Johnston - Self Confidence Secrets: How To Overcome Anxiety and Low Self Esteem with NLP

Take a moment and think about the people in your life. Think about your family, your friends, the people you work with.

Is there one person who always needs to be the centre of attention?

Is there one person always worried about what might happen?

What about the person always talking about possibilities and potential?

For most of my life I have been fascinated with human motivation. I believe if you can learn the why behind behaviour you can change behaviour. I do not believe in treating the symptoms when you can discover and cure the causes.

All human behaviour can be traced back to the desire to meet needs. Logically this makes sense doesnt it? At a basic level we all know this is true. Our most basic physical need is oxygen. Have you ever seen someone devoid of air? Be it a scuba diver stuck under water or someone suffering from asthma, when a person loses their supply of air they freak out and will do anything to get it back. Theyll do anything to meet this basic need.

What about our other physical needs? There is water of course. Weve all seen the movies where someone is lost in the desert without waterpretty soon theyre hallucinating and creating a mirage just to try and meet this need! Of course there is also food. These three needs, air, water and food comprise the do or die needs. If we dont meet these needs life ends pretty quick!

Then there are the extended physical needs such as sex or sunshine. Now Ive spent a lot of time in Vancouver, Canada and that is one cloudy city during the winters. I can tell you that when the sun is blocked nobody drops dead on the sidewalk but when the sun is out people are happier, more energetic and more vibrant.

So this covers most of our bodys need, our physical survival needs which are common amongst most mammals. What about our minds needs? What about our mental survival needs? Its true that we all share a set of human needs. Meeting these needs is just as critical to our mental health as air and water are to our physical health.

Ignore your emotional human needs and pretty quick youll find yourself unable to meet your physical needs as well.

Abraham Maslows was a psychology professor in the mid-20th century. His best known work was the hierarchy of needs he created, known as the Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. He proposed that we first strive for physiological needs such as breathing, water, food, sex and sleep. When these basic needs are met we move on to safety needs including security of income, of home, of family, of health and of property. When our safety needs are met we are free to pursue needs around friendship, love and intimacy. When we meet these needs were able to advance to our esteem needs which include confidence, achievement, and respect for and from others. Finally, it is after meeting all these needs that we turn to our need for self-actualization which includes morality, creativity, spontaneity and problem solving.

Maslow said that in order to be a fulfilled human being we had to meet all our needs, and meet them in roughly the order he laid out. It is far too difficult to unleash our creativity or develop deep, meaningful relationships if were overcome with worry about how we will pay for our next meal or where we are sleeping that night.