The 6 Human Needs to Survive
I’ve got no idea what your situation is or where you’re head is at. Instead of putting energy into figuring that out, I want to focus on an exercise that can help you. It doesn't matter if you’re feeling flat, freaking out, or relaxed and enjoying life. Introducing the 6 Human Needs I remember reading a book by Tony Robbins saying how as humans we have 6 human needs. These affect how we make choices and our behavious. Missing one or two isn’t ideal but is bearable. However, we tend to get stressed, hit rock bottom, go a bit crazy, or freak out (insert your own “sensation”) when a few of them aren’t been met. The 6 human needs are: 1. Certainty: an assurance we can avoid pain and gain pleasure. (I've changed this to Safety & Security because it makes more sense to me.) 2. Variety: need for the unknown, change, new stimuli 3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed 4. Love & Connection: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something 5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding 6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others. Without knowing it, your pre-COVID19 life probably ticked most of these needs. Then things changed. In turn changing how your needs were - or weren’t - being met. So, you’ve guessed it, it’s time to make sure your COVID19 life meets these needs.
Go through the list. Interpret each need in a way which makes sense to you and your lifestyle. Write down how that need is been met.
Put a star next to the needs which aren’t been met.
Put your thinking hat on and come up with a way/s which can meet that need.
If you’re struggling with this, imagine the You in a year or two who has got through COVID19. See how that You has handled the situation.
Handy thing to do This is a handy thing to do because they’ll be other times in life when you notice that “sensation”. Maybe you change jobs. The kids move out. You get injured. You retire. COVID25 swoops in. Then you get that “sensation”. This is an alert to let you know that your needs aren’t been met. Something needs to change. This is why it’s useful to do this exercise when things are going well. You become aware of the different things that satisfy your needs; building a good referral list for later or coming up with techniques to discover new ways forward. Note: one activity/thing doesn’t need to satisfy all needs. There can be multiple ways of satisfying a need. I found that something which satisfies a need this week might not next week. So, keep checking in whenever you get that alert “sensation” (whatever that is for you).
Something to think about...
“I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.” - Art Williams American Insurance Executive, Millionaire, Life Coach.
