Last week I was reading about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

You might’ve heard of this.

It’s the idea that humans have various needs which have a specific order to them. So basic essentials like food, water and shelter come first. Then higher-level needs like health, friendship, security, love and belonging come next. And as we get to the top of the pyramid we find loftier needs like self-esteem and self-actualisation.

It’s a famous, well-trodden model.

It’s also a model that’s surprisingly dangerous for anyone who takes it at face value.

Why do I say that?

Well, Maslow’s hierarchy isn’t how humans seem to work. Sometimes I worry what people think about me. And guess what? Even if I’m starving, I still worry what people think about me. It’s not like I grab a kit-kat, then go back to worrying.

Moreover, history is filled with examples of people cracking jokes on their way to the gallows, falling in love in poverty or creating the most astonishing art in the middle of warzones.

Take Viktor Frankl’s experience in a Nazi death camp. These were some of the most horrific circumstances ever known. And even though Frankl had none of his basic needs, he still noticed the sunset through the barbed wire, held the image of his wife in his mind and later wrote one of the most influential books ever written about meaning and love.

So the idea that love, purpose and creativity somehow come later in the queue is clearly a load of twaddle.

But I said above that this model is dangerous. And I stand by that. Because if you believe your desires are only valid once you’ve ticked off other, more “basic” boxes, you might live your whole life treating the stuff you really, truly, deeply want as off-limits because it doesn’t follow a certain sequence. 

So you might really want to learn how to paint but you’ve decided you should focus on your career first. You might want to find the love of your life but think you need to get your finances in order before you do. 

And if that happens, you’ll miss out on one of the greatest joys of being human:

Finding out what happens when you follow what calls you.

Truth is, we don’t need to earn the right to do what we want to do.

We really don’t.

Whatever you’re drawn to right now is valid, whatever else is going on in your life. That doesn’t mean you should quit your job tomorrow and run off to join the circus. But it does mean you don’t need to follow a flowchart to justify why it's okay to take a day off work, do something that scares you, play the piano, spend time with your child or put your feet up in front of the TV.

Yet an awful lot of people are still waiting for their lives to begin. 

I was waiting for about a decade and it’s surprisingly easy to do.

My program The Music Inside You is the antidote to this.

This program is for anyone who's followed the usual script, but suspects there's a different song they'd rather be playing. It’s a way to drop the “shoulds”, uncover what’s been getting in the way and start doing more of the things that genuinely matter to you.

Not so you become someone new or different. 

But so you can reconnect with what makes you come alive.

If you’d like to check out the details:

The Music Inside You

To fulfilment,

Tom