Motives, Motivations and Needs

Becoming aware of our motives, what motivates us and our basic needs, whether known to us (conscious) or known to others and not seen by ourselves (unconscious) allows us to see how we create our lives. If we know what we do, we can then make conscious choices to create what we want. If we don’t know what we do or what makes us who we are, we remain powerless in shaping our lives.

To begin discovering what you find of importance ask yourself: What is important in my life? Then write your answers down.

Then leave these first responses, go and do something else. Let your mind work for you. Try not to actively think on your answers, then later; sit with your first answers and write any new thoughts that occur.

If you feel able to ask a close friend/friends or maybe your partner to think of what they know or think they know that motivates you. Be careful in case your internal processes censor the answers they want to give. Then add these to your list.

I’d say there are at six least values to Motivation: choice, challenge, control, collaboration, construction of meaning and consequences. You may find more pertinent to you. One motivator can be; what’s in it for me? Depending upon the situation this can be the values; control or consequences or maybe constructing meaning.

Think back to a memory or time when you felt motivated; try to remember what happened just before that feeling. Was that feeling a value? Can you attach a name to it?

I think the six Values above: choice, challenge, control, collaboration, constructing meaning and consequences are the main values that motivate most of us.

Then, think back for a few more memories until you begin to get more values. Add these to your list. 

Rank those values from most important to least important. Pick what seems most important on the list and then compare it to the others: Is this really more important than that? Trust your intuition to give you answers.

Once you have a list, ask for each; why is this important to me?

Your responses will help you build up your motivational map.

As examples do any of these fit into your motivational map?

Living in regret

Meaning wishing we hadn’t done some things. Regret like this reflects the conflict between the knowing better now and the wishing we knew then what we do now or construction of meaning versus consequences This is a crazy making situation for us: if we had known better then; we’d have done better – wouldn’t we?

Enjoyment of work or interest itself for its own sake;

Pride in performing well, generating pride in the skill of doing the best we can, this can be either control, constructing meaning or challenge values.

Desire to be involved; sharing, leadership, authority and responsibility;

Helping others can be about control, collaboration and constructing meaning, I’m hoping that you will offer alternatives as to your motivators, choice maybe?

Desire to improve a previous performance.

Being self-competitive to prove something to yourself would suggest being motivated by challenge, control or constructing meaning.

My suggestions for such motivations are just that, how you construe or construct your world will be different and suit only you.

Motivation is the expectancy or probability of success, the making plain your connections between success or reward and which then creates the value for you in gaining your goals.

Maslow wrote much of the work on motivation and here I’ve put in his ‘triangle of needs’

The first four levels of the triangle are:

1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc.

2) Safety/security: out of danger;

3) Belonginess and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and

4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.

Maslow suggests we are only ready to act upon our higher growth needs when our lower order needs are met. Maslow’s ideas include only one growth need; self-actualisation. Which though a great theory, my experience is different. When I stopped being a student I gave up my student flat and had to find somewhere new to live. I found a horrible but cheap one room flat. It was enough to get me started in a new town, so according to Maslow it would’ve been time to work on my safety needs; I found a job.  Then I found I could afford a better flat in a better area, I should then have moved into belongingness and love-according to Maslow. But it didn’t work like that; I found instead that I yo-yo’d between levels, losing, finding lovers, jobs, security, esteem, sometimes feeling motivated or self actualised and other times not. So I revisited levels, went up and down until I developed in maturity and grew less insecure in the world. Instead of Maslows pyramid I think instead of the triangle being on its side: as a wheel instead of a triangle. The wheel is moving onwards slowly so that when I revisited a level I was not in the same place e.g. my visits to physiological needs were shorter and shorter: I earned more, could afford better accommodation, better foods etc.  So though I revisited places I lingered less than before when my choices were more limited.

Self-actualised people are:

Problem-focused, appreciate all of life, are focussed on their personal growth

and

have peak experiences, meaning they get to be who they wish to be.

Later Maslow added more on the need for self-actualisation, adding two lower-level growth needs necessary before a general level of self-actualisation

Cognitive; to know understand and explore.

Aesthetic; attaining symmetry, order and beauty.

Self-actualisation:  finding self-fulfilment and realise one’s potential

and

Self-transcendence: connecting to something beyond our ego and to help others find self-fulfilment or realise their own potential.

Maslow’s suggests that as we become more self-actualised and self-transcendent, we develop wisdom and automatically come to understand or know what to do in situations.

Neil Benbow

(c)neilbenbow2026