A lot of you guys say how it's important to focus on yourself and not to care about sex. While it is important, you must not completely disregard sex. Look up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It displays the needs a person must meet before you can become what Pook calls a 'Man', or what
@guru1000 calls 'transcended', or what Abraham Maslow called being 'self-actualized', just whatever you want to call reaching your full potential and living it. There are some overlaps within this lists of needs, as you will see.
This is the simple stuff needed only to live. It's stuff like food, water, sleep, excretion, air, shelter, clothes, etc. Just the things needed so that homeostasis is possible. Your physiological needs are the foundation for everything else. There is a reason why Aron Ralston wasn't thinking about getting laid when he was trapped between a rock for 127 hours. He was not meeting his physiological requirements.
When your physiological needs are satisfied (at least to a degree), then your need for safety will be the prime motivator for your actions. This includes a range of things from financial security and personal security to again, shelter and the like. Your health and well-being are also very important in fulfilling this need. Not only that, but you must also have some kind of safety net against any kind of harm to be reassured that you are safe. What I mean by this is that if you live in some stereotypical ghetto, you may technically be healthy and free of any illnesses or wounds, but that doesn't mean that no one is going to jump you and shoot you for your wallet. You still need to be alert all the time in case someone or something is going to cause harm to you and therefore you still are worrying about your safety and wellbeing.
This is the one I want to address the most. It does not matter who you are, what your background is, or how independent one may be, EVERYONE wants to feel liked and wanted, be it by large social groups, small social groups, or even on a person-to-person level, it doesn't make a difference. Everyone wants to feel wanted, we as humans have evolved to be this way as we are social creatures. We do not need to be liked by all, but you still want to feel a sense of belonging SOMEWHERE in society. This need focuses on the ability to create and maintain relationships with others whether they are friends in a social circle, teammates on a sports team you play for (if you play a sport), members of a club, coworkers, family and relatives, and even exclusive partners in
intimate relationships. Your desire to form intimate relationships with others becomes prominent once the sex hormones begin to release throughout your body and you become sexually mature. If you are not having sex, you are not fulfilling a biological craving to procreate. This step ties into the physiological needs category as it is built within our genetic code to want to reproduce.
When you are not having sex and lose an intimate partner, you are not fulfilling a biological need. How can one ascend towards esteem and again towards self-actualization when a biological need is not being sated? Often times, this ties into the safety/security needs as well because the other partner may have been keeping you safe(r) somehow by adding to your income, cleaning your house or making dinner (like a wife) and gave you happiness (whether the person be the sole reason for your happiness or simply adds onto it). If you become used to having this intimate partner, then losing him/her could also make you feel a loss of safety/security. These needs are very strong (especially in childhood) and can override the need for safety, hence why kids sometimes may cling to abusive parents sometimes. Depending on the strength of peer pressure, it may even overcome physiological needs as well which would also explain why some people will literally do anything for another individual: because that individual makes the subject feel wanted, loved, and a sense of belonging more than anyone else.
All humans have a need to feel respected, to be accepted and valued by others. You need to have high self-esteem to satisfy this need, obviously, and as we teach here, we need to have self-respect. When we have self-respect, and work on ourselves (as we also teach here), we work on the higher version of esteem. That can also manifest into satisfying the lower version (if you impress yourself, make yourself great, others may also be impressed with you and may value you too, in the same way how you achieve fame and glory as the quote below shows). I'll just copy and paste part of the Wikipedia section on this matter because it explains it really well:
Most people have a need for stable self-respect and self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs: a "lower" version and a "higher" version. The "lower" version of esteem is the need for respect from others. This may include a need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The "higher" version manifests itself as the need for self-respect. For example, the person may have a need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom. This "higher" version takes precedence over the "lower" version because it relies on an inner competence established through experience. Deprivation of these needs may lead to an inferiority complex, weakness, and helplessness.
Maslow states that while he originally thought the needs of humans had strict guidelines, the "hierarchies are interrelated rather than sharply separated". This means that esteem and the subsequent levels are not strictly separated; instead, the levels are closely related.
The last paragraph is especially important to the previous set of needs. Everything is relative to each other, hence how sex can be a love and belonging need but also a biological one as well. It is also important to note that the fame and/or glory the lower version of esteem desires will not help the person to build their self-esteem until they accept who they are internally. This connects into the next 2 stages of your potential.
"What a man can be, he must be" - Abraham Maslow.
This is the need to be fully alive and to find meaning in life. In order to achieve self-actualization, you must know what your potential is, what you are capable of (find meaning). Then, you must live it, or strive towards it (be fully alive). You should have already accepted who you are before you can realize what your potential is. Poon King once stated this:
Find your passion and your purpose. You need to have a some kind of passion, hobby of interest, some kind of purpose in your life in order to express this potential. Once all basic (physiological and safety/security) and mental (love & belonging and esteem) needs are essentially fulfilled, then the "actualization" of one's full personal potential can take place. Maslow believed that to understand this level of need, the person must not only achieve the previous needs, but master them.
Now this stage is basically a subcategory of self-actualization. Again, you must have accepted who you are internally to reach this stage as it deals with your potential. This is because self-transcendence is when one has overcome the limits and desires of the individual self, through metaphysical means and by realization (basically having an extreme epiphany that lasts for however long all the other needs are fulfilled and mastered). This is when you are self-actualized and emanate an aura that makes others feel what you feel. The 'vibe' or 'energy' you give off, for lack of better terms. The feeling you give off is the simplest form of altruism. Examples of people who were self-transcended are Mahatma Gandhi, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Nelson Mandela, Buddha, Confucius, and even people like Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte. The list goes on and on, obviously, but you get the point.
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These are the steps needed to be taken in order to constantly self-improve. This metamotivation, this ambition, is what gives people fulfillment, and ultimately happiness in life.
