Revisiting Maslow: What If Human Needs Are Pieces of a Puzzle?

Revisiting Maslow

We Don't All Start With the Same Pieces

I first learned about Maslow a very long time ago.

I was still young, sitting in a Communications class. If I am not mistaken, the topic also came up during our Administration class. Is it not interesting that we were being trained to manage game reserves, yet they thought Maslow and his hierarchy of needs were important for us to understand human behaviour, so Maslow found his way into our discussions?

It made sense. But it didn't quite make sense. So, I shelved it but never forgot about it.

Perhaps I was simply too young to fully understand what I was looking at. But having lived a little more life, I now find myself coming back to Maslow with a slightly different question: The needs make sense to me, but the order doesn't always.

And perhaps that is because we don't all start from the same place.

Maslow Was Onto Something

If you don't know Maslow, his hierarchy of needs is essentially an attempt to describe the different things human beings need as they develop and live their lives.

At the bottom are our physiological needs—food, water, sleep and shelter. Above that is safety and security. Then come love, relationships and belonging, followed by esteem, which includes feeling capable, valued and respected. At the top of the familiar model is self-actualisation—developing our potential and becoming what we are capable of becoming. Maslow later also wrote about self-transcendence, extending the model beyond the self.

The basic idea is difficult to dismiss.

When our basic needs are seriously threatened, they become very difficult to ignore:

• If you are hungry, finding food matters.

• If you are in danger, safety matters.

• If you have nowhere to sleep, accommodation matters.

• If you are living in constant fear, personal fulfilment probably isn't your immediate priority.

The COVID-19 lockdown gave us an extraordinary real-world example of this.

There were, of course, different phases and levels of lockdown, with restrictions changing over time. But from my perspective, and from the perspective of my business, the effect lasted for the entire three years.

Our business was not considered an essential service. For those three years, we were essentially locked out of—or severely restricted in our access to—the economy.

It was a sobering experience.

You think what you are doing is important, but society doesn't see it that way. Suddenly, the things you provide are no longer considered essential, and you are effectively locked out of your normal market.

And the effects didn't simply disappear when the restrictions were lifted. The economic consequences lingered for a long time afterwards, and to a degree, they still do.

I don't think COVID single-handedly proves Maslow's hierarchy. But having lived through it, I find it difficult to ignore how neatly the experience aligned with one of his central insights.

When circumstances become constrained, fundamental needs become much harder to ignore.

Bread first. Motivation, entertainment, and everything else later.

That matters.

But it doesn't mean every human being moves through life from one level to the next in the exact same sequence.

And this is where I think we need to revisit the model.

Is There a Problem With Giving Everyone the Same Blueprint?

I think so.

Part of my thinking comes from something I have encountered repeatedly in the personal development community—and I include myself in that.

It is very easy to give somebody advice based on what worked for us. We take our experience, turn it into a process, and say: step one, step two, step three. Simple.

Except sometimes it isn't.

I remember consulting with a woman some time ago and giving her what I thought was a fairly straightforward blueprint. At one point, I said something along the lines of, "Look, it's easy. Just take step one, then step two, then step three."

She looked at me and said, "Steve, that might be easy for you, but it's not easy for me."

She was right. And that sentence has stayed with me because it exposed something I had failed to see: I was looking at the steps; she was looking at everything that had to happen before she could even take the first step.

That is where Maslow becomes interesting again.

We Don't All Start With the Same Pieces

Perhaps the needs aren't really steps on a ladder. Perhaps they are pieces of a puzzle.

The broad needs may be common to human beings, but we don't all begin with the same pieces already in place:

• Some grow up with safety; others grow up with instability.

• Some inherit a loving and supportive family or money.

• Some inherit education, language, confidence, connections, and cultural knowledge.

• Some grow up knowing how institutions work and have people who will catch them if they fall. Others don't.

These things matter because they affect what we are capable of doing with our agency. This connects strongly with something I have been thinking about more recently: Agency and capacity are not the same thing.

