighting and decorations. But except for the usual food court and one fresh vegetable and meat market there, no store sells anything necessary for life. Fancy and expensive clothes, accessories, even services are overpriced. As a local, I can and I do get my necessities and services within my community where in addition to the goods being fairly priced we can get to know each other fairly well. I know it is all about tourism, but all that reminds me of is not to be a regular tourist anywhere in the world!
Have you seen the documentary on Netflix Minimalism? It was released in 2016, it’s 78 minutes long and features Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, the minimalists. The concept is worth looking into for sure. It is not about having nothing, it is about only having things that are necessary and not overindulging in material stuff. By freeing yourself from spending money and time in shops, you can explore your interests and see what you can become passionate about!
A while back I decided to spend my birthdays with my sons to do something active together instead of buying presents. I really don’t need more stuff, but I need to see them, spend time with them, talk, laugh. That is my gift. Material things can never make us happy for long, it wears off in a matter of days but the thrill of wonderful experiences can last for years, especially if we can spend this time with people we care about!
I don’t know if we get to appreciate each other, our family and community more now that we are two years into the pandemic. We need each other for Pete’s sake! I don’t care if you think you are an introvert, that just means you are ok being alone and you won’t feel lonely as your extrovert counterpart, they need people around all the time, and they become lonely as soon as nobody is around.
Chapter 2: So being social is our cushioning, it is how we feel human. With this prompt I can start to tell you about the way we have restructured Maslow’s theory of Needs in a moment. I was talking to my friends the other day and they were telling me how life is supposed to work: we are born, grow up, schooled, get a job, get married, have children, live happily ever after. And here I come and say that it doesn’t have to work like that. You create your own life from early on and in the 21st century it does not have to be dictated by people of the past if you don’t want it to. You can break out of the cultural and traditional expectations by educating your community too. You just need to be sure what you know is credible and you can expand on it, when you keep an open mind.
In our Humanly Genius system the needs rest on a social and communication cushioning. That is there all around us, it provides the environment for growth. In the metaphor I am going to use, it is the lawn, the park around your tower of needs. This lawn is thick and lucious. The park is full of flowers and trees, where you can freely meet your community and talk.
And there is where you build your own Tower of Needs.
See, instead of Maslow’s two dimensional pyramid, we are getting into a construction here. There is a disclaimer right away: I know that billions of people live on earth without being able to build a house that has piping and plumbing the way I am suggesting here, I am absolutely devastated about that. Right now however as I am talking to you this metaphor seems to be the most visual.
Underground there is the sewage and water system, so you are ready to start building your tower, to your life. The lower footing is dug deep down so it will provide a lifelong foundation. Let’s call it the basement, where all the necessary pipes for water come out, there is the furnace for heat, the sewer is connected to plumbing from here, air comes in, you can imagine that cars deliver your groceries here, and the staircase starts to run up from here too, so you can run up and down, for exercise. There is a corner here with some soft sheepskin, so if you feel tired, while you work here, as you are doing the construction, you can go to sleep here. Basic Human rights: Clean air to breathe, Clean water to drink, some basic food to eat, toilet facilities, basic clothing, being able to move, having space to sleep. Air, water, homeostasis, excretion, food, movement, sleep. This is the survival level.
The second level of your building is a bit higher up, it has the minimal space and energy in addition to your survival needs. It can be an all in one space, a bachelor apartment with a kitchenette. You might be on welfare, looking for a job or have a job that pays minimum wage, but you have a space you call your own. You have some security, prospects of employment, basic energy resources, basic health care, basic education for your children, and you can take care of your personal hygiene. Can you sense that this Safety level should be a part of our global Human rights too?
The third floor in this Tower of yours is different from Maslow’s levels. We put Society and psychological needs here instead of love and belonging because we already have the social and communication cushioning all around. So for the building metaphor, on the third level besides having your staircase running up, your air, plumbing, heat and hot water, your food delivery elevator, and your basic living space, you extend this level by having your home office and a special room where you can homeschool your children. You are connected to your lawyer, bank and other essential services, you can call up your local and government representative, to exercise your democratic rights. You can take university classes online too. The third level is expanding your horizon. I put homeschooling and home office here to be able to include work and education within the tower metaphor. You also start to find out more about your inner self to raise your self awareness. So the Third is the Society and Psychological Needs Level.
