The Best Approach to Self-Care: How to Attend to Your Unmet Needs

“Caring for your body, mind, and spirit is your greatest and grandest responsibility. It’s well-nigh listening to the needs of your soul and then honoring them.” ~Kristi Ling

There’s something I haven’t told many people. I kept it to myself considering it clashed with my “identity” and the image I hoped to project (hello, ego!).

I’ve been creating content and working in the spirituality and personal minutiae fields for a number of years. Although I don’t strive to wilt like Buddha, there’s a part of me (call it my spiritual ego) that expects unrepealable things of me, such as to remain at peace, content, and emotionally well-regulated most of the time. Without all, isn’t it what meditating daily is supposed to do?

Well, last year, I did not finger that content or peaceful. I felt quite depressed, and rarely did meditation make me finger better.

So I turned to wine. Most evenings, I had a couple of glasses of wine (sometimes three or plane four) to forget how bored and unhappy I was.

“I’m a fraud,” I kept thinking while sipping on the red liquid.

I tried other things (besides wine) to finger largest that helped, like gratitude journaling and spending increasingly time in nature. Although these things did modernize my mood, there was still a void within me that plane gratitude didn’t manage to fill.

It was when I read an vendible well-nigh humanistic psychology and the use of Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs in therapy that I became enlightened of the real rationalization of my “wine habit”: unmet needs.

“What do I really need?” I started asking myself every time the impulse to pour a glass of wine arose.

At first, I’d still requite in to the wine, probably out of habit. But eventually, using Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs as a guiding tool, I was worldly-wise to identify which of my needs weren’t satisfied and what deportment I needed to take to fulfill them.

“That’s true self-care,” I thought.

I realized that a self-care plan requires increasingly than a checklist downloaded from Pinterest. It demands a life inventory, identifying our unmet needs, and taking the right deportment to fulfill them.

Simply put, a rainbow suffuse isn’t the weightier solution for everyone or any issue.

I’d like to share with you my new tideway to self-care that aims to satisfy our deepest needs rather than providing short-lived comfort.

Step 1: Wilt enlightened of your unmet needs.

The first step is awareness. Although it’s not necessary to use Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs to identify what we want, it provides a helpful framework to guide our reflections.

I recommend going through each level of the pyramid and taking the time to reflect on your life. A good way to do this is through journaling.

Below are a few reflection questions for each category of needs to help you identify what’s missing in your life and may be preventing you from thriving.

Physiological Needs

These include vital physical needs like eating, drinking water, and sleeping. Self-care at this level comprises rest and giving our persons the proper fuel and nutrients to function optimally. You could ask yourself:

• Am I eating unbearable whole and nutritious supplies to nourish my body?
• Do I finger rested when I wake up in the morning?
• On a scale of 0-10, what’s my energy level most of the time?

Although most of us have no issue feeding ourselves, a deficiency in rest and nutrients is fairly common. For example, without running a few thoroughbred tests, I discovered that my iron levels were too low, which explained my low energy. Without supplementing for a few weeks, I started feeling better.

Security and Safety Needs

Safety includes income and job security, health, and the environment in which we live. Questions you could ask yourself are:

• Do I have sufficient financial resources to sustain myself and finger comfortable?
• Do I often finger stressed and anxious? Do I have tools to help me relax?
• What’s the state of my physical, mental, and emotional health?
• Overall, do I finger safe?

Social Needs

These are the needs for love, acceptance, and belonging, which include friendships, romantic love and intimacy, and family life.

The void I felt in the past two or three years mostly came from unmet needs in this category. Several people I knew moved away, and my relationship with a partner ended. Plus, without a year of isolation, I forgot how to connect with people, and the idea of socializing scrutinizingly gave me uneasiness (even though that’s what I needed the most).

Here are a few questions you could ask yourself to uncover unfulfilled needs in this category:

• Are there people virtually me whom I can count on?
• Do I finger wonted and supported by the people virtually me?
• Do I regularly interact and yoke with people, or do I often finger lonely?
• Overall, are my relationships satisfying to me?

Esteem Needs

These are the needs for appreciation and respect, which include having a healthy sense of self-worth and feeling valued.

