Getting What You Need

Image by Kai Fotografien • via Flickr

In part one of this two part series, we looked at how fantasies can be destructive to a healthy, growing relationships and explored how we could begin the process of turning those fantasies into a positive way to improve your reality. If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest that you go back and read Living the Fantasy Life now.

Identify the need

The first step in translating your fantasy into reality is to identify the underlying need. This may not always be straight forward, as my next example will show. In the mid-Eighties, I was a young husband and father, with no job and a family to support. Both Dawne and I wanted to run our own business and get filthy stinking rich in the process. One of the things that we did in an effort to determine what business to enter into was to attend endless seminars, most of which had the sole purpose of selling us some product or business opportunity without actually delivering any real value.

At these seminars, Dawne and I usually provided a check and balance for each other, saving us from spending thousands of dollars that we really couldn’t afford. There was, however, one seminar selling a course on buying and selling bonds that Dawne couldn’t attend, so I went alone. Would you be surprised if I told you that I bought the course? The facts of the matter are this: I spent the rent money on a course that we couldn’t even use, because we didn’t have the money or credit to invest in bonds in the first place! So what on earth possessed me to think that this would be a worthwhile investment?

The answer is, of course, a fantasy. In my fantasy, Dawne agreed with the wisdom of my choice. In the fantasy, we used the course materials to start buying and selling bonds using other people’s credit, and retired wealthy in 5 years. In the fantasy, I was a genius…

Analyzing this little side trip from reality with 20-20 hindsight yields up a couple of points: The emotional key to my indulgence was to be the one who relieved the financial stresses on our family and made us all happy. That seems pretty straight forward, doesn’t it? Sure it does, and you wouldn’t be wrong to stop there, except that there is a little more to the scenario than just relieving financial stress.

Of all the different ways of making money, why did my fantasy take on such a grandiose aspect? Because it wasn’t enough to just relieve the stress. I needed to be the Hero who saved the day and how do heroes save the day? Why they tackle insurmountable odds, gamble it all on a do-or-die gambit, and come out on top of course. That’s what makes them Heroes.

I needed to be seen as a Hero, because I felt responsible for our financial straits.

Recognize Reality

Once you have identified your underlying need, the next step is to recognize how the people in your life may or may not be fulfilling that need. Look at their words and actions honestly, and without judgement for the answer to this question. It is possible that they have been doing what you need and you simply didn’t notice, because it didn’t follow your movie script.

Again in 20-20 hindsight, my family already viewed me as a hero, if for no other reason that I never gave up. I went out every day looking for work, often taking jobs that I hated (ever try your hand at telemarketing?) and generally doing whatever needed to be done to ensure that my children had a roof over their heads. I suspect that the core reason for their regard was that I never gave up hope for a better future.

At that time of my life, I couldn’t see how they felt, regardless of how they showed me, because it didn’t fit my model of how it should be. My fantasy blinded me to the greater reality, and ultimately prevented me from receiving exactly what it was that I was craving. Harsh, but true.

This is why it is so important to identify the underlying need; It may be that it is already being fulfilled, and your fantasies are actually preventing you from seeing and experiencing all the love that is around you right now! But what if it is actually an unfulfilled need, something that your loved ones aren’t providing you?

Meeting the Need

Start by communicating your need to your loved ones. Remember that you can’t force someone to feel a certain way, but you can bring it to their attention. It could be something as simple as a miscommunication, easily rectified. Let them know what you need in a gentle manner, and have a conversation. Try not to let it degenerate into a fight, that will only make matters worse. Just so that we are clear, if you have correctly identified the core need, this is an emotionally charged issue for you, so don’t discount the possibility of raised emotions if the conversation does not proceed as smoothly as you would prefer.

No matter how your conversation turns out, the last, and most important point is this: take ownership (responsibility) for the feeling and need. It’s ok to need something from the people you love. It’s not ok to demand it from them. Ask what, if anything, that you could be doing to sponsor the reaction you are looking for from others? Are you behaving in a manner consistent with the way you want others to treat you?

If you, like me, want to be seen as the Hero, ask yourself honestly, “Am I behaving like a hero in my day to day life?” Buying that course was not acting like a hero. I know, because Dawne told me so. At volume, I might add…. Spending the rent on the course actually worked against the very point of the fantasy: alleviating and overcoming our financial difficulties. By acting on the dictates of my daydream, I was actually acting against the very problem I was trying to solve, making matters worse rather than better. My internal need certainly wasn’t met, because I was trying to resolve it without the benefit of a solid grounding in reality.

It is my belief that these core issues are accurate markers of our true selves. Over the course of our lives we develop strategies and behaviours that are designed to help us through various situations. The problem is that these minor personality adjustments, over time, change us away from who we really are, resulting in core needs getting unfulfilled because we are no longer behaving in a manner consistent with those needs. We are no longer acting like the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover that we really are.

My Advice

It comes down to this: you have to behave in a manner consistent with how you want to be seen and treated. If you wish to be seen as a Lover, start acting like one. The same goes for a King, a Warrior, a Magician, or anything else that you may require to feel loved and appreciated.

My advice is to start small. It took you years to learn your current set of behaviours and you are unlikely to change them overnight. Find small ways to introduce the new behaviours into your life, and grow from there. Alternatively, there are a host of new technologies available that can help to speed this process up. Just Google Energy Psychology or NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) for some excellent resources. Dawne and I both use NLP techniques in our day to day lives, and cannot recommend it enough as a powerful tool for self change and actualization. We are just beginning to explore the relatively new field of Energy Psychology, and the early results are encouraging enough for both of us to recommend it here as a worthwhile area of exploration.

Join me next Monday for part 3 of this series, in which we will take a look at the final stage of getting what you need through The Art of Giving.

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