Painful Needs, Healing Desires

When we're creating change in the outside world, we generally do it for one of two reasons: because we need it or because we want it. Both of those things come from different places and we need to be aware of those differences to be able to make better choices for ourselves.

We're starting with a rather large assumption for the purposes of this blog, that basic needs are met. You are fed, you have clothing, you have shelter, and you are physically safe. When these things aren't met, your desires are based on those basic needs. That's totally normal and as it should be.

What prompted this blog was a question somebody asked about what to do when you're impatient with the external world. There are many of us out there that are not patient people. Have you ever questioned why that is? What causes us to feel impatient?

Impatience comes from a feeling of being not in control of the external world. Things aren't moving fast enough. We're annoyed. We don't like the way things are happening. We don't like what other people are doing and so we get impatient with those people and things. The common denominator among all of these things is a desire for control over the people and things around us.

The desire for control creates a need for change. Why do we need things to change? So that we can feel better internally. The impatience makes us unhappy. The only way to fix that unhappiness is to remove the thing that causes the impatience - change the external world so that I can feel better.

Unfortunately this isn't how it works. When the external world is annoying to us, it is us that needs to change not the external world. It is our job to question why the external world is making us uncomfortable or in this case impatient and then heal or release whatever we find. It is not the job of the external world to change. The simple fact is we usually don't have control over and can't do anything about it anyway. So we simply take control over the thing we can control - ourselves. In doing so we can feel better without ever trying to force the external world to change for the purposes of our own comfort.

At no point does this stop us from wanting change. It is normal and human to want to create better for ourselves, whatever better means for that individual. There is nothing stopping us from making improvements to our lives and our external circumstances.

When we do it from a place of wanting to the idea is that we're already okay where we are. We don't need anything to change. We're not attached to the change in any way, we'd just prefer if things were a little different. This gives us some extra power that we don't have when we need things.

It gives us the power of time because we're not in a hurry. The lack of need means we don't have to be in a rush.

It gives us the power of conscious choice. We have time to be picky and figure out exactly what we want and what would make us happy. We don't have to make snap decisions and we don't have to make decisions from pain. We can make choices based on what we truly want within ourselves and focus on that.

It gives us the power of focus. We can focus on what we're creating. We don't have to force anything. We're not fixing problems. We can create consciously create with help from the Universe.

It gives us the power of rest and relaxation. We're not in a hurry. We have the power to figure out exactly what we want. We're not stressed about it. We're not anxious about it. We can trust and move forward calmly and intentionally.

My own life is an example of the difference between need and want. For a long time I needed my external world to change so I could feel better. I didn't have enough self-awareness to manage myself within the experience and allow myself to be okay anyway. I wanted to force external change so that I could feel better.

As I moved along on my journey, I kept shifting myself but the external world didn't change. I wasn't able to force the change that I thought I needed. What I learned through that experience was that I could be okay anyway and that the changes I thought I wanted or needed to make were mostly based on pain.

No, we're not going for dissociation. Learning to be okay in circumstances that you don't necessarily want doesn't mean you have to dissociate. It means you have to shift your perspective. You have to change how you see things. That means that you heal the pain in your perspective. If you spend a lot of time being impatient, then you heal and shift the perspective that causes you to be impatient. It's your perspective that's causing the pain, not the external world. The external world just is.

I still want external change but I just don't need it anymore. I learned to be okay where I am. By doing that I allowed myself to figure out what I actually wanted. Some of what I originally wanted was based on the pain of needing change. I was settling and taking what I thought I could get instead of giving myself the space to create what  I truly wanted. I was forcing myself down some paths, particularly in my career, that I wasn't going to be happy with. That was all based on the pain I was creating by needing change to be okay within myself.

By healing internally I gave myself the freedom, space, time, and patience to create what I truly wanted. I did make some minor changes to my reality by doing things like changing boundaries in relationships, but those are fairly minor things compared to many of the other goals that I have. Even with those minor changes I made them consciously and not from a place of need or pain. I didn't force anything on anybody. I shifted how I showed up in the world and it offered the people around me a change in the relationship. I didn't engage in any arguments to do it. There was no power struggle or fight for control. I just simply shifted myself.

If I had been doing those things from pain there would have been arguments. There would have been a fight for control. But when we move from a place of self-awareness without pain, we can do things in such a way that we can avoid some of the discomfort pain can cause. No, that's not going to be a perfect system and it won't work all the time. It's highly scenario specific and in my case it did work just fine. Just recognize that when a fight is initiated, it's coming from pain. That fight is because somebody is objecting to something that's causing them pain. The more we can be aware of that, the more compassionate we can be. Even in the argument, you have the ability to remain self-aware and not need to defend the shift you made within yourself or make anybody do anything.

The bottom line is that when you heal the pain you remove the need. Need comes from internal pain. We have the power as individuals to heal that internal pain by being aware of ourselves, being willing to do that work for ourselves, and being open to changing our perspectives so that they don't cause us so much pain.

Next time you decide that something needs to change in your external reality, figure out whether you need it because it's causing you pain or you want it because you're trying to better your life for yourself. If you discover a need within yourself heal it first then decide what you truly want. You will get a better result. You will feel better because you did that work.

It's not easy work, but you will be much happier with the result in your life if you do it.

Love to all.

Della