105: How to Meet Your Own Needs in 4 Easy Steps

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Today I want to share with you, what I like to call, what we call here in the podcast world, another re-release. What I'm releasing today is an episode I did that is about meeting your own needs instead of relying on others. I'm re-releasing this episode right here around Thanksgiving, because guess what, this is a time of year when we often don't think about ourselves. We think about what everybody else needs from us.

What everybody else wants sometimes becomes more than we can handle and we start to then blame, okay, this is part of that blame and shame game, and I will link in the show notes an episode I did about blame and shame, this is about blame and shame, and blaming all the other people for all the things that are happening and not taking on your own responsibility, not being responsible for yourself.

Here is what this episode is going to explore. I'm going to give you six things to listen for. Number one, we're going to explore empowering self-responsibility. It's up to you to fulfill your own needs, not your partner’s, not your parents’. Taking charge of your own needs, what do you need this Thanksgiving week is really the first true step to feeling independent, not needing anyone. We're going to explore that.

Number two, we're going to explore adulting. We know that we grow from childhood into adulthood and as we do this, the shift on relying on others to becoming self-sufficient is really essential to our own development and it's really what being an adult is all about. Listen in for my comments about adulting.

Number three, challenging relationships. There is this fairytale notion that someone else will complete us and meet all our needs. That can really lead to frustration and disappointment in relationships. We're going to debunk these myths and hopefully help set the stage for a healthier, more fulfilling connection and relationship. That's the third thing.

Fourth, we're going to address this striving for higher needs. Now, I don't love the word striving, but it does exemplify what I'm talking about here. This is us striving to meet the need for better connection and contribution and growth. We need to fulfill that need. That's how we lead a richer and satisfying life. We're going to talk about that.

Fifth, how the self-sufficiency can lead to empowerment by leaning into what we need, we can reduce our independence on others. Then the last thing is I'm going to give you some actionable steps that you can take to help meet your own needs and not rely on the others. Sit back, buckle up, and listen in to this re-release.

Hopefully, at some point in your life, when you were a child, you had people that helped meet your needs because usually as a child, we don't have the mental nor physical capacity to meet our own needs. I'm going to guess you definitely did or else you wouldn't be listening to this, you wouldn't be alive.

None of us could have actually survived at some point without someone meeting our needs. But as we get older, as we mature, as we become capable adults—and I think that's for grabs, whatever that means—I believe that at some point, it then becomes our job to meet our own needs. I'm finding this as a parent of children who are in their late teens and early 20s.

When I say sometimes they are practicing adulting, really what I'm saying here is that now they need to meet their own needs. I cannot solve all the problems. I cannot arrange things that they magically work out for them. They need to do a lot of that themselves.

But the idea of someone else meeting our needs is often romanticized and we're taught that you're going to meet the Prince Charming or the partner that's going to complete you and meet your needs for you. You also can think that your parent is there to always meet your needs.

I think all of these romanticized ideas are actually toxic. I see it creates so many problems in marriages and families and all kinds of relationships that I found the need to talk about it with you. I think this time of year is an especially great time to talk about it.

I believe that our needs are, first of all, a gift that we are given as just being human. Our needs are a gift that we are given by the fact that we are human. We have all different kinds of needs. We have basic needs like survival needs. Those are the kinds of needs as babies that our parents fulfill.

But then we have higher needs as we start to grow. We need connection. We need to be part of something bigger, which is why I think being part of a group coaching program for example is so important. If you have not listened to that episode, go listen to it. We have the higher need to feel like we're contributing. We need to feel like we're creating value. We need to be creative in general. That is a need.

These higher needs that we have, they really drive us toward having a better life. We innately want to have a better life. We innately want to grow. I've talked about that in past podcasts too. Our desire to grow as humans intellectually is innate. It really drives us to become more of who we are, more of who we're capable of being.

That is sometimes why I always believe that my clients are capable of so much more than they're currently doing. This higher need that we have to contribute, to grow, to create value, to contribute, it really helps us contribute to the world, and by contributing to the world, we're helping others and we're fulfilling our own needs.

