Using the Wrong Need Tool

For most of our ancient ancestors, the satisfaction of a lower need probably led to the natural satisfaction of the next need. For the hunter, becoming proficient at hunting satisfied our need for food, and the same skill we used for hunting, the use of a spear or bow, probably helped satisfy our need for safety at the same time. Being a good hunter probably made an individual highly sought after by the opposite gender and probably led to a pretty high feeling of oneself and one’s standing in the community. The tool used for our physiological needs was also great for each of our other, higher, needs as well.

Read more - Our Hierarchy of Needs

The same argument could be made for the gatherer as well. Being a successful gatherer would likely be attractive to the opposite gender looking for someone who could produce and raise enough offspring to adulthood. This person would be praised, on some level, for raising a healthy family. Being a successful gatherer reverberated up the needs hierarchy as well.

Wants vs. Needs

In a world filled with countless temptations and desires, distinguishing between our wants and needs can be a challenging and often perplexing task. Our daily lives are bombarded with marketing messages, societal pressures, and a culture that constantly urges us to seek more. But if we can begin to understand why we struggle so much to know the difference, maybe we can make better decisions and start to head down a more fulfilling path in life.

Contentment is What We Seek

 "Health is the most precious gain and contentment, the greatest wealth" - Gautama Buddha

Happiness and contentment are not the same. Happiness is excitement, or at the very least, the lack of boredom. To be content means to be satisfied, not to settle.

The source of all dissatisfaction appears to stem from the ability to compare experiences and then infer that one's state is not ideal.

Contentment is a state which is ideally reached through being happy with what a person has, as opposed to achieving one's larger ambitions.

There is a belief that one can achieve contentment by living "in the moment,” which represents a way to stop the judgmental process of discriminating between good and bad.

“Happiness comes after contentment.” - E.A. Cabaltica

Happiness is Excitement

What Is Happiness?

Since the beginning of time, maybe even earlier, many extremely intelligent human beings have been trying to figure out how to answer this question. To Socrates, happiness is what all people desire, that everything we do can be ultimately broken down to the goal of achieving the feeling of happiness - “since it is always the end goal of our activities, it is an unconditional good.” William James believed “happiness is created as a result of our being active participants in the game of life.” And Aristotle said - "Happiness is a state of activity."

 “When you see someone who is genuinely excited, look at the expression on their face and what do you see. Most likely you see the look of happiness.”

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

By Nathaniel Branden

1. Self-Esteem: The Immune System of Consciousness

Self-esteem is:

1. Confidence in our ability to think, confidence in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life; and

2. Confidence in our right to be successful and happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values, and enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

2. The Meaning of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.

We depend for our survival and well-being on the guidance of our distinctive form of consciousness, the form uniquely human, our conceptual faculty - the faculty of abstraction, generalization, and integration: our mind.