What do you really need?

“Live simply means seeing the difference between “too” and “enough,” stresses coach Mark Berg. To learn this, he suggests looking for your “balance point”. To do this, we need to revise our values ​​and aspirations. Let’s start.

Looking for the main

The first step towards simplicity: to understand what is important to us, what our soul is for. The revision begins with a question to oneself: “What are my deepest needs?”

Here it is worth listening to the main expert on this topic – the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. In his view, our needs are ordered like the “floors” of a pyramid. At the base are physiological needs (food, sleep). The next level is built on top of it – the need for security. Then comes the turn of social needs, needs for evaluation, recognition and self-development. All these are components of a harmonious life.

With vital needs, everything is clear. We will not saturate the body – we will die. We cannot go long without sleep. In the case of psychological, emotional, spiritual needs, it is more difficult for us to notice the feeling of “hunger”. We tend to confuse needs and desires, and this confusion can become a source of internal conflict.

Needs and desires

It is necessary to recognize the difference. Satisfaction of needs plays an important role on the way to balance. Desires are another matter. They may not correspond to any need. Desire does not lead to harmony; rather, it breaks it. It takes us away from the main thing, luring us with illusory benefits.

For example, we want to work to meet the need for security. We get money that we can spend on food, clothes, rent. But if we want to buy a prestigious brand suit for them, do we think at this moment that it will be colder for us in a simpler suit? Obviously, we are driven by something else.

Marketers have studied this mechanism well. They try to convince us that our desires are really our needs. Posters and commercials on TV describe a new phone or a trip to the end of the world, as if this is exactly what we cannot do without. True, we did not realize this until we saw the ad.

But are there useful desires? Of course, if they meet our needs for self-development, if we can find in them a source of motivation, passion, dedication. Unlike the emotional “fast food” that consumer culture offers us, true desires can become an endless source of joy and meaning.

Change behavior

To live a full life, we need food, protection from the vagaries of the weather, valuable relationships with people, intellectual and spiritual food. What else? What is in our lives right now that we really need? It’s not about turning into ascetics and moving to a remote village. Rather, it is about getting rid of what burdens us, takes us away from thoughts about the main thing.

Making a list of important things will allow you to take a different look at how we live and how we want to live. In the process, it will be necessary to question some habits and admit that we spend a lot of time on things that are not worth it. This is a painful but necessary stage, after which we will feel better.

In the future, this will facilitate the choice that we have to make. We are constantly evolving, our priorities are changing. Carrying your core values ​​and aspirations through all the changes is the task to keep in mind. By realizing what is pulling us down, we can act. It means making commitments: consume less, make smarter choices, maintain the relationships we’re in, don’t waste time on trifles. Leaving around us only what resonates with us at a deep level, we will find happiness.