Newsfeed

I totally forgot to mention this, but I made a card deck last year that has helped me explore and discover needs as part of my personal development.

I’ve used the deck to rapidly and easily identify and understand those parts of my life that were either helping me move forward or that were holding me back emotionally.

It’s also a radically insightful tool for…

• Relationship Development
• Customer Needs Research
• Design Research

In short, the cards are like “Google Maps for Your Needs and Feelings”

The list comprises of about 50-60 core needs published at Center of Non-Violent Communication’s website which has the following (incomplete) list of needs and desires:

CONNECTION acceptance affection appreciation belonging cooperation communication closeness community companionship compassion consideration consistency empathy inclusion intimacy love mutuality nurturing respect/self-respect safety security stability support to know and be known to see and be seen to understand and be understood trust

PHYSICAL WELLBEING warmth air food movement/exercise rest/sleep sexual expression safety shelter touch water HONESTY  authenticity integrity presence PLAY  joy humor PEACE  beauty communion ease equality harmony inspiration order AUTONOMY  choice freedom independence space spontaneity

MEANING awareness celebration of life challenge clarity competence consciousness contribution creativity discovery efficacy effectiveness growth hope learning mourning participation purpose selfexpression stimulation to matter understanding

(© 2005 by Center for Nonviolent Communication Website: www.cnvc.org Email: cnvc@cnvc.org Phone: +1.505-244-4041)

Why Use Needs As a Starting Point For Personal Development?

A major reason to use these “Needs” as my starting point for personal investigations was that, according to one school of thought, emotions (positive and negative ones) are always the result of an important need that’s either met (positive feelings) or unmet (negative feelings.)

Universal Needs, Individual Responses

Furthermore, while needs are relatively universal, the individual response to them are highly individual. I find this deeply fascinating.

For example, if I’m currently in need of community and that need is met, I may feel positively calm.

Someone else may feel positively excited for the same reason.

If my need for community isn’t met, I may feel negatively frustrated while someone else may feel negatively bored:

So, to better understand my emotions (and my actions that come from them) I use the inventory of needs to navigate an otherwise complex ball of golden twine also know as my psyche.

There are a bunch of ways to use the cards, but I’ve found two that work the best for me.

Strategy 1: Drive By Intuition

The first one is simply to spread out the cards unsorted and start to pick out those cards that I intuitively respond to. Once I’ve found a handful or so needs that I’m interested in, I start to discuss them with a partner or coach or simply with myself.

The main questions then are:

• Is this a met or unmet need?
• How does it make me feel?
• If it’s an unmet need, what can I do to change that?

The last question can quickly drive out an action I can take today to make my life better.

Strategy #2: Dump and Sort

The second strategy is even simpler and just as effective to get to a selection of met, unmet and irrelevant needs:

For each card, I ask myself:

• Is this an important, met need?
• Is this an important, unmet need?
• Is this an irrelevant need at the moment?

Going through each card, I wind up with three stacks: MET, UNMET and IRRELEVANT.

I then focus on the UNMET needs again because they contribute to my feeling the most unease and devise action items to solve them.

Needs are Values

I never really connected with when people, and more often, companies, talked what their values. It just seemed so abstract. Co-incidentally, discovering important needs also becomes the list of my personal values. Things that I value above all else.

Still got a few packs

**Sorry, all sold out at the moment! **

Last but not least, I still have a few packs that I produced last year. If you’re ready to turn on your own “Google Maps to Your Psyche” and discover and understand yourself more deeply, let me know. I’m selling them for $47 per pack.

Just shoot me an email at Alexis dot Rondeau at Gmail dot com and, if I still have a set, I’ll mail it to you.

Cheers!