On the fourth level you have everything there is on the third floor plus you have an executive office because you have gained your status, you have achieved a level where you have become an authority and you are respected for what you are, although if you are still a healthy person, doubt will not have left you. But you definitely enjoy some freedom here. You become self confident and self assured. This is the Esteem level where you are expanding your psychological needs further.
Your tower can still go up higher to have the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth level, and even though the top levels are the widest ones, if the levels below are well developed, you need not fear it collapsing.
From the fifth level on you might not have all the consecutive floors, depending on the type of creativity you have. nevertheless you are fulfilling your potentials aesthetically, scientifically, or otherwise. They can become only one great wide floor of self actualizing. You still take care of your everyday survival needs with great ease, look after your property and loved ones and expand your horizons. You might hire someone to help you, but remember, only if you help them too! You might become a mentor or a helper at the same time and not just a person who takes advantage of a poorer one.
See how this building metaphor works? In summary you have your primary necessities as foundations, and you build wider and wider levels each including all that the previous floors had plus the level’s with the special new rooms.
So what are the differences and why were they needed between our structure compared to Maslow’s?
We call the first level the Survival level instead of physiological one, and as such it does not include sex. Sorry!
As the survival of the species it would be essential to pass on DNA and keep humanity alive, but from the individual’s point of view it is not necessary and someone who has just lost their home in the middle of a natural disaster, food, sleep and clean water, sometimes even just clean air is in their minds, not sex.
As I mentioned, we replaced the third level and put Society and psychological needs there. Democracy needs to work here at some level. Government needs to work for the people they represent. People need to have more reliable information and say in local and governmental issues between elections. We also need to get to know ourselves better from the inside to become self-assured, self-sufficient and self-confident.
The structure is definitely different. We made it three dimensional. The building metaphor is one way to think about it, but you can also see it as the layers of an onion, the most inner one is the survival, that needs to be there in everybody, wrapped around it another layer of Safety, and another layer of Society, and another layer of Esteem, and then self-fulfillment. Another, a third way of imagining this is the Russian Matryoshka stacking dolls. The one, the smallest and found deepest inside is the primary survival level, that is within the Safety level and that is within the third level and so on.
This kind of imagery exercise is great for learning too!
Chapter 3: Our tower is surrounded by the social and communication cushioning. We need our family, our community to be healthy and whole. Humankind however is the only species that can cooperate in the thousands and the millions. We don’t have to know each other personally, we just need a common story that will connect us. This is how the earth, a geological site, becomes divided and geography is born. You can see rivers and mountains from high up in the sky but you cannot see countries and their borders.
See, our culture is teaching us stories about us, about where and who we belong to, and also where and who we do not belong with. It teaches us shortcuts that are stereotypes. It tells us that if someone comes from another place and speaks a different language, believes in another god and looks different from us then there are certain cultural conclusions to be drawn. And you learn the patterns of your culture. Racism is cultural stereotyping. It has nothing to do with biology and nature, that is why I could never comprehend it.
Stereotypes are shortcuts in thinking. On one hand they preserve your energy because you don’t have to think. On the other hand you run the high risk of being wrong and look only skin deep. Politicians, cultural and religious leaders exploit these weaknesses of the masses, so please fight this!
You can break out of this manipulation cycle and become less judgmental. Start to think about what you are told, and ask why they are telling you that but most importantly look at people as individuals that also have stories just like you and they are manipulated just like you had been.
The first step of Non-violent communication is to listen without any judgment. It is almost impossible to start it out completely that way because that is the hardest thing in the world. We always judge ourselves, others, our cars, anything that comes around. The damn thing! It takes years of practice not to yell out in traffic: you Idiot!
But it is the first step. And I suggest you start with yourself. It is ok to observe yourself and acknowledge what you are doing or thinking of something but try not to judge. If you need to change something, just plan to change but do not label yourself in any way. I mean any way. Do not say: You stupid! And do not say either: Oh I am so wonderful!
You can say though: I pulled it off pretty well!
When you can point to specific accomplishments, you can be really proud. Example: It was really thoughtful of you to give that care package to that homeless mother! Instead of just saying: You are such a kind hearted person! Even if it is a positive label, it is just a label.
Chapter 4: Speaking about motivation:
In the previous episode I mentioned that in the first four levels of needs we are mainly driven by avoiding the lack of things. We don’t want to be hungry, thirsty or tired. We don’t want to be fearful and anxious all the time. We want to avoid uncomfortable situations. There are two different groups of motivations. Extrinsic motivation is when something or someone makes us do something. Intrinsic motivation is when we are driven by our own will and desire to accomplish something. There is a huge difference between the two but usually parents, teachers and especially employers have no patience to wait it out until we develop our intrinsic drive. They usually say democracy doesn’t apply to schools or work. So we only live in democracy when we sleep? Then they push us and we comply but reluctantly. It happens in the workplace too but it doesn’t have to.
