These 5 Common Habits Are Keeping You From Getting Your Needs Met

Don’t worry, I’ve got a life hack to change that.

A few years ago, I found myself wandering through an ancient marketplace in the center of Rabat, Morocco.

I was teaching leadership development internationally through Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, which afforded me the opportunity to teach entrepreneurship in North Africa—guiding Moroccan students through the skills needed to take an idea and manifest it into the world as a business.

On Friday night, still jet lagged and sleepless, I stepped out onto the rooftop of the centuries-old home I was staying in and looked out onto a bustling marketplace below. At midnight, the medina was as busy as it had been mid-day: Packed full of people, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, eating, drinking tea, talking, debating, bantering, bartering.

I decided I wanted an adventure.

Old town Rabat is a vibrant, red brick walled city, built four or five stories high, in a series of concentric circles. The entire life of the city is contained within those circles: Shops, homes, restaurants, and grocery stores all leading out into narrow corridors. Everyone’s home has a different door on it—intricate iron doors, wooden doors of every color, doors decorated with tile and glass, each one more unique than the last.

So, I quietly left my accommodations and decided to walk the corridors.

The moment I stepped outside and into the bustle of midnight Morocco, I felt the most profound sense of aliveness. I didn’t speak the language, but I didn’t need to. The sense of community, of shared humanity, was so palpable that I felt deeply connected, even though I did not understand practically one word of what was being said around me.

Walking down one corridor, I noticed an elderly man standing still to the right side of the corridor ahead of me. His tanned, leathered skin was draped in a faded, linen djellaba. He wore worn slippers on his feet and held a cane in one hand.

As I walked closer, I noticed that he didn’t have any eyes.

If I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed this elderly man was homeless, a beggar with no one to care for him. But when I arrived, I learned that the homeless in Morocco are often taken in by locals: Put to work for a wage, given food and shelter.

As I approached, a teenage boy walked past the old man and gently placed a few coins into his hand. How nice, I thought to myself, walking past.

But then, turning the corner, I had an awakening. There I was, in Morocco, carrying a bag full of money over my shoulder. I had the means to help this man, too.

So, I turned around and walked back to the old man, gently opening his palm and placing a handful of coins inside of it. He said something to me in Arabic, the words and syllables lost to the language barrier. When I didn’t understand, he repeated himself.

“He says he sees you,” said another gentleman, standing nearby. “He sees you and he says thank you.”

And believe it or not, in that moment, face-to-face with a man with no eyes, I had never felt more seen in my life.

Being seen—like what this elderly man in Morocco had given me—is a basic human need. Being safe and secure—like how I was able to help him—is another. Everyone has these basic needs, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. But by becoming aware of your basic needs, you are better equipped to dig deeper into your thoughts, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. This awareness also supports your ability to treat yourself with understanding, kindness, and compassion when you unearth a pattern of thought or a behavior that you want to change.

While, as humans, we can have any number of wants and desires, genuine human needs can be distilled down into five basic ones:

1. The need to feel safe and secure.

   The baseline of necessities: Food, water, shelter, protection.

2. The ability to gain the “good things in life.”

   Here we’re not just talking about “good things” in terms of material gains. This also includes higher-vibration emotions like joy, abundance, love, and harmony: Feelings that go beyond the basics of “getting by.” It is a primal need of human nature to aspire to be better and to grow.

3. The need to be accepted.

   At our core, human beings are herd mammals—our need for community is instinctual. We require acceptance, inclusion, understanding, belonging, and love. And, while the need for acceptance is often centered around community, it is just as important that we accept ourselves.

4. The need to express ourselves.

   There are myriad ways human beings choose to express ourselves, and those ways either meet our needs or they do not. While we don’t always choose the methods of expression that serve us best, the need to express is essential, nonetheless.

5. The need to be valued and loved with unconditional positive regard.

   At the core of what we are all looking for as human beings is the ability to be ourselves, for better and for worse, and still be loved.

They might sound simple but meeting your basic needs is hardly an easy undertaking. Really, it’s the trying to get these needs met that trips most people up, leading to five crippling habits that can prevent you from getting your needs met.

Do any of these sound familiar?

1. An absence of clear directives.

   As human beings, we are experts at keeping ourselves distracted and confused. A confused mind is a resistant mind—all it wants to do is say “no”, no matter what it is presented with. (Yes, even if it’s good for you!) Without a clear vision and directives, the mind shuts down and you can’t move forward.

2. A lack of accountability.

   You cannot manage what you do not measure, and you set an unproductive precedent with yourself and others when there are no consequences for your behavior or theirs. Most people do not want to be held accountable for themselves, and they do not like holding other people accountable either. But without accountability, we just keep doing the same things repeatedly.

3. Rationalizing inferior performance.

   While you might be familiar with the voice of your inner critic, did you know you have an inner rationalizer as well? This voice justifies all the ways you are phoning it in on your life, as well as the ways the people who are supposed to be accountable to you aren’t holding up their end of the deal. This inner rationalizer needs an overhaul regarding what you expect and are willing to tolerate from yourself and others.

4. Planning in-lieu-of action.

   Have you ever spent an inordinate amount of time planning to do something and then never acted on it? You start that business in your head, you order a new set of exercise clothes online, you buy a library’s worth of self-help books—but then you never actually follow through on any of it? If this sounds familiar, then it’s time to start planning to act. Not tomorrow, not next week, but now. Wake up and make the decision that today is the day.

5. Aversion to risk and change.

   Humans are creatures of habit—even when it comes to broken and destructive habits that don’t serve us. Habits are recognizable, they are comfortable, and even when they’re not working for us, the familiarity of their dysfunction feels safer than the unknown of change. For the risk-averse, the only way to change a habit is for that habit to become more uncomfortable than the discomfort of the unknown.

Throughout my years of personal study and professional coaching, I have noticed that one or more of these five crippling habits are at the root of almost any struggle. These habits allow you to stay confused, have no accountability to yourself or others, expect little of yourself and less of others, remain trapped in a loop of never-ending planning with no action, and fear evolution and transformation.

But you can change that.

Here’s a great life-hack for you: Awareness is a key step to transformation. So, once you are aware of your unhealthy habits, you can reframe them—turning a bad habit into a positive directive. For example:

Rather than an absence of clear directions, it’s time to formulate a crystal-clear vision of where you are going.

Rather than a lack of accountability, take a moment to recognize and establish some firm consequences for neglecting to meet the standards you have in place for yourself.

Instead of rationalizing inferior performance, focus on what superior performance looks like for you.

Stop planning and take one clear action step—TODAY.

Confront your aversion to risk and change with a wiliness to lean into that discomfort and see where it takes you.

The only question now is: Which one will you choose?