“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” ~Sonya Friedman
In what feels like a previous life, I was a serial dater.
I looked for attention, validation, and identification in relationships. Each guy, however wrong for me, seemed like the perfect fit for my empty hand.
Maybe I hated being around his smoking, but I brushed it off and tried to breathe the other way.
Maybe our conversations were dull, but I thought it’d get better. Maybe I cringed at being dragged to another party, but I went because he wanted to see his friends.
This pattern continued for years.
I stayed in relationships that were clearly wrong for me and dated people I didn’t understand, who didn’t understand me, just to be in one.
It wasn’t until an insightful Zen class that I even became aware of the pattern.
As I cozied up in the gently lit room, hot tea in hand, surrounded by kindred spirits, the Zen master began the day’s lesson: needs.
Huh. I sipped the sweet jasmine tea and listened intently, totally blown away by what he was saying. Needs? What are those? Seriously, they weren’t even on my radar.
But they should’ve been. Needs are personal prerequisites to happiness.
We don’t learn to pay much attention to our needs, beyond the basics of food, water, and shelter. Television advertisements, popular culture, and the desires of others dictate our “needs.”
But I’ll bet that, on a soul level, you don’t need a cooler car, a bigger ring, whiter teeth, or more parties.
What do you need then? Answering this question can be one of the most powerful transformations of your life.
It was for me. After that class I started paying attention to my needs, and very slowly, I began attending to them.
I needed to embrace my introverted nature instead of ignoring it or boozing it out at parties every weekend. I needed alone time—space to dream, think, and be. I needed peace and quiet. Deep conversation. The freedom to spend a Friday night in without guilt.
At first, recognizing these needs was rough. I hated myself for having them; why couldn’t I be like the other twenty-one-year-olds? Why did bars overwhelm me? Why couldn’t I socialize with his rowdy friends?
It drove me nuts. So for a while, I continued to ignore my needs. I thought I’d just override them with more wrong relationships and parties I hated.
But eventually, I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I came to terms with them. Being aware of my needs was making room for me to actually start taking care of them.
It took years, but I’m finally at the point where I’m comfortable with my needs—and making them known. (more…)