BASIC HUMAN NEEDS

These are conditions within the person that must be fulfilled so that he/she is truly whole, human, and healthy. These needs are deeper than mere wants or tendencies. Failure to get the basic needs especially the psychological ones leads to sickness.

Physical (physiological) Needs

These must be fulfilled to maintain all biological processes needed for physical survival. They are: food, sleep, rest, work, warmth and sanitation.

Psychological needs are based on two main needs as follows:

• To feel worthwhile to self and others.

• To love and be loved.

Self Actualization

Be yourself.

Accept yourself as you are and start from there. Learn to emotionally tolerate imperfection in yourself. It is necessary to intellectually recognize your shortcomings, but disastrous to hate yourself because of them. No one ever succeeds in a lifetime in fully expressing or bringing into actuality all the potentials of the real self. It is always imperfection throughout life, moving towards an idea goal but never reaching. We can always learn more, perform better, and behave better.

Self-Esteem

It is your own opinion about yourself.

To have a healthy esteem means to appreciate the worth of, to think highly of, to admire, to treasure, and to value yourself for who you are, a child of god. It is a confident feeling about yourself, a good opinion of yourself, and a good regard for yourself.

Why would you have a poor opinion about yourself in any area of your life?

One reason why you may have a low opinion about yourself is that you compare yourself with other people. In terms of such comparisons you’ll almost all the times feel inadequate.

Recognize that:

• You are unique in your own way, and there is no one like you and that makes you great.

• You are a human being, and in that regard equal to every other human being.

Love

Love is a positive viewpoint.

To use love as a force in your life, simply change your attitude or viewpoint towards a troublesome situation, event or person. Love is always a workable solution when it is seen as a positive viewpoint. Consider how many things there are that disturb you at present. The reason these things disturb you is that you are seeing them with a negative viewpoint.

To love yourself means being true and faithful to yourself, being peaceful with yourself, coming to terms with yourself, seeing yourself from a positive viewpoint only, or making peace with yourself. Facing yourself bravely and realistically without any deceit or fear. These you do to yourself always, all the time, without a time limit. Love is always a “give and take basis” so while we do all these, we also need to do so to our fellow human beings.

Security/Safety

The feeling of insecurity is based upon a concept or belief in inner inadequacy.

If you do not feel that you do not “measure up" to what is required you feel insecure or unsafe. A great deal of insecurity is not due to the fact that our inner resources are actually inadequate but due to the fact that we use a false measuring stick. We need to be continuous pursuers of our life goals and not thinking about ourselves in terms of absolute (ideal, perfect), which definitely induces insecurity.

Meta Needs (virtues)

This results from fulfilment of both physical and psychological needs and could not be realized on their own.

It is only when the physical and the psychological needs are fulfilled that you can reach the Meta needs. Some of them are: truth, justice, peace, uniqueness, riches, unity, sympathy etc.

THE SELF-IMAGE

Self-image is our own conception of the ‘sort of person I am,’ that is, ones own evaluation of oneself.

It is a ‘premise’, a base, or foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this, our experiences seem to verify and thereby strengthen our self-image; a vicious or beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is gradually set up.

That is;

• It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves.

• Most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in childhood. From all these we mentally construct a self (or a picture of a self).

• Once an idea or belief about ourselves goes into picture it becomes true as far as our personality is concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.

Question: What ‘sort of person’ do I consider myself to be?

Self -image becomes a golden key to living a better life.

All your actions, feelings, behavior, even your abilities are always consistent with this self-image. You ‘act like’ the sort of person you consider yourself to be. You literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or will power.

The man who conceives himself to be a ‘failure type’ will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions or his will power, even if opportunity is literally dumped on his lap. The person who conceives himself to be a victim of injustice, one ‘who was meant to suffer’ will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinion. A schoolboy who sees himself as an ‘E’ type student will invariably find that his report card bears him out. He then has ‘proof’.

Because of the objective ‘proof’ it very seldom occurs to a person that his trouble lies in his self-image or has own evaluation of him/herself. The self-image can be changed. Numerous case histories have shown that one is never too young or too old to change his self-image and thereby start to live a new life. It has seemed difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality or his way of life because nearly all his efforts have been directed to the circumference of the self rather than the center.

The real secret to really ‘live,’ that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. That is;

• You must find yourself acceptable to ‘you.’

• You must have a wholesome self-esteem.

• You must have a self that you can trust and believe in.

• You must have a self you are not ashamed to ‘be’ and you can feel free to express creatively rather than hide and cover up.

• You must have a self that corresponds to reality so that you can function effectively in the real world.

• You must know yourself, both your strengths and your weaknesses, and be honest with yourself concerning both.

• Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of ‘you’ being more than you are not, nor less than you are.

• When this self – image is intact and secure you feel good. When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure.

• When it is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of you feel self-confident. You feel free to be ‘yourself’ and to express yourself. You function at your optimum.

• When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with.

Conclusion

What each of us wants deep down is more life, happiness, success, peace of mind and soul. Whatever your own conception of supreme good may be it is to be experienced in its essence as more life. When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life.

To the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our god given talents, and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self-condemnation, and/or self-hate, we literally choke off life force available to us and turn our back upon the gift which our creator had made to us.