Let me ask you a question; Do you know the difference between: “Getting What I Need vs Getting What I Want”?
What is the difference between these two concepts: Need and Want? Perhaps a “Need” is something that we absolutely must have in order to survive. Like, air, water, food, shelter, love, relationships, and what else? Perhaps a “Want” is something that we desire, but is not necessary to our very survival. Like a new pair of shoes, or a dinner out, or a vacation, or a new car and what else?
So what happens when the line becomes blurred on these two things? Imbalance, spiraling down, things get better? What I have observed is that we become confused at what we absolutely need and what we want in order to feel better about ourselves, or something that has happened to us.
We have been accustom to “having” what we want, when we want it and we move the want to items into our need column and we then move into “expecting” to have what we want when we want it. We almost become like a toddler in the throws of “NO”! and a full blown temper tantrum. When we step back and look at our behavior, we think: “Wow, that was not what I wanted to do, or act like or say….why in the world did I lash out like that, just because I didn’t get what I wanted?”
That’s a great question to ask yourself! Why, what put you over the edge? There are a billion answers, just like the billions of people on the earth. It all comes down to our perspective of what we think we need vs what we really need and that is totally driven by our “voluntary choices”.
I have a challenge for you; just for the next few hours, write down everything that you do, say, or buy that you do not even think about. You just do it, you just say it, you just buy it without thinking about how much it costs, how it will impact another person or what gets done during these next few hours.
Look at that list. What was a need? What was a want? What was a “no brainer” (meaning you didn’t even take into consideration that it might be a need or that it might be a want)? What pattern do you see there? I bet that you were acting on impulse and doing the later the third choice of doing things in a “no brainer” mode.
You see we rarely stop and think about what we do from moment to moment. This is a “habit”. Our habits over time can serve us and lift us up, or they can destroy us.