When someone says, “I want to do something that I'm passionate about,” what they're really saying is “I want to feel good about contributing to the world. That is a higher need of mine.” We all have the same basic needs but our higher needs are all different and they vary from person to person.

Some people have a need to be more social than others. They crave more connection. Some people have a higher material need. They desire a certain amount of stuff. Our needs can change too as we mature and grow. But I want to note that what I'm talking about here are not our love languages.

Now I believe we can meet all of our higher needs on our own, we don't need someone else to know that language to help meet it. We don't have to rely on anyone else. You can live your best life just by relying on you. You can do amazing things in this world just by relying on you, it can actually be kind of fun.

But I want to address why we think other people should meet our needs. Romantic partners, parents, even bosses, we think that they all should be providing us with potentially enough growth opportunities if we're talking about a boss. I will tell you now that I don't believe any of this to be true. We should not expect romantic partners, parents, or bosses to meet our needs. Here's why: If I said to my husband, “Hey Rob, I need to feel appreciated because I know that words of affirmation are my love language. Can you tell me how great dinner was tonight or how much you appreciated me dropping off your car at the dealership for service?”

Now, he might actually do this. He might actually give me those words of affirmation. But from my experience, most likely, this will not last in the long term because it was not his idea. It's not coming from his higher need to express appreciation and connect with me in that way.

It's coming from me trying to get him to meet my need. It's like he's pretending. If you actually notice, sometimes if you're in a relationship with someone that knows you pretty well, they may be mocking and they might really say these words in a kind of mocking or pretending way.

Even if he does say them, even if he really does appreciate what I did for him, if this is not the type of thing that he would do without being asked, then he is only doing it because I asked him, not because it is filling a need of his. If I know that that's really not him, it's really not something he usually does, then I am really deceiving myself. I am tricking myself into thinking he really does appreciate me because he's pretending he does.

No one I meet wants to keep pretending. There's going to come a point where even if he does keep pretending, I'm going to think he's doing it wrong or not enough or with the right tone. I will still be unhappy. Isn't that ironic? It's going to create more unhappiness. If I tell him he's doing it wrong, it's even going to create more unhappiness.

If he tells me, “Well, I mean, I'm trying to do it right, I didn't mean to do it wrong, I'm just trying to do what you wanted,” again, it's all going to be creating unhappiness. Then we can start to sense some insincerity. The truth, my friends, is that I can only feel appreciated from my own thoughts.

Nothing he says or texts me or any action he takes can make me feel appreciated. The easiest way for me to feel appreciated is to just decide, “I'm doing a great job. Keep it up, Andrea. You matter. You're important.” That is the reason I am telling you, guys, as you're listening, don't rely on anyone else to feel a certain way or meet your needs.

Now here's the thing. I am not saying that we should not be considerate of each other because I don't want you relying on anything external, including a person because all of that is unreliable. Being considerate is one thing, but relying on someone else, that is not a good idea.

Everyone does not get a trophy. Do you remember how little kids, when they play sports, everybody gets a trophy and that trophy is going to make them feel great? They're relying on the trophy, but we all know that when they get in the car, they could start crying. That external thing is not creating the emotion, is not creating the appreciation, or is not meeting the need.

When we understand this, it's actually super empowering, peaceful, joyful, and even fun. It is also kind. Taking care of your own needs is kind. One of the kindest things we can do for other people, we can either wait around and hope that they'll meet our needs, or we can take ownership of meeting our own needs.

If we take ownership, then I don't have to resent them, be frustrated with them, expect them to read my mind, or pretend or be different than they are. If I meet my own needs, then I can feel good about me. I am staying in my own business. Listen to the episode right before this and I talk about staying in my own business.

What a relief for all the people in my life that I am staying in my own business and I am not relying on them to meet my needs. So how do you actually take care of yourself? I think there are four steps. Number one, you've got to pay attention to your dirty pain. We talk a lot about clean and dirty pain inside Committed to Growth, but here's the quick version. Clean pain is appropriate and necessary and human and it's usually involving primary emotions. It's pain that we want to keep, at least for a little while. We want to move through it and allow it and relax into it.

