4. What moves us! A look at the topic of motivation

Much has already been published about motivation. You all know the pyramid of needs (p. 370–396) as presented by Abraham Maslow in humanistic psychology. We do not need to go into this in detail. But what is fundamental to his model is the fact that it is needs that motivate us, one could almost say drive us, to take action.

And that's where we want to take a closer look! If we look at motivation from the perspective that it is about unfulfilled needs that are pressing to be satisfied, the question immediately arises as to which needs we are talking about?

And further:

Figure 4: different needs – same needs?

A look at the inventory of needs by Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication, shows us very quickly that there are very many different needs:

Figure 5: Needs Inventory - Center for Nonviolent Communication

 (c) 2005 by Center for Nonviolent Communication

Website: www.cnvc.org Email: cnvc@cnvc.org

Phone: +1.505-244-4041

The list presented here is made freely available to all by the Center for Nonviolent Communication and it is immediately pointed out on its website that this list can only be a rather incomplete list of various needs.

So, the answer to the first question should be "Yes!". With so many different needs, it is not surprising that we are very different!" And we would have to answer the second question with an unequivocal "No!". "People tick quite differently! Where should there be common ground!”.