Three basic needs drive our actions. Understanding what they are and how to reframe them is important to achieving peace with ourselves and others.

TAKEAWAYS:

Humans all have three basic psychological needs: security, approval, and control. Our wants can almost always be traced back to one of these. This can often help us understand people’s actions.

We can recognize that sometimes a need for physical safety is real, and external. But if that physical safety is already there, then the rest of our wanting is psychological. Our psychological need for security, approval, and control is always already met from within us – we have everything we need. This recognition helps us let go of trying to make other people or situations meet our psychological needs.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE:

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Conscious Leadership Group, https://conscious.is); see especially Commitment #11, on being the source of our own security, approval, and control.

• The Welcoming Prayer
  https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/welcoming-prayer-method/

• Centering Prayer
  https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-method/

• Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course: there are many certified teachers of this excellent 8-week course, both online and in person. One option is available completely free at the link below, courtesy of an experienced, certified teacher who wants to make MBSR more widely available. Packed with valuable information, videos, links, etc. 
  https://www.palousemindfulness.com/ 

Through Riggs Integral Coaching, Susan Riggs works with individuals and teams to help them live and work with depth, purpose, and joy. She is a certified Integral Coach® through New Ventures West, an associate certified coach through the International Coaching Federation, and a certified Myers-Briggs® trainer. She has many years of experience working with community health centers and other nonprofit organizations.

Through Serenity and Health, Donna Chacko shares information, inspiration, and perspective in her monthly blog to help others enhance their physical and mental health and grow closer to God. She practiced medicine for 40 years, first as a radiation oncologist and later, as a family medicine doctor. What she learned from caring for cancer patients, and later immigrants and the homeless in Washington, D.C., continues to influence her message. She is the author of “Pilgrimage: A Doctor’s Healing Journey.”