When we do that, we're able to process it, and it really helps us live as humans and not create arguments. I mentioned in the last episode when I talked about letting other people feel their own emotions, it is okay that someone else is disappointed or frustrated or sad. We actually want those things because it helps us mature.

Now, dirty pain, on the other hand, which usually involves secondary emotions, is the kind of pain that keeps us stuck. It's immature. When someone else comes to a coaching call with pain, more times than not, it is dirty pain. They are stuck. Dirty pain is immature.

I see it in myself sometimes when I feel like I'm having a temper tantrum. It's kind of childlike and adolescent. It doesn't help me move forward. It helps me just stay in stuck stress and spin. When I'm doing that, I can't access my genius brain. It is stuck stress.

If I'm trying to be right or just, like have that self-righteous piece of me, it also keeps me in dirty pain. Saying I have a lot going on and then avoiding doing anything, that's dirty pain. It's okay that you feel it. There's nothing wrong with it, but I want you to recognize it.

When you feel pain of any kind, pay attention and ask yourself, “What do I need right now? Andrea, what do I need right now?” Last month in Committed to Growth, we did a lot of talking about taking care of ourselves, and this is very, very, very much part of it. I'm feeling stressed, what do I need? I'm feeling overwhelmed, what do I need? I'm feeling frustrated or resentful.

Resentful is a tricky one because we think other people will meet our needs and we keep waiting for it to happen and hoping, but we are the only ones that can meet our needs. Dirty pain also can feel like being unseen, unheard, or acknowledged or appreciated, or things aren't fair, or you feel unfulfilled, you have no curiosity. This is all an indicator that you have a need.

Now, being curious can be a transition pain. It puts you into a place of need to continue to learn or explore or grow or develop new skills. So I love when my clients are curious, because it really indicates that we're working towards becoming the next best version of ourselves. That is a place that all of my clients are in when they decide, “Yes, let's do this. Let's coach.” They are curious about what could be different for them, whether it be life, business, relationship, finances, or health.

If you're curious, then that's really a sign that you might benefit from the support of coaching. It may be time to get off the sidelines and start doing the work worth doing. So pay attention to that curiosity.

Number one was to pay attention to what pain you're experiencing, especially knowing if it is a dirty pain. Now number two of meeting your own needs is welcoming the knowing. Now when you start noticing, “I'm feeling frustrated, or resentful, or angry, or afraid,” these feel like dirty pain emotions and they don’t feel necessary and they're usually not serving you, I don't want you to get mad at this point. Don't tell yourself that you shouldn't feel this way. “I should be grateful for what I have,” that's not going to help.

What if you said instead, “Okay, what are you here, Feeling, trying to tell me? What are you here, Resentment, trying to tell me? What are you trying to show me, Frustration? What are you trying to help me understand? I want to understand this.” You have to be loving or give yourself a little grace. You have to be loving with yourself. You have to listen to yourself.

So many of you are rejecting that part of yourselves. I just did a consult call the other day and she must have said seven times, "I shouldn't be feeling this way." Yes, you should, but now you should be asking yourself, "Why?" I like to think that part of myself is when I ask myself those questions, I love that part of myself. That part of myself is the smart self.

When I'm asking myself, “What do I need?” It's like the little girl in me. I can talk to myself in a very compassionate way. “What's going on? What's the matter? Why are you needing me? Tell me. What are you needing? Tell me.” She'll just tell me if I pay attention and listen.

That little girl Andrea, she'll tell me, "I just don't feel seen. I just don't feel acknowledged. I just feel like this isn't fair." Now, a lot of the little girl Andrea's thoughts don't make sense. They're not logical and rational. They're not coming from her genius brain. She knows that.

I have a lot of other thoughts and a lot of other things I know the counteract what she's saying. But that's okay. I'm not going to just shut her down and go, "You shouldn't think that." I just let those feelings come up and I take a look at them. I want to hear her. I want to understand her. I want to attempt to understand so we can't be in such a rush with this step too.

We have to continue to observe ourselves. This is like taking the pause to override those mirroring neurons that I talked about in the last episode. This is also a lot like parenting. As parents, we so desperately want our kids to feel better. We want to shut down their negative emotions because their negative emotions oftentimes don't make us feel good. We don't like listening to their negative emotions.

