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Special Needs

Oct 112010
 

Last week’s blog hopefully got you thinking about your values, helping you to understand the bedrock of unique principles that guide you through life. This week, we’re going to look at another set of principles that drives our actions and behaviours, and which can lead to relationship clashes if they’re not aligned – our needs.

Of course, we all share the same basic human needs. They’re things like oxygen, food, water and sleep, the need to feel safe and secure, and to have love and belonging in our lives. Yet beyond this, there are all kinds of ‘sub-needs’ that are as individual as we are.

Our ‘sub-needs’ play a huge influence in how we connect with others, especially within intimate relationships. In figuring out what these are, we can enter into situations and relationships with greater awareness, and hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls and dramas that arise when those needs aren’t met.

So, here are some broad categories designed to get you thinking about where YOU fit in. Knowing your sub-needs will help you to more clearly decide whether they’re being met, and enable you to express them to others when you need to.

Read through each list and decide which of them apply most strongly to you, within either your love relationship, or your friendship or family dynamics (where applicable!). Try and be selective and choose the top three that feel like your most important needs. It can even be useful to adapt them and make them more personal to you, writing them down as you go.

Need 1: Safety

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need to feel secure

– The need to feel connected

– The need to feel comfortable

– The need to feel peaceful

– The need to have support during hard times

– The need to feel cared for

– The need to spend time together

Need 2: Acceptance

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need to feel valued and appreciated

– The need to receive physical affection

– The need to be heard

– The need to feel understood

– The need to feel desired

– The need to feel respected

– The need to be openly vulnerable

– The need to feel strong

Need 3: Belonging

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need to enjoy shared interests

– The need to share daily life

– The need to be totally present and in the moment with another

– The need for spiritual awareness

– The need for loyalty

– The need for trust

– The need for strong communication

– The need for playfulness, laughter and joy

Need 4: Space

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need to preserve my own identity

– The need to space outside the relationship

– The need for privacy

– The need for clear boundaries

– The need to nurture individual interests

– The need for my own friendships

Need 5: Influence

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need to feel useful

– The need to feel like I matter

– The need to feel like I make a difference

– The need to help other heal

– The need to care for others

– The need to motivate others

– The need to help others change and grow

– The need to help others through hard times

– The need to create safety for others

– The need to create comfort for others

Need 6: Love

Common sub-needs here include:

– The need for touch, hugs and affection

– The need for sex, play and pleasure

– The need to give or receive unconditional love

– The need to have or surrender control

– The need to feel passionate

– The need for kindness and caring

– The need for emotional intimacy

This exercise can be a valuable tool for relationship maintenance, as you discuss with a partner, friend or family member what drives you, and work out where there’s room for improvement, compromise or greater understanding of what makes each other tick.

It’s worth spending time on, because when we have greater awareness of the needs that often subconsciously drive us, we can more clearly express and be guided by them – leading to happier, healthier, more meaningful relationships all round.

In love and light,

Taranga

http://www.theinnocents.org/

Constant Cravings

Oct 112010
 

We’ve been diving deep lately, with recent Bliss blogs focusing on two of the key forces that drive your actions and behaviours – your values and your needs. This week, we’re going to travel further still, into one of the most powerful motivators, especially in the area of sex and relationships – our desires.

Desires are what make the world go round. From sexual desires to the lust for wealth and power, every one of us is driven by desire of some type, and it’s happening all the time. It’s no coincidence that advertising, one of the world’s most powerful industries has been built around this insight. TV ads, billboards, and any one of the estimated 250 advertising messages we’re exposed to every day, nearly always tap into those basic human desires built into all of us.

We construct our lives around our desires – and new desires are forever being born in us. Yet while some of us embrace them, many of us remain in the dark, or fearful of them. And with most religions condemning desire in all its forms, that’s no surprise. Desires are nearly always highly powerful, dangerous, even. They carry an ‘urge’. Unchecked, they can lead to obsession, and to unhealthy pursuits like greed, laziness, envy, and even violence.

Yet our desires, when acted upon consciously and with awareness, can allow us autonomy, individuality and creativity (which are also things organised religions might be fearful of, and wish to discourage us from). Desire motivates us to action. We actually can’t live fully without them.

Desires are elusive, they can easily hide. And because they often show up in our dreams, or our imaginations, we may not be fully hear or understand them. When we fail to realise our desires, or to even ask ourselves what we really want, life can just ‘happen to us’ – but we all have the potential to ‘co-create our lives, using our desires to motivate us into action.

So ask yourself, ‘what do I most desire’ – and if the answers don’t come easily, do this simple exercise to bring them into the light. This exercise can be applied to a particular area of your life (such as your sex life, a potential partner, or your work), or you can think of it as more of a broad gauge of some of the things that float your boat in general. All you need do is take a few minutes out with a pen and paper, and write whatever first comes into your mind when you ask yourself ‘What are my top turn-ons?’. Try not to over think it. It might be as simple as ‘enjoying a beautiful sensual massage’, or ‘digging in the garden and getting my hands dirty’, or ‘devouring a slice of chocolate cake from my favourite bakery’. Whatever it is that you really love to do, whatever makes your mouth water, your knees tremble or your heart quicken, write it down. Wait a week or two, then do it again. Compare your answers, and see if there are any patterns, any clues to the types of desires you experience over time.

Most importantly during this exercise, be aware of which desires feel ‘light’ or empowering, and which feel unhealthy or obsessional. Which do you embrace, and which are you afraid of? Which do you act on, and which do you try to ignore? Don’t judge yourself. This is about creating awareness and bringing desires in all their forms into the light, allowing you to see them, to feel them and to accept them. Realising that, we can be less enslaved by them, and we’re free to express our desires in ways that are healthy and supportive of our journey through life.

Once you combine new awareness of your desires with better understanding of your wants and needs, you’re on the way to all kinds of transformations. A bold claim, you might say – but when our wants, needs and desires reveal themselves to us, we can begin to shape our lives more in alignment with them.

Quite simply, new awareness of our wants, needs and desires creates powerful shifts in attitudes and behaviour, propelling us to new heights of success, contentment and joy in all areas of life.

In love and light,

Taranga