One of the common desires that people experience in their life is summed up as a well-known saying – “I want to thrive, not just survive.” This can also be interpreted as enjoying life as opposed to simply existing. When there is a deep need for a person to change their way of life, the world has a way of presenting this in the form of a new opportunity to change.
Unfortunately, many people miss these opportunities because they are restricted by their own self-imposed limitations and negative mindsets. These negative mindsets can only manifest when a person is approaching their life from the wrong point of view.
The most important thing for us to understand when we want to transition from a life where we are merely existing, to a live that we truly enjoy is the idea of honesty and self-reflection. We can't even begin to think about truly enjoying our lives if we don’t first learn to understand ourselves deeply. What does this mean? It means understanding our needs and our desires at a very fundamental level.
Someone who has a very clear idea of their needs will be able to focus their lives and minds in a way that works towards their goals.
On the other hand, someone who is only focused on their desires and over-looking their needs may go about causing themselves more harm in the hopes of going after what they want.
This self-inflicted harm will leave them feeling worse off, even if they do somehow manage to attain the desire that they first set out to attain.
When we focus on our needs first, we can ensure that all the fundamental requirements for our life are met. This gives us a stable foundation to build upon, whereby we can then set about developing ourselves in a way that leads us towards the things that we desire as well.
Stable Terrain Versus Rocky Terrain
It doesn’t matter what kind of foundation you build for yourself, if it is built on an unstable terrain it will eventually come crashing down around you. Ensuring that your essential foundation is safe and secure though means you will be able to build upon it in a way that allows you to experiment with what comes next. Even if what you build upon that foundation collapses, your foundation will remain intact.
Enough with analogies, let’s be very clear on this.
When you have built a way of life that takes care of your essential needs, this can be considered as a stable foundation. Once you have this in place, your desires can then be sought after. Your desires sit on top of your needs, and so you can remove them at any point and simply return the stable foundation.
If you approach this problem from the other way around though, you are going to find great difficulty at every turn, because the energy you put into your desires will not be giving you the things that you really need.
Fundamentally
You absolutely must consider your needs, making them your number one priority. Work to attain these first, and once they have been attained then set out to achieve your added desires. This will allow you to enjoy your life more because you will have a concrete knowledge that no matter what happens while you are chasing your dreams, whether you succeed or fail, your essential needs are always met. From here, you are free to play around with whatever you want, and you will never be really concerned if things don’t go as planned.
This is the key to enjoying your life, to thriving, as opposed to simply existing or surviving.