Rebuilding Maslow’s Pyramid (and 8 pro tips on moving cities)

BusinessKiwi
It's Your Turn
Published in
5 min readJul 18, 2017

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Moving countries means rebuilding Maslow’s pyramid of human needs in your new location. If you’re not familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, these are the needs that you and I are motivated by to achieve the ordinary things us humans needs and the extraordinary things we desire. Built in the form of a metaphorical pyramid, every layer fulfils those humans needs that then support the higher layers of needs above.

Credit: Research History

Confronting The Old Pyramid

Moving countries meant leaving many familiar pyramid layers behind and deconstructing the layers built up after 7 years living back in New Zealand (watch Bye Napier!). That was plenty of time to reach the upper fulfillments layers (100 CEO Interview Project), then earlier this year (perhaps last year was the first inkling) I felt I wasn’t growing any further… and I knew I could play bigger, even if it meant rebuilding the pyramid from scratch somewhere else.

Of course, before every rebuild, there is the removal brick by brick of the previous construction — and that is a task in itself, one that many will wrestle with in their heads before turning away from and accepting their pyramid ‘as is’. Don’t turn away. Do the hard work.

Credit: Discovering Egypt

Pulling Down the Old Pyramid

Saying goodbye to the people I chatted with each day at the local coffee shop, the clients who I’d supported for years and my family (and bizel the cat!) that lived in just a few minutes drive. That all had to happen. Selling the car I loved driving, selling the things I wouldn’t need anymore and putting sentimental things in storage. That had to happen too.

Knowing I wouldn’t be going to ‘that’ restaurant anymore, or heading down the familiar path to get to the gym again for a while, perhaps ever. Knowing I wouldn’t recommend and deliver another marketing campaign, or complete another CEO interview. Nostalgia is great, but so is growth and with the finishing of each of the familiar things, created brand new space for the new things which haven’t truly begun yet — and that’s why I write this now, when the previous pyramid is in ruins and the new one has hardly got a foundation in the ground yet.

Choosing where to build your New Pyramid

I’d lived in London before so I knew the area well and had thrived there previously reaching at least to the fourth layer of the Maslow’s pyramid. I’d scouted out other locations in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, New York and nearby in Auckland and Wellington. Wellington was a close second having been a home through my uni and graduate role days, but it was too close to where I was already setup. It was a safe next step with growth but the ceiling on possibilities was only a little higher. If I wanted to truly reach for the stars, the ceiling needed to be pretty as good as limitless. That meant big city living.

Credit: This AMAZING artist

Re-Building Maslow’s Pyramid in London

Having built one Maslow pyramid in London already, the landscape is familiar. I had friends to call for a place to live temporarily, I knew the neighbourhoods and found getting around excitingly invigorating, especially rediscovering the little things I’d missed about living in London. It’s in the same timezone to skype my son and maybe one day his Mum will let him visit. Plus the small things…. ah there’s delight in the small things like, the ease of picking up a pack of blueberries, pomegranate and a couscous salad from Marks & Sparks on the way home, the simplicity of tube travel without having your hands on a steering wheel in full concentration. Then there’s a vibe… the pleasure of anonymity and the warm smile of strangers being considerate in a big city that adds a slice of humanity in moments of the cities intensity. I’ve seen a guy help a girl pick up her dropped phone and careering phone battery. I’ve practiced my broken Spanish to help a tourist get to his Google maps spot and we’ve all squeezed in just a little more to let that extra person on at Clapham North tube stop.

Two Weeks into the ReBuild

The physiological needs are taken care of, albeit temporarily. Safety needs are also taken care of by virtue of having great friends helping me out. The third layer of the pyramid is starting to be built as I feel a belonging to the shared offices I work at daily, punching in job applications as I re-establish this life. That’s the key word — re-establish. It’s infinitely easier to reconnect with friends and all that history than building them from scratch — with one proviso. Life moves on and with it the people you used to know in one life stage are now in another which provides a whole new set of opportunities to meet friends children or socialise in different ways from drinks at pub, drinks at bar then drinks at club. Ah… twenties.

Maslow’s Pyramid Building Made Easy — 8 Tips

  1. Enjoy your complete freedom.
  2. Make decisions that embrace that freedom.
  3. Stay nimble. No long contracts or commitments initially.
  4. Get into a routine of building your Maslow Pyramid each day. For me this means finding a temporary office and working on networking and career building.
  5. Say YES, when ever an offer to go and do something appears.
  6. Don’t look back towards your old pyramid. Someone else lives there now!
  7. Keep building, even when you don’t feel like it.
  8. Explore your new environment, you might discover the things for your Maslow pyramid.
Photo Credit: Meeeee.

What Happens Next

The deficiency of having unmet needs from the fully built pyramid, is a strong motivator to keep applying for jobs, seeing flat shares and producing creatively along the way (I’m Vlogging it all this time around). I don’t know how long it will take, all I know is that expending energy in rebuilding the pyramid in London is the best decision I’ve made since the one that initially led my return to New Zealand to spend more time with family back in 2010. While I never thought I’d return, and (who know how long this time will be!) the very act of returning is a catalyst for starting anew and continuing to bring as much value as I can to the people around me, which should be a force multiplier from London.

If you want to follow what happens next, subscribe to my YouTube Channel here: http://ryanin.nz/subscribeonYoutube

Then watch the first one since I left New Zealand.

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