But we know that that doesn't really get our kids to where we want to go. There may be things that we can't figure out right away as we try to listen. We have to give ourselves time and space and just keep in the observing phase of what's going on. We want to comfort ourselves.

Instead of going, you shouldn't feel that way, “What's the matter with you?” It's got to be, “It's okay. It's okay to feel that way. I understand. You have a good reason for it, tell me more.” The best way I can describe this phase is gratitude for knowing.

If you could be grateful for the awareness, then you're not going to push it away and be ashamed and feel guilty about it. I was originally going to call this episode Giving Yourself Grace, but I think there's way more to it, but giving yourself grace is one aspect.

I think in this time of Thanksgiving, this kind of grateful that you should be seeking this year is grateful for knowing and having human emotions. This, my friends, is a gift. Even emotions that create dirty pain, all of these emotions serve us and help us become better people, leaders, parents, partners, and business owners.

When they go around the table this week and ask, “What are you thankful for?” You could say, “All of my emotions for being curious and compassionate with how I feel.” Okay, step three. Step three is to then hold space for the solution to what you need to come to you. Hold space for the way to meet those needs.

Now again, most of our needs are just thoughts we're trying to believe, but it's okay to have different experiences, different relationships, and different circumstances in your life that make it easier to think the thoughts you want to think. Hold space for a way that that will happen. Don't shut it down.

What I mean by holding space is to keep space open and allow it. Jody Moore recently gave an example and I coached on the same thing. I've coached people sometimes who say something like, "I love to travel. I want to travel and I have this huge curiosity and desire and interest to travel. I want to explore their world. I want to see new places, meet new people, and understand different cultures. I want to do it in this way. I want to stay in an Airbnb, at the Ritz, or in a tent, one of those three extremes. That's what I need. I want to go with other people. That's what I need.”

But—here comes a big but—my spouse doesn't want to travel in that way or travel at all. He or she hates to travel. I think she hates to spend money on it too. They won't go with me. How am I supposed to meet that need?

I say to them, "Okay, let's understand this. Let's go through the steps.” I want you to recognize, number one, that this is dirty pain. You're starting to feel resentful. Then let's get curious and compassionate and open and hold space for it. Then let's just decide that, of course, there is going to be a way for you to meet the traveling need, traveling in the way you want to travel.

It doesn't mean that if you meet this need that you're disrespecting your partner. There is a way for you to meet that need. It's just not a way that you've thought of yet. It's just not in your head yet.

You have a manual about how this is supposed to evolve or happen, it might evolve or happen in a different way, but you're going to get the same outcome and your needs are going to be met. I'm not saying here, just settle for second best. I mean, the way is going to be better, even better than the way you originally thought you were going to meet that need.

You have to stay open to it. You have to not know the answer at first because if you knew the answer, you would have already figured it out. The need would have already been met. You would have already planned the trip. You need to stay open to it. I don't know the way that it's going to be, but there is a way. There is a way that can be loving and supportive and kind and that you won't be disrespectful.

I can meet my need to travel. I wonder what that way is going to be. Just allow it to come. Yes, I want you to seek it but don't seek it with rushed impatience. A lot of times we seek things with rushed impatience. You have to seek it with patience, faith, and trust and allowing it might take a little time and that's okay.

A lot of times when people start to engage in coaching, they have this rushed impatience. I see this all the time. Then I have to remind them, “How long have you been at this? Oh, a month? Two months? Six months? You need to take time.”

The other thing here with step three of holding space for the solution to come is it is okay to ask other people for things. It is okay to keep asking your husband, "Hey, I would love to travel. If you ever change your mind, let me know because I'm going to plan a trip and I'm going to go with somebody. I don't know who yet. Maybe it'll be my sister or a friend or somebody like that, but if you decide to come, let me know.”

It is okay to continue to make requests of people, but what I don't want you to do is hand over your emotions to that other person so that you are depending on them to meet your needs. That's the mistake we make when we're expecting other people to meet our needs.

