having your needs met and defining success

There is a real conversation to be had on a personal level with yourself about how to become fulfilled, have your needs met, and be successful for yourself. There are wants and needs but it is up to you to define what those are for yourself. We exist right now with so much exposure to other’s lives, which is amazing in the sense of seeing what is out there and expanding your vision by learning more options, but there is also the side of the coin where you could compare your life to others (or more so what they choose to put out there). I want to discuss how you can start to define your wants and needs, what you consider to be successful, and a little bit on how to get there for yourself. 

Talking strictly needs, we all know Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There are five tiers sorted in order of importance to human survival - physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs. 

Food, water, shelter, etc. come first. With this one, you might notice it is getting harder to financially support these needs for yourself - rent and home prices and interest climbed significantly over the last 4 years and grocery costs are continually creeping up. The system itself is attempting to take our basic needs and we as a community are supporting one another the best we can through it. If you have been aware and living in the last few years, you are already very familiar with this problem.

When I am talking about creativity and creative outlets, you can see on the hierarchy, it is way up there, not close to the necessities, though I also find that creativity is intertwined into each of these tiers.

If you are in a tough spot right now with getting meals on the table, the community is with you and there are resources for you. Do not lose your spark or creative drive that makes you uniquely you. Our art, spirit, creative problem solving, and creative free thinking give us strength and wholeness. The following is now going to dive into the journey of discovering what your soul is craving and defining success for your own life’s path.

Actually getting into discovering your needs and defining success for yourself will be the first step because if you do not know what you are looking for, it is going to be very challenging to find it. 

We want to connect with our Authentic Self.

This will help to guide us in making big and small decisions daily that align with ourselves and light the path in life that we actually want. When we are clear with our own personal values and beliefs, you can make the moves that are right for you, not just what seems right for other people. This will keep us strong in our own identity throughout our lives and help to not be so influenced by others and comparing ourselves to other paths or mindlessly plugging into what seems right by society’s standards.

To discover what you value, you can consider just what’s important to you - you can even look up “list of core values” to get some inspiration. Pick like the top 10 and think of why these values popped out at you. Try to connect with each on a deeper level from your experiences and understand what is important and why those values are important to you. 

Some examples include: 

Authenticity

Achievement

Adventure

Authority

Autonomy

Balance

Boldness

Compassion

Creativity

Curiosity

Determination

Friendships

Fun

Growth

Happiness

Honesty

Humor

Influence

Inner Harmony

Knowledge

Leadership

Learning

Love

Loyalty

Meaningful Work

Peace

Pleasure

Respect

Responsibility

Security

Self-Respect

Service

Spirituality

Wealth

Wisdom

You can also think of things and people around you that you love and adore and consider what it is that you are drawn to positively in them. What do you see around you that really resonates? This can show what values you see in practice in daily life that really speak to you. Once you can find a handful of things that are most important to you, then you can consider how you want to live and integrate or sprinkle those values into each aspect of your life. How do you envision yourself living out each day? 

The visualization is key for imagining your personal authenticity and listening to your inner self or allowing yourself to quiet everything and everyone happening around you, quiet what you’ve been told and being aware of if you have an inner dialogue already molding how you are considering these questions - allow yourself to listen to your intuition or gut feelings - you don’t have to straight up meditate, but some form of spending time with yourself in intentional thought. 

This touches a little bit on how people like to describe manifestation but we are not simply hoping for something to happen for us right now, we are getting in touch with what it is we are even looking for in life and what we want to surround ourselves with to feel that we have our needs met. We are discovering our needs. 

A quick note on manifesting, I do appreciate it but this idea of manifestation on social media promises some holy force granting you your desires in a very purely existing and believing type of way. The flood gates opened in recent years with this line of thinking that by simply saying YOLO and “manifesting” your life's outcomes, it will all work out. In some way, things do work out, but it does not come from doing nothing. There are people on YouTube selling their assets and traveling for a year. If you remember someone online a while ago said they always wanted to go to Japan and decided to book a one way flight with no plan, no desires in motion, no security, and is now homeless in Thailand. We don’t want to manifest too close to the sun because even if some unknown sacred energy has our back, we still need to plan ahead and make the effort on our behalf to make our dreams work.

I find that knowing myself and where I want to go helps me meet my needs. In a tactical sense, what I have done in the past is just write out all of these categories in modern life such as financial, career, love, family, health, social, creative, travel/new experiences. I like to tap into my values and envision what my life would possibly look like and support my values and authentic self - envisioning those things while not even considering where I sit today, not at all tied to what is happening right now or my current situation. We are essentially daydreaming with some purpose here.

Once we have identified those things, we can get into actually achieving them. Setting small milestones along the way, starting with something this year, then thinking what does the next 5 years look like in this vision? Each year, I come back to this, see what I wrote, and more often than not, see that I actually exceeded what my big dream was for that year. 

Values change, priorities change, I think once a year is good practice to re-center, see how things are going, and see if it’s not jiving or if you are reaching these environments that you had dreamed about. 

I will say it is a good reminder when I am so in the routines of life to look back at my old notes and realize, wow, I was dreaming of this a couple years ago and now things are happening I would've even thought of back then. 

Plans really don’t go accordingly either so you have to realize this now and have grace with yourself. Just being open to opportunities and knowing how you define success and knowing what your personal needs are will be helpful in assessing if an opportunity is right for you and help make decisions, big and small, and slowly become the sum of your life. 

I didn’t go a ton into options of what success could look like, because it really is so personal and up to you to decide, but I hope some of this can be a reminder or a chance for you to check in with your values and goals because, they do change over time and what you are looking for in a job or house or city, etc. will morph as you do.  You must ensure your needs are met and you must know what your needs are in order to make sure they are met in all areas of your life and to then become successful for what that looks like in your world.