Janice was a stay at home Mum aged 50 with grown up children still living at home.
Her husband struggled to run his own business and was often stressed and worn out when he came home so there was little time to talk and spend time as a couple. He had stopped including Janice in decisions about the business and they had no plans in place for their future. On the weekend he pursued his passion of restoring cars in the garage and would shut himself away for hours at a time.
Janice’s children were out living their own lives and removed from how their Mum’s life was quietly falling apart.
Janice was living a life of quiet desperation. She had lost any sense of her worth – she no longer felt needed or loved as a mother or wife. The strong bond she once had with her husband was in tatters and she worried about their financial future
She knew that going out to work could help her situation, but she believed she wasn’t young enough or smart enough to rejoin the workforce and was stuck in not feeling valued at home and not being confident enough to dip her toe into going back to work.
Janice cherished one area of her life that gave her incredible pleasure. It was planning and taking holidays with her girlfriends. For two weeks she could focus completely on herself and have fun exploring the world.
She relished each adventure – the only problem was the huge hangover she felt when she came home from holidays to the same unhappy home, marriage and her fears of not being enough and not having enough love.
How Scarcity Pervades our Daily Lives
Lynne Twist in her wonderful book “The Soul of Money” talks about how scarcity pervades our daily lives.
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever.
We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever.
Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack.
What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.”
The very foundation of not enough is the fear we won’t be loved and with love being the oxygen of life it cuts us off from our very life force.
How Do We Confront Our Scarcity Gremlins
When not enough rears its head, it illuminates areas of our life where our needs are not being met.
With most of us living busy lives, we’re often just going through the motions to get through our day and have no conscious understanding of if and how we are meeting our core needs.
While each human being is unique, we all share nervous systems that function in the same way, which means there are a finite number of human behaviour patterns that we all have in common – we just put them together in many different ways.
Renowned Coach & Speaker Anthony Robbin concluded that human beings are motivated by or can be motivated by six core needs.
The Six Core Needs is one such pattern that is regarded as one of the most influential in how we live and function as a society and critical to how we achieve happiness and fulfilment or live a life of quiet desperation since all behaviour meets one or all of those six needs.
| 1. Certainty | Assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure, safety and security. |
| 2. Uncertainty/Variety | The need for the unknown, change, new stimuli, adventure. |
| 3. Significance | Feeling unique, valued, important, special or needed, independence. |
| 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 and supporting others. |
The Six Core Needs are broken into two parts – the top four are needs of the Ego, and the last two are needs of the Spirit. The top 4 are the most compelling that must be met in a resourceful way before we can move on to 5 & 6 – Growth & Contribution.
When we consider that each of these core needs drives behaviour, we can better understand the impact they have on our own life.
Our strategies to meet our needs can be resourceful (fulfilling), neutral or unresourceful (frustrating). Unresourceful strategies are often our sticking points that create conflict and unhappiness.
The more resourceful ways we can meet our core needs the more happiness and satisfaction we will have access to in our world.
When faced with a decision, everyone will decide on the behaviour or actions to take based on their driving needs.
Our top 4 needs are being met every day as they have become crucial to our survival, but we all meet and prioritise them differently. As a general rule, we each have two top “driver” needs and the priority we choose will impact every aspect of our life. Every need is happening, but which one do YOU prioritise?
To work out your number one Driver, look at each need asking
“If I could only have one or the other, which would I choose?. Then take the one you choose and compare it with the next one down.
Example:-
Certainty or Variety – Certainty
Certainty or Significance – Certainty
Certainty or Connection/Love – Certainty.
Your No 1 Need is Certainty.
Then to determine your number 2, do the same with the remaining 3 needs.
Variety or Significance – Significance.
Significance or Connection/Love – Connection/Love.
Connection/Love or Variety. Connection/Love.
Your number 2 need is Connection/Love.
It’s time to choose to live a life where we’re meeting our needs resourcefully so we can be in the driver’s seat of our life rather than at the mercy of the winds of our environment/boss/partner/children.
By investing in a trusted coach to uncover how we currently meet our needs, we can develop resourceful, healthy and sustainable strategies to meet our six core needs.
We will then have a strong foundation to grow and create a life of meaning where we are fully available to be of service to others and contribute to the world because our own needs are being met.
Bel O’Mullane is a Coach/Facilitator at Feminine Wisdom Holistic Coaching. She specialises in helping women and men in Midlife to regain their Passion and Purpose so they can create a next chapter they love.
Bel runs the Sanctuary Women’s Community and monthly workshops on Keys to Living a Meaningful Life.
You can learn more about Bel at femininewisdom.com.au.