Make requests all day long, but choose how you're going to feel regardless of whether or not they honor your request. Once you go through step three and you allow space and you get curious and you're open to it, you will receive guidance. You'll find solutions to your needs and coaching, that's what we do a lot of.

I am holding space for you to be open to receiving exactly what you need. You might not have even guessed what it is. One might be doing the “what are the three things that you definitely want to happen on this trip process?” as a way to meet a need.

I think I have a download on that, what are the three things you definitely want to happen on this trip process? But you also have to stay open and keep your heart open and be curious that maybe those three things might change and be open to it instead of feeling pain if things don't go exactly as you want them to go.

I am telling you I've experienced this over and over and over again. Then that takes us to step four, where once I have figured out how to meet my own needs, I have to keep doing it over and over and over again. It is not a checkbox. You're going to have new needs that come up. You'll have to keep doing this process.

What I want you to do in step four is to offer your complete self to the world. I really do think this is the finishing step in meeting our needs. I personally think that we are so wired to help others. We are so wired to give, contribute, connect, and love that if we don't do that, it feels like we only have three-quarters of the way there in meeting our own needs.

What do I mean by that? Well, it might mean that you go and help people with the same needs that you had. That's common. Like you had an injury and you worked with a physical therapist to get you rehabilitated for a year and now you want to be a physical therapist.

But it could also mean that you're a mom and you saw how your mom created amazing humans and now you want to create amazing humans. As you work to become even more amazing than you already are, you're going to recognize different needs and you might be focusing on being the best version of yourself in a marriage or in a business and you're going to meet your need on how to figure that out.

I know that through this podcast, for example, I am meeting one of my own needs. I am helping you but I am also meeting my own need to contribute to the world. I try to bring a full me to the podcast. I try to bring a full me to coaching. I try to bring a full me to my family. I am not constantly trying to get my needs met by any of those things.

I am here to serve and love those people around me. I have 10 times more to give when I am showing up from already complete needs. I have more energy, I have better ideas. Sometimes when I ask my clients, “How do you want to show up?” I want them to show up as a full them, not waiting for someone to meet their needs.

I think I'm a lot more fun to be around because I'm usually in a better mood when I show up as a full me, when I show up completely satisfied with my, “I don't need anything from anyone.”

I can serve in whatever way I choose to serve so much better when I meet my own needs. Let's wrap this up. Step one to summarize, pay attention to your dirty pain. It's trying to tell you something. This is really how you're going to discover what your needs are. You need to know what they are.

Step two is to welcome the knowing. Don't be mad at it. Don't tell yourself you shouldn't feel this way, you should be grateful for what you already have, you shouldn't think what you're thinking, or you shouldn't have those needs. That's not going to help you.

Then step three, hold space for the solution to come on how the need is going to be met. Hold space for it. Have someone help you hold that space open. Then step four, offer your complete, fulfilled self, needs to be met to the world. That's when you're going to show up the best.

Okay, everybody, I hope you have an amazing holiday celebration all month long. I hope that you do this work to meet your own needs. Don't ask anyone else to meet your needs this month when you start to experience the dirty pain of overwhelm.

If you have questions about how to do that, come over to me on Instagram. I would love to connect with you there. Send me a direct message. You can connect with me on LinkedIn too. I will respond, I promise. I love to help you with whatever you need help with, whatever you want to hold space for.

Thank you for listening, thank you for sharing. Remember, this is the perfect time to up your game. You're not too busy, you've got plenty of time, time to level up, and have a beautiful rest of your week. See you next time.

Okay, so are you really ready to drop the drama? Are you ready to clear the clutter out of your brain, the thoughts that are keeping you stuck in thinking that someone else should be helping you? Are you ready to take some intentional, deliberate steps to upgrade your life?

I am. I actually just used that phrase this morning with a prospective client and I said, "What we do in coaching is we give your whole life in business an upgrade." So let's level up together because remember, you are capable of more than you actually even think you're capable of, but this all starts with you. You've got to do the work. I'm here to partner with you. I'm here to help you think bigger. All right, my friends, I will see you next week. Keep thinking big.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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