Because It is nice to know what we are doing. It is even better to know how we are doing that. But first and foremost we need to know why we are doing what we are just about to do. That is a lot of doing there, but I hope you got the message.
We are thinking creatures, we want to know reasons, so please do not deny that from your children or from your employees either! When they know the why, the reason behind your decisions, your actions, they will not just accept them but they will also surprise you by giving you even more creative ways to enforce those decisions and actions. On the other hand, they might be able to think of reasons you should change your mind if you are prepared to listen to them. We all need second and third opinions. Dan Price at Gravity, a card payments company, is paying his 120 staff members $70,000 annual salary as much as he is paying himself. This decision of his from 2015 paid off handsomely for the company. His employees are creative thinkers, they are proud to be part of this innovation! We will talk about Dan Price when we get to the study by the Nobel prize-winning economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, looking at how much money an American needs to be happy. They arrived at an amount of $75,000, but Dan misremembered the number, so it became $70,000.
So the magic of why. Knowing the reason, understanding the connections, makes it easier to relate. Supervisors, I know it takes time, but if you explain, you will have more committed dedicated employees who will feel valued by you, and by extension, by the company.
Parents, never tell your children, because I said so! Sooner or later this will bite back and this will be the reason your child will rebel so then you ask why, remember the reason…
Chapter 5: And that leads me to my next point I want to make today.
I have been confronted by generational issues quite a few times lately. It may well be because I have been doing some research for this podcast, but I have to confess, I didn’t like it! What is the problem here? Rather who has a beef with generations or just a particular one? I think someone might have issues with their baby boomer parents and started to generalize and I personally don’t like it.
We have a globalized economy, market, global news, global social network, even the virus is global, the information is at our fingertips no matter how old are the fingers that type in the words. How does it make you feel when someone labels you or puts you in a box just because you were born in a certain year? So I am a baby boomer? My son is a millennial, my other one is gen Z? There are generations X, Y, Z, Alpha and unalpabetized unnumerized generations before and after?
Just so someone can tell you that this is the reason you have ADHD or you are stressed out? Or is this why the world is this way or that way? Can you feel how wrong that is? Judging and labeling just because of your year of birth? I don’t feel generational differences! I feel a divide and conquer attitude here.
I think that there are serious problems in society that have to be addressed and changed and it had already started generations ago, before those even got named and we need to continue that work together! There is racism, cultural biases, political and military injustice, human rights violations that we all need to step up against as one! So what if I was born earlier than you were? In all generations you find the ones that push for change so our society, our communities can become better, more honest, transparent, more inclusive, non-judgmental.
For that however, we need to constantly learn about the world, nature, human nature, ourselves, so we will become more confident and be clear about our morals and values before we start expressing our opinions left and right and get into arguments instead of healthy debates.
We have a responsibility here. You have a responsibility to yourself! To get better, to fulfill your potential. I have a responsibility to you, to everybody else, to the community now because I decided to give back and that’s what I’m doing now. I don’t know, later you might decide that you are going to do the same. You will start to give back but right now start giving something to yourself. And that will be the reward to me. That’s what I want, that’s why I started this. And I started this because I believe in human intelligence. I believe that everybody is born with some intelligence. And it is up to you what you do with it. I hope you use it well to your own advantage, to your community’s advantage, to the world's advantage. So build your life well, so you can live well, and you can look after your community.
Chapter 6: Would you like to share some of your thoughts about the issues you would like to target?
Join our Let Your Genius Emerge discussion group on Facebook! Give us some ideas! Maybe we can join you as well.
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We will release a new episode every Tuesday by 9 am Eastern Standard Time, that is 3 PM Central European Standard Time. So from here on you can do the math depending on where you live on the globe.
In our next episode we will travel back in time and get a historic perspective of our humanity. I find it helps us to observe from a distance, either from the distance of space or time. I like to get out of our everyday little issues to see a larger perspective.
If you are interested in any of the subjects, especially the assertive non-violent communication and ESL coaching, send me a message on HumanlyGenius.com or letyourgeniusemerge@gmail.com
Don’t forget, the next episode is next Tuesday! Think, explore, create, communicate! Goodbye for now.