needs are satisfied to the degree necessary to maintain life, other needs will not motivate people.
•Second are the needs for Safety and Security or the needs for protection, especially those that emerge from social or political instability, order, law, stability, and freedom from fear. These are the needs to be free of physical danger and the fear of loss of a job, property, food, or shelter.
•Thirdly, is to satisfy the need for Belonging and Love (Affiliation or acceptance) needs including the needs of deficiency and selfish taking instead of giving, and unselfish love that is based upon growth rather than deficiency. Since people are social beings, they need to belong, to be accepted by others. The needs of friendship, intimacy, affection and love from the work group, family, friends, and romantic relationships.
•The fourth level refers to meeting the need for Self-Esteem and Self-Worth, self-respect, and healthy, positive feelings derived from admiration. According to Maslow, once people begin to satisfy their need to belong, they tend to want to be held in esteem both by themselves and by others. This kind of need produces such satisfactions as power, prestige, status, and self-confidence.
•At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, is the need for Self-Actualization which refers to self-fulfillment and the need to reach personal full potential as a unique human being seeking personal growth and peak experiences. It is the desire to become what one is capable of becoming – to maximize one’s potential and to accomplish something.
Characteristics of a Self-Actualized Individual
A self-actualized person is someone who feels fulfilled and has accomplished all the things they are capable of accomplishing in their life through personal growth and experiences. A self-actualized person can be characterized as being:
•Problem-centered (not self-centered).
•Highly creative.
•Responsible.
•Hard working.
•Ethical.
•Honest.
Lifelong Learning
‘If only I could have learned Chinese two years ago…’
‘If only I learned about investing when I was still in my early twenties…’
Lifelong learning is the ‘ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated’ activity of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It not only enhances social inclusion, active citizenship, and personal development, but also self-sustainability, rather than competitiveness and employability.
Lifelong learning is pursued throughout life – learning that is flexible, diverse and available at different times and in different places. Lifelong learning crosses borders, go beyond traditional schooling and post-compulsory education. This definition is based on Delors’ (1996) four ‘pillars’ of education for the future.
1.Learning to Know – Mastering learning tools rather than acquisition of structured knowledge.
2.Learning to Do – Arming yourself for the types of work needed now and in the future including innovation and adaptation of learning to future work environments.
3.Learning to Live Together and with Others – Peacefully resolving conflict, discovering other people and their cultures, fostering community capability, individual competence and capacity, economic resilience, and social inclusion.
4.Learning to Be – Education contributing to a person’s complete development: mind and body, intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic appreciation and spirituality.
Learning is unavoidable and happens all the time, however, lifetime learning is about creating and maintaining a positive attitude to learning both for personal and professional development. Personal development can improve your professional opportunities, and professional development can enable personal growth.
Lifetime learning can enhance your understanding of the world around you, provide you with more and better opportunities and improve your quality of life.
Lifelong learning can impart creativity, initiative and responsiveness in you thereby enabling you to show adaptability in post-industrial society through enhancing skills to:
•Manage uncertainty.
•Communicate across – within cultures, sub-cultures, families and communities.
•Negotiate conflicts.
•Boost your confidence and self-esteem.
•Make you less risk averse and more adaptable to change when it happens.
•Help you achieve a more satisfying personal life.
•Challenge your ideas and beliefs.
There should not be any reason for learning as learning, for learning in itself is a rewarding experience. It enables a more fulfilling life at any age.
Our capacity to earn is directly related to our willingness to learn. Being well educated is not necessarily the key to employment. Employers are looking for well-balanced people with transferable skills. You should be able to demonstrate that you are keen to learn and develop.
Putting the time in for extra learning brings its own rewards. We can get more personal satisfaction from our lives and jobs as we understand more about who we are and what we do. A more highly skilled and knowledgeable employee is an asset to any company and can lead to faster promotion with associated salary increases.
Whatever your life path or age, it's never too late to start and there are a number of benefits to continual personal and professional development.
Successfully changing career path in mid-life and spending time informally developing expertise is more common than ever, especially during rapidly changing market conditions. Most people still rely on succeeding in employment for their ability to earn a living. The more flexible we can be about our direction, the easier we make our lives. Our economy is shifting gradually towards short-term and part-time contracts with more flexible work-patterns.
Depending on job durability for earnings and promotion is not as feasible as it used to be. Because of work-life instability, more people of all ages are turning their hobby into a business idea. Continually following one’s passion outside of work hours can lead you to get paid for doing what you love, and typically you will develop business and other transferable skills as you go along until the point that you can delegate your least favourite jobs.
Continuous learning is a requirement for success, and the faster you learn the faster you can apply your new knowledge to improve your life as explained below under Improve Your Learning Skills where you can learn how to read fast and remember things.
Learn from Your Mistakes
Most of us grew up thinking that mistakes are bad and should be avoided at all cost. We tend to correlate mistakes with low intelligence. The more mistakes you make, the dumber you are. However, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new. Turn a mistake into an opportunity to gain wisdom.
Knowledge