I worked nonflexible in my twenties and early thirties on improving my self-esteem, but I can still remember the treasonous impact of low self-worth on my quality of life when I was younger. Self-esteem needs are foundational for having healthy relationships, taking superintendency of our bodies, and pursuing our goals and dreams.

Questions you could ask yourself are:

• Do I finger appreciated at work, at home, and within my group of friends?
• Is my self-talk mainly positive or negative?
• Do I believe I have good qualities? Do others fathom those qualities?
• Overall, do I finger good well-nigh myself at work, at home, and in social circles?

Self-Actualization Needs

Maslow specified self-actualization as “fulfilling our potential.” It includes feeling a sense of purpose and growing and evolving as a person.

For most of my life, I had “purpose anxiety.” Nowadays, living my purpose is one of the most important aspects of my life and what sustains me in difficult times.

Doing what we love and using our gifts toward a vision that matters to us gives us fuel to move through challenges.

You could ask yourself:

• Do I finger like my life is meaningful and has a purpose?
• Does the work I do fulfill me?
• Am I using my skills and natural strengths in ways that are enjoyable to me?
• Am I constantly growing and evolving?

Self-Transcendence Needs

Self-transcendence is well-nigh feeling unfluctuating to others and all life and vicarial accordingly. At this level, we have a desire for contribution, service, and impact. The need for a spiritual practice and connecting to a higher power are moreover part of self-transcendence.

Questions you could ask yourself are:

• Am I making a positive impact on others and the world?
• Do I finger unfluctuating to others, nature, and perhaps a higher power?
• Am I satisfied with my spiritual practice and/or the legacy I’m leaving?

Leisure Needs

I’ve widow this category to the list considering I believe play is flipside important contributing speciality to our well-being.

A lack of fun and laughter can negatively impact our mental health—at least, that’s been my wits in the past few years. Along with unmet social needs, a lack of play was my biggest source of dissatisfaction. I had wilt overly serious and forgot how to have fun. I couldn’t plane remember that last time I had laughed.

Questions you could ask yourself are:

• Do I have fun at work, at home, and in my self-ruling time?
• How often do I laugh?

Step 2: Identify what requires your firsthand attention.

After going through these questions, I rated each category of needs on a scale of 0 to 10, assigning 10 to the areas that most required my attention. For me, those areas were leisure and social needs.

This meant that doubling lanugo on my meditation practice or having a daily untried smoothie would likely not be unbearable to unravel my “wine habit.” Or, largest said, they weren’t what I truly needed.

I needed to have increasingly fun, laugh, and play. I needed to yoke with people more, have deep and meaningful conversations, and expand my social circle.

Once you’ve identified which of your needs aren’t fulfilled, you’re ready to spitball solutions.

Step 3: Spitball ways to fulfill unmet needs.

Once we know what’s “off,” we can think of ways to modernize the situation.

“How can I have increasingly fun?” I asked myself.

I reflected upon times when I had the most fun in the past and wrote those down. I moreover wrote any other ideas that came to mind, from watching funny dog videos to going to a spectacle show. I made a list of ways to have increasingly fun in my periodical and made an effort to do at least a few of them every week.

Step 4: Choose one small whoopee and schedule it.

After brainstorming, it’s time to take action. I recommend picking at least one idea on your list and scheduling it.

A few weeks ago, I decided to shepherd a Kundalini yoga matriculation followed by a dinner with the teacher and fellow students. It was an opportunity to meet new people.

I knew that, as an introvert, the risk I would cancel at the last minute was high. Therefore, I immediately purchased the ticket and scheduled the matriculation in my planner. I’m glad I did; I met new people, laughed, and had interesting conversations.

Self-care activities are increasingly likely to happen when we schedule them.

. . .

I could summarize this vendible with one question: “What do you really need?”

Taking the time to make a life inventory, identify our unfulfilled needs, and then take whoopee to satisfy them—that’s proper self-care.

The difficulty is that, sometimes, we don’t plane know what we need! I find Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs a helpful tool to guide our self-reflection.

I hope it can help you too.

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