Jan
22
Meet Your Needs Before Setting New Goals
January 22, 2000 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
It’s the New Year and a new opportunity to take some time to reflect on various aspects of your life, to gauge how your inner vision matches up with what’s actually true in your life. It’s a natural and beneficial habit to raise your head above the familiar daily routine to see if the road you’re on is taking you where you actually want to go. It allows for subtle mid-course correction, redirections that can be much more difficult to institute once habits and behaviors have become entrenched.
Unfortunately this annual taking-of-stock ritual is unnecessarily painful for people who’ve resolved in the past to make a fresh start, only to discover themselves very shortly back to their old habits. They become a little gun-shy about making new resolutions. It’s unnecessary because people often set themselves up to fail by setting unrealistic standards for themselves, before they’re ready for them.
It’s a mistake to make resolutions to do new things, institute new behaviors, or strike out in a fresh direction until you identify and get your basic needs met. When you don’t, it’s a set-up for failure. It’s also a set-up for having your life driven by your needs, rather than by your goals, because your needs are non-negotiable. If they don’t get met, it’s a sticking point, a block that hinders further progress.
So what are needs? Needs are what we must have in order to function at our best. We actually need a lot more than we think we do to function at our best. Beyond basic survival needs, like food, shelter, and clothing, we may need any number of things: love, support, recognition, resources, skills, order, safety, freedom, to be heard, respect, stability, peace, ideas, guidance, acceptance… fill in the blank.
Lets look at the nature of unmet needs. It’s not unusual for people to accept that they will have unmet needs, to even feel selfish thinking about meeting them. That’s how life is, isn’t it? Well, let’s look at the consequences of that thinking: Resignation. Giving up. Being resentful of others for not meeting needs. Confusion over the right to have what we need or want. Embarrassed because needs are running our life. Frustration. Anger that others actually ask for and get what they need. Holding ourselves back from our full possibilities.
That’s a lot of mental and emotional energy, wasted. Not to mention, creating so much more confusion that’s it often difficult to even identify our needs, or understand that in fact, they can be completely satisfied. We flop into a life assuming that all of our needs cannot be met, rather than designing one in which they can. This life, while it does work, is not what it could be. We have inkling that this is true, which is why we keep attempting to set resolutions or new standards for ourselves.
The truth is that needs are completely satisfiable, once and for all. Once you get past the hump that it’s okay to have what you need, it’s simply a skill that takes training and practice. The first step, often the hardest for some people, is to identify them. Then you can develop new and creative ways to get them met.
Continue to set high standards and goals for yourself AND give yourself permission to have what you need. Be gentle and honor yourself and your process of becoming.
ACTIONS: How do you identify your needs? The Integrity-Needs-Wants model can be helpful. The idea is that it’s not possible to get what you want till you have your needs met, and you won’t be able to meet your needs until you are in integrity with yourself. So, work backwards and forwards.
Ask yourself: What do I want that I’ve been unable to get? What you’ll discover is that you’ve been bumping into an unidentified need.
Then ask yourself: Am I in integrity with myself? Am I being who I really am, in alignment with what I value and what I believe in? If you’re not (i.e., a butcher and a vegetarian), no matter how well you’ve identified your needs and installed procedures for getting them met, they will not be satisfied. You are out of alignment with your true self, a fundamental need, if you wish.
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