Today and every day determine what your needs are and get them met.
It's your responsibility to do that, or arrange for it. It's not someone else's job to make you happy, it's yours. Some people think/believe it's not cool to set out to meet your needs, to actively go for making yourself happy. But, if you make yourself happy, then everyone else is free to do their own thing instead of having to "fix" you, and some of your own resultant happiness and joyfulness will undoubtedly affect in a good way the happiness of other people.
How do you know what your needs are? Are needs the same as desires? I think desires represent needs, but may not be actual needs. That is, if you ask yourself, regarding your desires, "What good thing will that get for me?" you can detect eventually, by repeating the question if necessary, what a particular desire represents.
When you know the need you can usually find several options for how to meet it today. Not necessarily meet it so completely that you'll not need it again, but to meet it in some useful and satisfying way that can be done or begun today. Even if you fill a need in a simple and easy way, even in a small amount, it puts you on a track for continually filling that need. You won't be going about your day hungry for something that's been missing, or is newly missing today.
It's interesting what happens when you do this, meet your own needs, all of them or as many as it is humanly possible to meet in a day. Even if you can only invest five minutes for filling each need it's worth doing.
Just how simply could you meet/supply your needs today? Tonight? This morning? Plan for it throughout the day? What if you devoted ten minutes of each hour in the day to thinking about, planning, determining what your needs are and actively filling them? What if you worked quickly and with good focus on your work tasks for fifty minutes in each hour, and then took the ten minutes remaining to meet your needs? I'm going to guess that you'll not only get more and better quality work done during the fifty minutes than you did before in the whole sixty. And, that the benefits of meeting your needs daily will have a cumulative effect on your work, your personal happiness, and the people around you.
Do you have these needs?
Physical activity/exercise/movement
Touch, to be touched in a kind and gentle way, to touch others
A sense of completion, completing a task, completing a series of tasks
Appreciation and recognition for work you do and personal qualities
Love and affection
Fresh air
Clean water
Good, healthy food
A good night's sleep
Rest
New environments, new discoveries
Enjoying past successes and pleasant experiences
A challenge
The company of compatible associates/friends/family
Music
Dance
Art
Play
Creativity
Learning about yourself
Owning your own excellence
Success
How many ways can you think of, that are doable today, to meet/fill/satisfy your needs in a good, comfortable, and personallly ecological way?
Just wanted to comment on how positive this list was. Now if I could mobilize myself in a positive fashion and unbury myself from my past I sure would be glad to move on and work on my future! Very informative article.
Posted by: Pat Cravener | October 26, 2007 at 09:35 AM