Wellness Wednesday - what drives you?

When was the last time you had to make a decision? Was it a little or big decision? How did you arrive at your choice? What 'drove' you to make that particular choice?

There are several things that influence our choices and one of these is our top two drivers. In this instance the 'drivers' are our top two core needs. So far we have looked at the top four core needs and whilst we all need to meet all of these needs all the time, we need two even more than the other two.

These top two core needs are our drivers. They help us to make decisions, choices and influence our preferences. For example if your top two drivers are Certainty and Connection you are probably in a job that offers plenty of both, and you enjoy social situations that offer both. However if your top two drivers are Adventure and Significance then a job that offers lots of certainty would be boring and it may not fulfil your need for significance. A really great job offers all the six core needs but we will look at that next week.

Working out our top two drivers (core needs) can help us to make choices that are more likely to work for us. About now you are probably wondering how we can work out our top drivers so here is a little exercise that will do just that.

• Write down the four core needs of the physical/body (certainty, adventure/variety, significance, love/connection).
• Because we prefer either certainty or variety work out which you need most. This can initially seem a bit difficult because we need them both, but if you could only have one for the day, which one would it be?
• Do the same with significance and love/connection. Again, you need both but if you could only have one for the day which one would it be?
• Now go through all of them: certainty or significance? certainty or love/connection? variety or significance? variety or love/connection?
• You should now have YOUR order of importance. We can feel as through we have a slightly different order in different situations, so we may usually have certainty and significance as our drivers but when you are on holiday we feel as though variety and significance are more important.  However if certainty is our top driver then we are only able to really enjoy variety and adventure when a certain level of certainty is met.

Now that you know this when you book your next holiday or apply for your next job you can work out if it is likely to be able to meet your top drivers consistently.

When you choose your goals, which will be influenced by your drivers, you can work out objectives to meet these goals knowing that you can choose actions that will work for you because they meet your core needs in order of importance.

Next week we explore the two core needs of the spirit.

warmest wishes
Sarah