It’s easy to visualize what our unmet needs look like.
A wife needs her husband to listen to her frustrations at work after a long day. A customer wants John to serve her every time when she comes to the store. Mary feels lonely because she has no friend to play with whenever Adam is absent from school.
We often assume these are our needs, but they are actually strategies.
Her husband is her preferred strategy of her feeling seen, heard, and understood. John is the strategy that a customer prefers for getting food from the grocery store. Adam is Mary’s choice for meeting her needs for fun and companionship.
If we remove these preferred individuals, the following situations work too:
Instead of her husband, the wife turned to her best friend to vent.
Mike can provide the same level of service to customers as John does.
Lucy and Emily are two other friends who are eager to play with Mary at school.
There are our universal human needs. And there are strategies that we apply to have our needs met.
Confusing the two can significantly reduce the chances of meeting our needs.
Don’t let strategy scarcity hold us back.
