How To Meet Your Needs
We all have the same needs
Meeting our needs is something most therapeutic treatments are designed around &, it is also a practice that is being shared more openly through coaching & well-being services, this is great news for all of us. (Remember seeing a licenced therapist is advisable where difficult emotions arise)
We all have the same needs, the thing that sets us apart is what need we need to meet at any given moment & how we feel that need is met. We are fundamentally all the same, our circumstance & experience in how our needs are met from birth, coupled with our response is what makes us look & feel very different. Our nurture or lack of affects us profoundly, this gives us the essence of our uniqueness, creativity, & personality.
This is great news as it means we can learn to identify our needs and match it with our behaviour & go on to experience things whilst learning to change our external response/reaction if we choose to. This allows us to have control, take new perspectives & identify true connection from superficial connection. We can see in ourselves & our loved ones, peers, friends, acquaintances, what need is not being met & how to help or when to back off. Working on ourselves does not give us the freedom to assess others. Freedom of choice even in accepting information is not a liberty we should forget.
Our needs being met can help us realise our potential, some clever psychologists, along with the logging of ancient tribal practices has given us a clear blue print of what these look like & what tier they fall under. This is something I find very exciting, learning this has certainly been liberating for me, providing me a blueprint for personal & professional development. This is the very essence of the work I share.
Whether we look at modern psychology through the lens of Human Givens or through the lens of Jung, Freud, Maslow &others or Ancient wisdoms like Yogic & spiritual practices (understanding energy systems through chakras), they all draw the similar conclusions! so maybe there are great lessons to learn here for all of us spiritual or not, beware no one person has all the answers to humanity! These lessons we can navigate from whatever modality suits us best, what we feel attuned to. This allows us to journey through life feeling guided but free, we can blaze our own trail or we can lean into a path that’s been opened up by predecessors to make additions & updates to those.
What are our needs?
What are our needs?
Our needs are listed on the tiers of each modality as shown on the images. Start with the basics, lower two tiers, then link them up as you go.
Maslow’s Hierarchy lists - Physiological needs as fundamental needs.
Human Givens lists (modern psychology): Security, Safety, Meaning & Purpose, Intimacy, Privacy, Control, Community, Achievement, Status, Attention as needs
Meeting your fundamental needs consistently with confidence allows you to level up, in my opinion by highlighting your values which will show your boundaries and allow you to navigate personal growth by creating your own map as you go, this will also highlight where you may need specialised help like that of a licenced therapist.
Discovering your needs
Take 5 minutes to contemplate your fundamental / survival needs: Food, Water, Shelter, Rest, Sleep, Privacy & Safety, Control & Achievement.
Take a moment to understand how it feels when you are in a position of always needing to look out for the reliability of their existence.
Ask yourself, are you fuelling yourself for the things you want to achieve? Do you feel secure in your surroundings? Are you getting enough sleep? Do you feel like you can level up? Are safety & privacy an issue? do you have space to be you? can you be with just you alone and feel good?
The emotions that come up here are useful to list and create your personal values list from. You may end up with many words, see if you can condense them into 3-5 words that highlight the attributes that make relationships easier for you to understand and set boundaries around.
In workplace leadership and development take it another step further and consider the musings below
How do these questions make you feel?
Can you fully concentrate on developing, connecting, or taking orders from someone who’s immediate attention is not helping you to meet your needs but demanding on you to meet theirs?
If you have staff in your charge are you really connected & on the same page, or are you barking orders because someone is barking orders at you? This can apply in others areas of your life too and show up through learned behaviours, these are the behaviours that groups of people i.e families have in common that we take on unconsciously.
How does that feel?
The practice of leadership, managing, mentoring or service is not based on what you want, it’s based on how you can influence the actions of others & convince them that your interests align.
e.g you have a deadline to meet, you are telling your team & manging their work priorities based on that deadline, but their priority is not the deadline, but on making sure their child is home safe, counting the income to manage the bills, just making it through another day. How do you cross that bridge & make their priorities & yours align?
e.g my priority is to share teachings around the fundamentals of wellbeing to empower those who want to feel success, connection, & have personal health whilst claiming personal & professional achievement knowing that this contribution is not only one that feels good but also rewards financially & adds to growth and happiness. My clients priority in the main is to ensure boxes are ticked & profit is made. I make this align by showing the link between profit & human wellbeing.
Having empathy for others is a great place to develop yourself & someone else from, people have to trust you before they will work for or with you. Trusting you means they are trusting that their need is met by doing so. The best place to practice these skills is with yourself first. It is really important for survival & happiness that each one of us learns how to meet our needs ourselves, then help others achieve the same, this allows connection to self & makes for better connection to others.
Observations
The struggle of the worker is to be able to trust in consistently meeting their fundamental needs, not looking to compromise them in order to move on. Many people are focused only making ends meet daily.
The struggle of the manager/boss is to get people collaborating & working as unit toward a specific goal without distraction to enable the best possible outcomes to keep business profitable, staff are human investments. People looking to level up are forgetting what it’s like on the level below, this breaks connection. Empathy creates connection.
If either of those players are struggling in the fundamental needs department conflict will happen, problems arise, empathy & trust are broken, people get hurt. Losing trust is a easier than gaining it, gaining trust is done through the habit of communication, & empathy. It’s not achieved overnight, reputation matters.
Take a list of the needs & measure your team against them, see how that stacks up, become aware of how that knowledge makes you feel! take the time to contemplate where you are, where you want to be & what opportunities you have to close that gap.
Find out more about personal development coaching here. Join my workshop at the end of the month to take a further look into leadership & wellbeing you can do here. Learn more about workplace wellbeing & the longer more intimate workshops I do here.
I hope you enjoyed this article and took some useable knowledge from it to help you understand your biology and meet your needs in relation to your goals. Please leave a comment, press the heart button and share it to help more people take control of their health, well-being and fitness.
Samantha
