Life Purpose: contribution and meeting your own needs

[Loving Radiance]

When we contribute with our LP to the world, we can either

a) meet our lower needs of Maslow's hierarchy first (safety and belonging) and then share our LP, or

b) focus on contributing with our LP first (fulfilling self-actualization need) and then our lower needs get met  automatically.

I for myself have the intuition that a) is for me because otherwise the holes in my pyramid would drag me down and hinder my contribution (and even corrupt it).

For those currently in the course, what do you feel will be your choice and why? And for those futher on the path, what was the case for you?

Here's Maslow's pyramid of needs for reference.

 

@Michael569 @soos_mite_ah

[Michael569]

2 hours ago, Loving Radiance said:

a) meet our lower needs of Maslow's hierarchy first (safety and belonging) and then share our LP, or

b) focus on contributing with our LP first (fulfilling self-actualization need) and then our lower needs get met  automatically.

I think it is a combination of both but it is probably bottom-up rather than top-down. 

You can have the most generous LP on the planet but if nobody cares about it, your basic survival will be harder to cover. 

Unless, of course there is a system in place that helps you to just work on your LP and ignore the monetary part such as having a wealthy family, large savings or trading your work for a basic living (e.g. exchanging work for food & shelter in a sort of a monk fashion) 

I also agree with your hypothesis that you should first have the lower levels in place before embarking on this as holes in the pyramid will make the whole thing collapse. Things that should be put in place before a pursuit of purpose are: finances (having some form of stable income even if lower), relationships (or at least sexual fulfilment), living situation & non-toxic environment, habits (work ethic, exercise habits, mindfulness habits, routines), relative emotional mastery, mindset (being prepared to spend a lot of money on all sorts of things LP & business related), some education, some world experience (such as travel) , lot of prior reading and research, becoming realistic optimist rather than a naive optimist. 

You will often hear cliche things such as "you just have to follow your heart and al the pieces will fall in place" but I think that's just bs and unless you are extremely strategic and ruthless with your time & effort, it will eventually fail and force one to go back to wage slavery. 

I used to be extremely optimistic but now having been in the middle of it for the last 3 years all my romantic notions have kinda died out and I've become extremely practical and realistic with this - unless one is willing to put the work, time and money in, it won't happen. And you may still be doing the right things, working 12-hour days, making videos, reels, posts, paying other experts - and it still won't happen....at least that's how I see it right now. But my strategy is far from ideal, there are many things I should be doing and am not because of my own limiting beliefs. And a lot of what I do bears no fruit and needs to be changed. 

 Ina  way, feels like learning how to survive after being thrown out of a chopper in the middle of a forest. You're kinda going at it and hope you're doing the right things before time runs out (or in this case before your savings run dry if you dont have a secondary income) 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Michael569

[Loving Radiance]

@Michael569 Massive! Thank you.

And also thanks for sharing a bit where you are. Feels good to get an insight into where you're at right now even if it's not glamorous.