SELF-CONFIDENCE & HAPPINESS: What do they mean to you?
Self-Confidence and Happiness – what do they mean to you?
We are all unique and individual, so is it true to assume that what I experience to be happiness and confidence is the same as what you experience it to be? We certainly know that different people perceive different things to be contributing to their happiness and confidence. For example, jumping out of plane might make you happy, but it’s unlikely to make me happy as I’m afraid of heights.
Self-confidence and happiness are strange things. When we have feelings of happiness and confidence we can feel amazing, and as if we could take over the world; anything is possible. When we aren’t feeling confident and happy, it can feel like we’re never again going to feel either happy or confident; like the world is against us and we are all alone. These two words; happiness and confidence; and the emotions and feelings we associate with the words, can dominate our every moment; our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
And herein lies the lesson for us all. We need to understand what it is that contributes to thoughts, feelings and behaviours of happiness and confidence for each of us as individuals.
In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs that unites all human beings and helps them feel secure and attached with an emotionally healthy sense of belonging.
This five stage model can be divided into basic (or deficiency) needs (e.g. physiological, safety, love / belonging and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualization).
The deficiency, or basic needs are said to motivate people when they are unmet. Also, the need to fulfil such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food the more hungry they will become, until a point when they may begin to believe they can exist without food, when actually we know this is not sustainable. Exactly the same things happens with our emotional needs. We can feel motivated to seek out love and belonging if we are without it. The difficulty arises when we become so desperate for these needs to be met that we will seek them in unhealthy relationships either with ourselves (drug, alcohol and food abuse), with our environment (an unkempt house), or with others (abusive relationships be it emotional, physical, sexual).
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Key to healthy and sustainable happiness and confidence is an understanding of what our basic needs are, an acceptance that all are important, in fact essential, and how and where we meet these needs from.
Who are the people in our lives and what are the activities we do that mean we achieve a healthy mix and balance of all these basic needs. If we spend time nurturing our self and others in this way, will then achieve the growth needs of happiness and confidence as an automatic result.
Happiness and confidence may be interpreted by each of us differently in terms of how we express these feelings, and engage in them, but what is fundamentally unifying for us all is that we need to ensure our basic needs are meet first.
If you would like more information about how to identify where you can and do get your basic needs meet, or if you feel that some of the relationships in your life might indicate that you have been seeking unmet needs in unhealthy places then get in touch at info@yourvelvetevolution.com today and we can arrange for free consultation.
Wishing you a happy and confident day.
Lydia