A short guided meditation encouraging daily self-inquiry about one’s most important needs and explicit communication of those needs to close others. The speaker urges identifying 2–3 critical needs each morning, articulating them clearly to important people, and also listening for others’ primary needs to maximize fulfillment and reduce suffering.
One of the most important things in relationships is being aware of what it is that you need on a daily basis. Because if you're not really aware of what you need, who do you think is going to become aware? So just facing that realistic point of view that if you aren't really very, very aware of your own needs, there's an extremely good chance that you're going to be left unsatisfied. So each day as you wake up, you wake up with a part of your inquiry being, what are at least the few most important needs for me today? And when I look at the most key people in my world, what are the three needs that I want to make sure that I get taken care of on that given day? Now the question comes, well, what kind of needs could these be and what would the specifics be? So it would be things like wanting to have an honesty or an affection or a certain trustworthiness or certain kind of interconnectedness, and these kinds of needs you would have throughout your day, like all of us, that are human. Yet if you don't really clearly identify, well, what is it that you need, what is it that you really want, what is it that's really important? And then come to a clear understanding, are you actually conveying this in words to the people that are closest to you? Are you actually articulating this on a consistent enough basis to where it's intuitively and intellectually obvious to those people around you what it is that you want? So let yourself do an assessment to see, am I actually conveying at least a few of what it is that I need? Examples to the people that are closest to me? And similarly, am I really important to listen? Am I really willing to make it important to listen to what the others around me, what the three important needs that they have and have that be clear that unless we're really able to navigate into the places that are most important and essential to each of us, we're really not going to be able to have a chance of living a satisfying life. So each day, just as you wake up, see if you feel motivated to identify as clearly as possible your three needs or more that are just really critical. And as you recognize them, just go inside and say to yourself and see if you're ready to say to yourself, when I'm with so and so person, I'm going to make sure that he or she understands that this is what I was really like ideally, and I want to make sure that I convey to them that I'm interested in what it is that are the few needs and desires that they have that are most important to them. So in that practice of continuously taking a greater interest in what it is that you yourself most need, and also what it is that those that are most important to you most need, and by not taking that for granted and actually going into the question every day and really dedicating yourself as much as you can, you're maximizing your potential to be fulfilled in life. And without doing that, you're clearly going to create more suffering. And with doing that, you're absolutely going to make yourself move in a direction to maximally take care of your own needs.
