Practice Honest Expression: Skill 5: Identify the difference between universal needs and the strategies to meet them
Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 3: Honest Expression, see Skill 1: Ask the other person if they are willing to listen before engaging in honest expression, Skill 2: Distinguish neutral observations from other types of thoughts, Skill 3: Use feeling words to express feelings rather than interpretive words, and Skill 4: Communicate feelings as connected to needs rather than another’s action.
Skill 5: Identify the difference between universal needs and the strategies to meet them
All human beings have the same universal needs and it is these universal needs that motivate behavior. Identifying the universal needs present in any given interaction or situation allows you to take effective action to care for those needs.
Learning the list of universal needs and how they are different from preferences, strategies and desires opens the door to compassion, creativity, and flexibility. When you confuse universal needs with the strategies to meet them, you can easily become stuck in reactivity. Problems and arguments become unsolvable.
Phrases like, "He needs to control everything," reveal a tragic confusion between needs and strategies. Control is not a universal need. Control refers to specific strategies to meet needs.
Perhaps the most revolutionary part of becoming conscious of universal needs is knowing that everyone, in every action, is attempting to meet or align with a life-giving universal need. The more you are able to recognize this in others and yourself, the more compassion will arise naturally. You are set free from having to judge people and put them in the appropriate box (e.g., nice, helpful, obnoxious, criminal, racist, fanatic, etc.), because you can guess at the needs they were trying to meet no matter how tragic their strategy for doing so.
A big part of having a sense of freedom and power in your life is knowing the difference between a universal need and the strategies that meet a need. Identifying a need can give you a sense of limitless options. When you confuse a strategy for a need, or imagine there is just one strategy (or person) that can meet your need, you often feel stuck and hopeless about getting your needs met.
It is also incredibly empowering to realize that needs are never in conflict. It is only an insistence that they are met in a certain way, at a certain time, or by a certain person, that creates conflict. As you cultivate creativity and flexibility about how to meet your needs you may find that there is much less conflict in your life.
PRACTICE
I invite you to reflect on three different conflicts in your life. For each conflict, identify your own needs and guess the needs of the other person using the needs list. Then identify the strategies that each of you are holding onto or insisting on, and guess which needs each of you is hoping those strategies will meet.