Pursuit Of Happyness Analysis

he movie titled “The Pursuit of Happyness”, there was a problematic family living in San Francisco in 1981. The main character, Chris Gardner worked as a salesman invested his entire life savings in portable bone density scanner to support his family including his wife Linda and a five years old son Christopher. However, Chris’ business was not doing well and his wife was forced to work. Day after day, Linda was suffering and she always quarrelled with Chris and blamed him for didn’t play the role as a responsible father and a good husband. Luckily, this was not the end for Chris. One day, he met his turning point, Jay Twistle, a manager from Dean Witter. He offered Chris with a stockbroker at the end of a six-month unpaid training period.

It is divided into five levels of needs. The most basic need is physiological needs, followed by safety & security needs, social needs, self-esteem needs as well as self-actualization needs. According to this theory, if you want to achieve a higher needs, you must firstly fulfil the lowest needs which is physiological needs. In another words, when you already fulfil a needs, you will surely seek for a higher needs. Physiological needs are the most basic needs for human being survival such as food, water, shelter and freedom from diseases. When physiological needs are met, the safety and security needs take place instead. Safety and security needs include protection from elements, security, order, law, limits and stability (maslow's hierarchy of needs, n.d.). It is essential for people to avoid from physical harm and societal chaos. The third level of need is social needs. For example, affection, family, friends, belongingness and intimacy are examples of social needs. It is vital as people need to have a sense of belonging and acceptance from their social group such as family and friends to prevent form loneliness. Worse still, a new research suggests that loneliness and social isolation are as much a threat to our health. (Gupta, 2015). The next level of needs is self-esteem needs such as achievement, independence, status, prestige and managerial responsibility

Motivation is defined as the process that guides, initiates, and maintains goal-oriented behaviours (Cherry, 2015). It comes when a person is willing to sacrifice his own time, money and energy to do well in a particular task. Motivation is an inherent action that provides us impulse to do something in order to achieve our goals. In the movie The Pursuit of Happiness, Chris Gardner who lost almost everything in financial crisis ended up living as homeless with his son. He was jobless and unable to support his son and wife therefore his wife left him. Motivation drives him to struggle and to get rid of this situation. With his strong motivation, Chris had succeeded even without physiological needs such as food, water, and shelter. Furthermore, Chris also motivated Christopher during the free time with his son playing basketball. He told Christopher not to let somebody to think that he can’t do something. He also told him to always protect his own dream. If people can’t do something, for sure they will tell you can’t do it too. And if you want something, go and get it. (Will Smith Movie Quotes That Will Motivate You Through Adversity, n.d.). Motivation can further divided into two subtypes which are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the motivation that comes from inner side of one self and urges him in doing something no matter what is the external reward given.