The textbook describes Belonging need as something that we humans “need” to enjoy life. It is through interpersonal communication that we as humans find fulfillment. We need to feel wanted, comfortable, and accepted by social groups. This could include anything from spending time with others, or simply just listening and understanding each others feeling and desires. We humans desire to be heard, and we desire to hear others. Through the need of belonging we learn about others, and how we can be apart of there lives, just as they want to be apart of ours. I feel I have taken this idea for granted. I never noticed how necessary it is for myself to be accepted by family and friends. I have worked my whole life to be accepted, and acknowledged, that I never really understood that I not only was working at being accepted, but also needed to be accepted. As I look back in my life, hign sight is always 20/20, I see how much effort I have put into friends, and family. It always has just been natural for me to work at being accepted with social groups, that I never knew how truly important it was to my personal well-being, and enjoyment of life. This acceptance, or need to belong, has shaped the way I live within society. Because if no one acknowledged me, I would basically be nothing. Anything we say, or do must be accepted by others or it has no meaning or value.
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Which leads to the next level of interpersonal communication necessity, self-esteem needs. This concept explained by the book, explains basically how other react to each of us. As I stated above, anything we say or do has no meaning unless it is accepted and evaluated by others. We create a self-esteem understanding based on how others react to our attempt at being accepted. I act out my interpersonal communication and others give me a response. I am either smart or dumb, quick or slow, mean or nice, depending on how others communicate with me. We need a high self-esteem to succeed in nearly every aspect of life. Whether it be with our romantic life, or getting a job, we suffer or succeed based on the strength of our self-esteem. Knowing that nothing I do has validity unless others acknowledge or evaluate it is a daunting thought. Nearly my entire understanding of myself is based on what communication processes I have been through with other individuals. I have always been someone who desires to be heard, someone who wants to be acknowledged. I have always wanted to have an impact on others, and its through this give and take self-esteem process that I will be successful or a failure. Knowing that such a great deal rest on how others perceive me through interpersonal communication is quite an interesting and deep thought in my own personal life.
Lastly, Maslow feels that a concept know as self-actualization is the top and most abstract need in a humans life. This is the idea that we as humans grow in self acknowledgment. We strive to be the best that we can be, or to achieve self-actualization. The large majority of what we humans do through interpersonal communication is to achieve our best, to become the fullest human being we can become. It is through interpersonal communication that we come to the understanding of our greatest potential. We learn new skills, and test ourselves through the relationship we have with other human beings. I personally give a great deal of importance, in my own life, to the growth of knowledge. It is extremely difficult for me to learn more then I currently known now with the help of interpersonal communication. I need to communicate with others to further my personal self-actualization. Through communicating with others we learn new experiences, we learn what they have learned from others, and the entire human race grows off of each other. In my continuing journey to achieve my personal fullest self, I use all the tools of interpersonal communication to learn, and grow.
