A need is a clear demand, such as hunger for food or seeking reassurance when feeling unloved and insecure.
Satisfying a need means that it has been gratified, relieved, and discharged. Once you feel satisfied, your attention quickly turns to something else.
The following list of needs is inspired by the work of Abraham Maslow.
Physical Needs
Food, water, safety, shelter, health, basic comfort, and income.
Security
You feel secure when you feel wanted, accepted, loved, and supported by others, and can feel a sense of belonging.
Connection
The drive to meaningfully relate, involve, give and receive, procreate, and/or experience sexual fulfilment.
Self-Esteem
You need confidence, competence, respect, and power. When you feel approval, recognition, and admiration from others, you naturally feel these for yourself and others. This develops the confidence needed to take risks and strive. From competence and achievement, you develop assurance, poise, and power. The esteem in all these ways is preeminent to favourable development and behaviour.
Integrity
This results from fulfilling your agreements with yourself and others. By weighing potential consequences, you make discerning choices, fostering self-trust through your thoughtful decision-making process.
Satisfying basic needs is primary.
Without doing so, you are distracted, out of balance, and out of peace. If numerous needs are unsatisfied, then your disturbances are complicated and magnified. Your daily activities and creative flow are biased and directed toward satisfying your unmet need(s). Your focus is distracted and skewed, your life is entangled with problems, and your fulfilment will be forever compromised.
Since most people don't know how to address their unmet needs, they turn their attention to what seems easier.
And yet it never truly works because weakness arises. An individual may excel as a singer but neglect the development and sustenance of healthy intimate relationships.
To satisfy basic needs one must feel the insecurity that develops from its lack, then determine the best way to effectively address it.
However, many people lack the requisite trust, strength, and method by which to do so. This inhibits healthy progress because they fear they will be weakened by admitting the lack; yet they will be strengthened.
The key is to identify the unsatisfied need that the negative behaviour attempts to satisfy.
Next, replace that negative behaviour with a positive equivalent. For example, returning alone to her hotel room feeling the high of a concert, the great singer typically orders her favourite goodies, eats heartily, and grows larger. Recognising her lack of skills in building healthy relationships, she chooses to start cultivating fulfilling connections even during her tours.
Indeed, satisfying basic needs is necessary because it provides the foundation for all else to develop, and supports you to reach your optimum levels.
Satisfying basic needs is fundamental to clarity, peace, and overall well-being, and supports your potential to be realised.
If you're looking for a life coach on the Northern Beaches or Australia-wide, book a FREE consultation with Aaron today.
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