Or Are You Being Driven By Your Needs…?

I don’t care what anyone says, you may have qualifications coming out of your ears, you may have 20 years’ career experience behind you and an IQ of 160, but the fact remains that if you have unmet needs in your life these ould impede your progress, even without you realising it. These might be completely subconscious drivers, simmering away beneath the surface. This  will manifest in any number of ways. 

For instance, have you ever had conversation with someone who was really excited about something and were keen to share this with you.  But instead of feeling elated and pleased for them, you ended up resenting them?  Their good day was a trigger for you to have a bad one.  And then your day spiralled out of control as you grumpily drove to your next meeting, gesticulating at the driver who ‘cut you up’ at the traffic lights shouting crazily at them, “yeah, same to you – you **** Moron!!”

Unmet needs could include a need for security, love, friendship, power or control for instance.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessary just talking in the negative here. A need might include a strong or adventurous creative streak, or a uuge interest in interacting and entertaining people, but your career might not provide any outlets for your this, leaving you feeling unfulfilled and bored.

Maybe you have a very precise and ordered mind, but the environment you work in doesn’t require those skills. You may be an absolute natural at attracting and engaging with your customers, but instead you’re stuck in the back office working on strategic planning and feel like a canary in a cage with it’s wings clipped. If there is no outlet for your inherent talents you may have to comply and adapt in order to fit in. But that’s like keeping the lid on a pressure cooker.

I fell into this trap many times, trying REALLY hard to get things right, when I should have said to myself “look Wendy, stop and think. Is this where your talents are best spent?” I’d grown tired of working for someone who’s keen eye for detail was driving me insane. And the harder I tried to be absolutely perfect the worse it got.  Being a people pleaser got me absolutely nowhere.

What I didn’t know was that actually had I been a little more self-aware and made the conscious choice to apply my natural gifts and transition into something else, I would have found myself effortlessly moving into ‘the zone’. I would have been less stressed and lacking in confidence, because once I’d identified something wasn’t quite I could then proactively take action . Which is why our emotions have a very important role to play here.

Sometimes we may experience negative feelings and assume that these must be suppressed at all costs because we fear failure or being exposed as falling short in some areas. Consequently our deepest needs stay buried for years, and our true potential never sees the light of day.

But what if you were to stop for a minute and acknowledge an uncomfortable feeling as a sign or a warning flag
that’s madly waving at you which says: “hello, pay attention, we’re trying to tell you something – you need to take some action here”.

Interestingly if you were unable to feel any emotion this would seriously impact on your ability to make decisions, which is why emotions are crucial guides in our decision-making process.

At this point, if you are a man reading this, the subject of emotions and feelings might possibly be enough to bring you out in a rash or make you run for the hills. That’s absolutely fine and I want to reassure you that this blog isn’t about getting in touch with your ‘feminine side’ or encouraging you to sit around in a circle singing sad songs with a tambourine.

However, the word ‘emotion’ doesn’t necessarily equate with weakness or failure.

Emotions are warning lights for us to act upon. Feelings of slight unease could deteriorate into bigger and more profound emotions when these flags are ignored or dismissed altogether. But living with feelings of regret and guilt for instance, have so little energy attached to them they achieve precisely nothing. So, if you bring your needs to work either because you aren’t working to your strengths or haven’t acknowledged that there’s something amiss, then you might engineer situations in order to satisfy them and get a quick fix instead, which is a short term strategy. If your career doesn’t provide you with an outlet for your natural talents and skills your progress up the ladder may be slow, especially if you either a) don’t recognise there is a problem or b) aren’t prepared to reflect on this or change direction to look for something more rewarding (because presumably you’re too busy being grumpy). The energy will have stalled and you won’t be in the flow.

A need may become a blind spot that you don’t even realise you have, although to other people it probably stands out a mile. This blind spot may manifest in any number of ways, to your detriment. For example, if you insist on your colleagues conforming to your methods (because your method works for you but not for them) others may resist you, argue with you, contradict you and then eventually fall out with you completely. For
instance, if you’re a big picture person but your superior is a lover of fine detail and they spent more time than is absolutely necessary pointing out the minor flaws in your plans, this may grate a little, leading to some frank
exchanges and major differences of opinion. And who’dbe right here? Is anyone ever absolutely right?

We can be quite territorial when it comes to our needs and go to extreme lengths to preserve our ‘patch’ and may expect other people to conform or tow the line to preserve the status quo.

Listen and pay attention to the signals you are receiving through your feelings and think about how you are currently dealing with them. Sometimes we deal with our needs in odd and not very logical ways. This is your subconscious mind, like a little kid brother or sister, desperately trying to make things right for you but without the benefit of experience or balanced rational thought.

More strategies like this can be found in my new book “Discover Yourself On The Yellow Brick Road – 7 Core Principles of Career Success”