Rebalancing Happiness & Fulfilment

Two years ago, we entered a fascinating time in human history. Over the past two years, almost everything we thought we knew for certain, had planned to do, or considered normal has been challenged. There has, and continues to be plenty of change and challenge, mixed with the uncertainty of never quite being able to predict what comes next. If you have been able to predict what’s coming, it’s likely you said it in jest at some stage.

I’ve written previously about the 6 Core Human Needs that we all spend our time trying to balance — each need being a spectrum that each individual needs more or less of. Whether we balance them consciously or unconsciously, these needs are the root of much of our human behaviour. Sometimes our behaviour is a result of today’s needs, and sometimes our behaviour is the result of a build-up of imbalance over time which has brought us to a level of discomfort and dissatisfaction we can no longer tolerate.

The greatest gift of the last two years has been that they have sparked many questions in each of our minds about what we want and believe, presenting us with an incredible opportunity to reconsider how we move forward. Conversely, they have continued to throw enough shrapnel at us to prevent us from reconfiguring with any focus.

When the world first ground to a halt and locked down two years ago, we thought it would blow over in 3 weeks. We watched with wide eyes as an unknown threat stalked the globe spreading itself through new cities every day. As the weeks passed by, we also watched incredible feats of human spirit as communities drew together, finding new ways to support and communicate with each other. Life as we knew it paused. We watched the planet breathe in ways we weren’t aware she could or would without us. And we breathed. Some of us for the first time in a long time.

We started to feel the first strains of confinement, of uncertainty, and of separation. We became bored with our own space and our own heads and started to reconsider our needs. The first four Core Human Needs were either well out of whack, (Certainty & Uncertainty) or being reconsidered in ways we hadn’t contemplated in a long while (Significance, Love & Connection). The last two Core Human Needs (Growth & Contribution) were either on hold or demanding to be satisfied in entirely new ways.

We went from lacking certainty at the beginning of lockdown to having too much of it…