Personal Needs – Boon and Bane for your Career

personal needsHow good do you know your most important personal needs? Are you aware of how much they influence your mood and motivation? How much they actually determine your path to becoming successful and satisfied?

You have probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow uses the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through while we and our personal situation develop over time. I think his findings are still relevant and they provide a good framework to explore a person’s most important needs in a little bit more detail.

So, what are your most important personal needs? If you can’t answer this question straight away and with total conviction, I suggest you sit back and think about it for a moment.

It’s a matter of fact that our personal needs have tremendous power over how we feel. If we take good care of them and they are respected by us – and others, we generally feel great! If they don’t get enough attention over a certain period of time, we inevitably feel something is missing and we start to get miserable.

To better understand your needs, it might help to think about situations in which you either felt amazing and fully loaded with positive energy. On the other hand try and recall phases in which you felt dreadful, sad or disappointed. Which core needs could have played a role here and what happened to them in each of these situations? Write them down and keep them handy!

Now think about your job or  your career. If you want to feel better, more energized and positive, try to answer the question of what you could do to get more of what you need on a regular basis? What tasks, projects, roles or actions would help you to get your needs fulfilled? If you manage to just get a little bit more of what you need every day, your level of happiness and satisfaction at work will automatically and consistently rise. At the same time, this process will help you to control and reduce your work-related frustrations.

Start now and make it a habit to regularly check how your actions and decisions are tailored to your particular personal needs.

 

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