Full Speed Ahead!
Oh, the magic of this post-holiday time of year. The jolly sound of treadmills running at high speed. The flavor of fresh cough medicine as we attempt to recover from months of festive overindulgence and questionable nutrition. The whiff of quiet desperation in the air as we all try to will our way to making this the BEST YEAR EVER despite the short-lived nature of many a prior resolution. January, the month of self-hazing, in which we will try to rectify all of our disappointments in one end run of optimism on steroids!
New Year's resolutions work for few of us. You know it. I know it. And yet, this is the only time of year when we all habitually tend to our deepest needs and desires en masse and can expect to be lauded for our efforts. This opportunity will not come again for a twelvemonth, so it makes sense that we want to dive in and make the best of it; after all, it can be hard to find supporters among our friends and family who will cheer us on once things have gotten real later in the year. The thing is, this pattern of setting impossibly high expectations for ourselves every January and expecting that we can live up to them, come what may, forever after is just not healthy. Yes, I said it. What we need is a balanced approach, one in which we perceive a need or desire to change something about our behavior, and then take steps toward that change in sane increments and our own right timing.
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
What if we were to make this kind of admission about our needs and desires, and our willingness to make them a priority, constant? What if we were to consciously remind ourselves to support each other with gusto all throughout the year, because this is where real change happens? What if we were to learn to set appropriate boundaries to leave room for focus even when this societal craze for self-improvement has waned (about the end of February)? What could we achieve then? And how in the world can we begin to exhibit such radically sensible decision-making?
The famous graphic depicting Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He never actually used this illustration, but it sure is handy!
My answer to that is: By balancing various essential components whenever we envision a new future. In addressing how to do this, I’d like to start by going back to basics with a little inspiration from an old friend. Do you remember this famous triangle graphic used to illustrate Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs from your high school social studies class? It depicts the order in which our hero of the moment, Abraham Maslow, postulated that humans must address the necessities of life in order to progress. If you're up on the latest in psychological studies, you may know that current opinion suggests that our progress through development in all the areas shown may not need to be this linear and exclusive. However, the graphic does offer a tidy structure for discussing the basics of what humans need in order to create a daily life awash in a sense of fulfillment.
Ok, so maybe I was the only one who was awake that day because this sort of thing happens to be right up my alley. But I thought it made a lot of sense then, and I still like Maslow's style! It's hard to argue with the concept that if your most pressing physiological needs are not met, it's very difficult to find the energy to pursue advancement in areas like artistic expression and finely tuned interpersonal skills, for instance. I'll be using this handy chart as the starting point for the next several blog posts in which we'll review the basics of creating a solid platform and progression for the life you really want, whether it looks very close to what you've got now, or light-years away.
Starting at the bottom of the chart, our physiological needs include food, water, air, shelter from the elements/temperature control and clothing, sleep, elimination, and sexual expression. For the purposes of this category, I’m not going to delve deeply into most of these. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to most of you that we can survive for only minutes without oxygen; hours when exposed to harsh temperatures without proper shelter and clothing; only days without water; only weeks without a minimum number of calories with sufficient nutrition or without proper digestive elimination functioning. I think adults are mostly aware that the desire for sexual expression is a strong, natural drive that has helped the human race survive over millennia, though the range of what can be right for each person in this area is far broader than in most other categories. I’ll discuss refinements to all of these later.
The only one of these I want to comment on more extensively for now is sleep, because I see it as often problematic here in the U.S. and in many other countries as well, and it’s an area that I think we need to rethink in important ways. With the advent of a new, amped-up technological lifestyle made possible by electricity, we've slid backward dramatically on this without really realizing the magnitude of the problem, and it's costing us. Sleep will be the star of my next blog entry—now doesn’t that sound exciting? I’m telling you, people, you do NOT want to miss this one. Stay tuned!