What drives you? What do you seek? What do you want? Usually, it’s not the thing or goal per se that we really pursue, rather it’s the feeling we believe we will come with the getting. Money? Security or Freedom. Achievement? Significance or validation. Possessions? Status or comfort and so on ad infinitum.
We humans respond to emotional needs with physical ‘solutions’. Anxious? Here comes the comfort food! Lonely? Bored? Let’s go shopping! Or doom scrolling! You meet lots of interesting people that way… NOT!
Examine your habits, routines, desires, and cravings: “What emotional payoff am I attempting to create? What unspoken (or not fully understood/deeply examined) need lies beneath the surface?” We spend much of our time focused on symptoms, the leaves, rather than the underlying causes, the roots, of a challenge, concern, or circumstance.
There is a technique of critical thinking called ‘5 Why’s’ where with each explanation you again ask ‘Why’, each time going a level deeper until you finally get to the root cause. There is nothing magical about ‘5’, there could be 3 levels or 7. I’ve found that the more often I circle back over time, the more levels I find or at least a deeper understanding emerges of each level, and I find connections and subtleties previously hidden. At some level, all appetites are connected.
The Check List
What are you chasing?
How do you imagine you will feel when you eventually get it?
Why do you want/need that feeling? How self-aware are you? How well do you know you?
Is it a healthy need? Is there a better way to meet that need/achieve that feeling?
Finally, will enough ever be enough? Beware the hedonistic treadmill! You can never get enough of what you don’t need…
Closing Quotes:
“Man is a perpetually wanting animal.” – Abraham Maslow, 1908-1970
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” – William James, 1842-1910
“Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.” – Marshall B. Rosenberg, 1934-2015
“I think hunger is a natural state of being for most people. I mean, hunger is a desire—and you don’t only have physical hunger, you have emotional hunger. A lot of my hungers are, in fact, emotional.” – Roxane Gay, b. 1974
“I’m almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I’m always craving an emotional high… and I’m always wanting something to counter the low, when I’m anxious about work or arguing with family…” – Tommy Tomlinson, The Elephant in the Room
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
