What is a good life? What is it than man should pursue in order for him to be able to call himself a fully actualized person? What is it that motivates man to live? Is life just a journey of satisfying material necessities, or is it more than that?

Ideally, a man should live in a manner through which he can develop his potentials to the fullest. This is the ultimate “good” that life should gear towards. However, since life is an unending battle with faults, failures, deprivations and the like, the individual person must be able to prioritize his needs and try to satisfy these needs one step at a time, in order for him to not lose motivation to move forward.

A known psychologist named Herbert Maslow introduced a hierarchy of needs; through which he tried to explain where man should start in order to have a fulfilling life in the end. For Maslow, a man’s ultimate goal must be to become the person he can potentially be. He always believed in the maxim that goes, “What a man can be, he must be.” However, before a man could reach the highest level of human need, which is self-actualization, one must first satisfy the most basic needs of human existence. Maslow called these needs as ‘deficiency needs,’ because the lack of which gives rise to a deficiency that a man should satisfy. The first four levels in his hierarchy are all deficiency needs. However, all these and the fifth will never be achieved if the first level is not met. The satisfaction of each level becomes the motivation of the person to fill the succeeding level.

Physiological needs are the first needs of human existence, according to Maslow. These are needs which are basic for human survival. These cater to the needs of the body such as food, water, air and sleep. Without these man can’t accomplish even the simplest of functions. For example, a man ought to feel safe while living in a society and interacting with its other members, as is shown in the second level of the hierarchy. However, a man who is food-, water-, air- and sleep-deprived, could not possibly have adequate strength to practice his or her self-help tendencies.

Furthermore, financial safety can only be achieved when one has a job. In the same manner, a man can never have or stay in a job if he cannot accomplish even the easiest responsibilities in the work place. Or how can a man have a family or join in cliques if he or she doesn’t have the energy to do so.

The point is that a good journey towards self actualization and personal success starts with a healthy body.