I may have the agency to make a decision, but my available capacity to act on that decision depends partly on the resources, skills, relationships, time, and circumstances I have available. Two people can have the exact same ambition and completely different capacities to pursue it. That doesn't necessarily mean one is more motivated; they may simply have been handed different pieces.

What do you have? What do you still need? What do you need to go out and find? Those questions are very different from, "Here is what I did. Just do the same thing."

We Inherit More Than Money

This is why conversations about advantage can become too narrow when we make them entirely about financial wealth. Money matters, but it isn't the only thing we inherit.

We can inherit safety, confidence, education, connections, a stable family, language, and knowledge about how the world works. We can inherit a community that makes certain opportunities accessible, or the freedom to take risks because there is somewhere safe to fall.

Sometimes previous generations have already built pieces that we simply experience as normal life. That doesn't mean the person receiving those pieces hasn't worked hard—they may have worked incredibly hard—but their hard work is being applied from a different starting platform.

If we ignore the starting platform, we can start believing that the outcome tells us everything about the person.

It doesn't.

The Market Has a Hierarchy Too

This becomes particularly interesting when we move from individual development into business.

Suppose you have developed a brilliant product. It works, people love it, you know how to deliver it, and you believe it provides enormous value. So you build a business around it—and nobody buys it.

That doesn't necessarily mean the product is bad. Perhaps your market simply doesn't have the resources to buy it. If people in your community are spending most of their available income on food, accommodation, transport, electricity, and security, you may struggle to sell them an expensive service aimed at self-actualisation.

They may want it, but they need bread first.

That is not a failure of motivation. It is a mismatch between the product, the market, and the circumstances of the people you are trying to serve.

An entrepreneur needs to understand this environment.

Blueprint or Template?

This is why I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of a universal blueprint:

• A blueprint tells you what to build, assumes the materials are available, and says, "This is how you do it."

• A template gives you a framework, asks what materials you actually have, and says, "This is one way it can look. Now let's work out what you have, what you need, and what is possible from where you are."

That is a much more useful way of giving advice, and perhaps a much more respectful way of receiving it too.

The Loop Comes Back to Maslow

So, was Maslow wrong?

I don't think so.

I think we have sometimes taken a useful model and turned it into something more rigid than it needs to be.

Research has since challenged the idea of a rigid universal sequence. Approaches like Self-Determination Theory and Max-Neef's Human-Scale Development explore needs as interconnected rather than simply hierarchical.

We don't have to choose between them.

• The hierarchy helps us understand urgency.

• The puzzle helps us understand difference.

Together, they give us a more useful way of thinking about human development.

We don't all start with the same pieces. We don't all need the same piece next. And we don't all have the same ability to build the next piece.

That changes the way I think about success.

Because perhaps the question isn't simply: How far have you climbed?

Perhaps we should also ask:

• What did you start with?

• What did you have to build yourself?

• Who helped you?

• What are you building now?

• And perhaps the most important question of all: What pieces will you leave behind for somebody else?

So whether we are building a game reserve, a life, a family, a business, a community, or something else, we need a strategy that serves us.

And as The Everyday Mavericks, maybe this is worth making part of our conversation.

Before we tell somebody how to climb the ladder, perhaps we should first ask what they are standing on.

Before we judge how far somebody has climbed, let's look at the pieces they were given.

And before we turn our own experience into somebody else's blueprint, let's remember:

That might be easy for you. But it might not be easy for me.

We don't all start with the same pieces.

Maybe the point isn't to build the same picture.

Maybe the point is to understand the pieces we have, build the ones we are missing, help others where we can—and, wherever possible, leave a few better pieces for those who come after us.

Moving Forward

Live curiously. Lead courageously. Life is worth living.

The Everyday Mavericks keep moving forward with intention.

Shalom.

A Note on Our Process

AI tools are part of my editorial process. I use them to help transcribe, research, fact-check, proofread, refine and sometimes structure my ideas.

The experiences, observations, questions and conclusions shared here come from me. AI may help me work with the words, but it does not replace the thinking, experience or intention behind them. I remain the author and final editorial decision-maker.

Thank you for reading The Everyday Mavericks and for continuing to make this conversation worthwhile.

Kind regards,
Steven Wayne Nicholls