The Power to Overcome

Posted by: admin on Sunday, June 13th, 2010

People have specific personal needs in their lives.

  • Some need appreciation for what they do – those people desire appreciation for their efforts so completely that if they’re not appreciated, their efforts stop. They cease to function within an organization and they literally stop producing because they feel unappreciated.
  • Some need affection in unlimited amounts – they can’t function and will literally leave a relationship if they’re not getting the amount of affection they need from others with whom they’re in a relationship. Their personal functions stop while they seek to find the kind of affection they need in amounts that will fulfill their desires.
  • Some need connection and total acceptance – they literally seek acceptance in the extreme, because they can’t handle personal rejection. These people go to extreme measures to be accepted, by pleasing others even when it crosses their own personal boundaries. In fact, these people NEED to be accepted so desperately that they will often do things against their own will in order to gain acceptance from others.
  • Some need respect and recognition – more than just the normal amount of respect, some need to be praised and publicly acknowledged in order to maintain their personal standing in life. If they don’t get respect and recognition, they seek it until they’ve found it, even if it means rejecting family and friends who don’t give them the respect and recognition they believe they deserve. They often seek friends with lower expectations in order to gain the kind of respect and recognition they deserve.
  • Some people need cash reward for their efforts – without the cash reward, return on investment, they will turn to whatever means necessary to find the monetary satisfaction they desire. These people will end friendships, move mountains and go into deep debt to find monetary satisfaction. Their desperate attempts to prove they have money can eventually cost them their wealth if they continue to seek it, without finding what they seek.
  • Recognizing the extremes of your personal desires is half the problem. Once you know what drives you, the option to change your drive to something more manageable and remove the emotional drain becomes possible.

    For instance, consider the demands a young woman can put on her life when her drive is financial success. The key component of any financial bonus to her life is in the ability to spend money. She finds an open door to credit with credit cards, and spends them past the limits. Her efforts to pay off credit cards is thwarted by her need to spend more and more money.

    She can’t appear “destitute” to her friends or family, so she attempts instead to appear as if money is no issue. The resulting overindulgent spending habits creates a slippery slope right into bankruptcy.

    The only other alternative to this is becoming a work-a-holic. Many choose this route to satisfy their need for cash in their pockets.

    Consider another young woman seeking connection and acceptance. Her efforts to be accepted by her family drain her emotionally, suck at her physically, and destroy her boundaries until she’s locked into relationships that will ultimately destroy her. She needs to escape, but by the time she realizes the need, she’s sucked into a stifling, suffocating relationship with too many people. She can’t escape.

    Still, there is hope.

    Each of these young women has the power to overcome their tenacious obstacles and become whole again. By taking back their personal boundaries and standing on the basic principles of self protection and management, they can overcome the desires that brought them to this point.

    When they realize that the power to overcome their desperate desires comes from within themselves, the end result will be success.

  • Self-respect.
  • Self-appreciation.
  • Self-acceptance.
  • Self-care.
  • Self-management.
  • Five simple steps to success that should be part of every self-inflicted plan to overcome the obstacles we put in front of ourselves. No person is exempt from these obstacles… Everyone you meet falls into one of these categories and has at some point in their lives been crippled by their own desires.

    Whether they choose to succumb to the desires and fail or find limited success by giving up other areas of their lives to dedicate themselves to success in only one area of life, either choice results in failures of one kind or another.

    Consider the man who spends his life working for money, long hours, to the demise of his family life. Or, the man who walks away from his family seeking respect for his views of life, because his desire for respect is greater than his need for family. He’s willing to destroy his family in order to get respect for his own self righteous image.

    Consider the woman who runs away from unaffectionate relationships only to find herself stuck in abusive relationships where affection is promised, but never received. Or the number of people who give up so much of themselves to build relationships that they have nothing left at the end of their lives, and die alone.

    We make choices every day. Wouldn’t it be better if we could make choices with recognition of the factors within the choices?

     

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