In 1943 Abraham Maslow proposed his now famous Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, creating a whole new movement of humanistic psychology. In essence, he concluded that deficiency needs must be met before personal growth needs can be fulfilled. He defines deficiency needs as: physiological, safety, love and belonging, and esteem, in that order. Once these lower levels of the pyramid have been provided for, we can move on to satisfy our growth and development needs of self-actualization; we can focus on finding happiness. If you are the curious or academic sort, I encourage you to read more about it in Toward a Psychology of Being.

Posted in choices, happiness, needs, simplicity 16 Comments »

Although my life is quite serene and simplified now, there are days when it seems I don’t have time even to eat, or to take a break. Particularly now that I have started this blog, there is always something I should be working on, and my to-do list gets longer every day. But it doesn’t stress me out, or interfere with my inner peace, for two reasons: my choices and my perspective.

1. All of my tasks are freely chosen: teaching my son, maintaining my home, writing my blog, planning travel arrangements, etc. There is nothing on my to-do list that I really don’t want to be doing. Even the less enjoyable tasks, like laundry and dishes, directly contribute to my happiness because I feel better when my house is not a pig-sty. So my newly added task has made my schedule a little fuller, but infinitely more rewarding. This brings me to reason number two.

Posted in balance, choices, present moment, simplicity 2 Comments »

This little smiling miracle is my son, my role model for staying in the present moment and focusing on the positive. When this picture was taken, he was six years old, and had been in the hospital for nine days (including Christmas) to repair a previous surgical mistake. Do you know why he was smiling? He was smiling because he was present only in that very moment.

He was no longer thinking about the difficult recovery from the first surgery, or the six months of excruciating pain and danger he had just survived. Like most kids, he doesn’t waste time or energy looking back. He was not thinking about the struggles that still were to come: how would he do even the simplest things with this heavy halo screwed to his skull for nearly three months?

Posted in choices, happiness, Overcoming Challenges, present moment 7 Comments »