What people need

Yesterday I met up with my long term mentor, someone who I worked with 10 years ago and who has continued to watch my progress, prompt my thinking and challenge my actions. I always look forward to meeting up with him, despite the fact that the conversation can sometimes be uncomfortable... he knows me too well and can see through my tendency to rationalise where I am or what I'm doing. He pushes me to grow and that's not always easy.


Amongst other things we talked about choice and he asked me why I still feel the need to pursue something more - after all by my own admission I'm very happy and fulfilled personally, I have a great job with a lot of positives to be thankful for. Yes there are frustrations, but who doesn't have at least some of that with their job? We got onto an interesting conversation about the human tendency to push for something different / more / new when they are at their most fulfilled, sometimes even to the point of it destroying all that was good (we all know the person that seems to have it all who then have an affair / major job change / mid life crisis etc.) - why would you do that?!?


His challenge (other than not to lob a 'life grenade' for the sake of it) was to try instead to find peace with what I have, and recognise my quest as a normal human drive that we all share. This
led me onto doing some basic research into what drives us as people. I came across the following which I think encapsulates it nicely:


The Six Human Needs
1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
4. Connection/Love: 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


So is the trick to recognise that to relish uncertainty in a quest for variety and growth is just 'normal' and, like physical needs (we don't fret about being hungry or tired on a daily basis), we should acknowledge and accept these emotional needs rather than get caught in a loop of inner questioning and soul searching which we call a search for purpose.


This idea ties in with the thinking on emotional agility - being sufficiently self aware to recognise an emotion or need for what it is and allow it to be there along with our other needs, but not to allow it to dominate to the extent it overpowers the other (satisfied) needs and starts to become a negative force. To have enough variety to be fresh and engaged is good, too much will unbalance uncertainty and connection and is bad.


The moral of this ramble is to understand that we all people have a complex range of needs we seek to fulfil and as ever the trick is to recognise this, give our conflicting needs enough space to be satisfied but not so much as to be dominant - balance is the key to a happy life :-)