Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business, and Life!

Chapter 4Understanding People's Needs

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

—IMMANUEL KANT, eighteenth-century philosopher

Developing a better understanding of the needs of others can also help you develop a better understanding of yourself.

When you're trying to get clear, you have to do more than get quiet and seek out a period of reflection, create balance, and discover your life mission. An additional step to getting clear is focusing on the needs of others and responding accordingly. When you tune in to other people's needs, you become less focused on yourself. Taking the needs of others into consideration adds clarity and perspective to our decisions.

When it comes to the basic needs in life, three yearnings stand out above the rest:

• The need to belong to something greater than oneself.
• The need to love and be loved.
• The need to know that your life has meaning and that you made a difference to others.

Let's take a closer look at each of these three needs.

The Need to Belong

The greatest companies in the world have achieved dominance by figuring out the needs of their customers and fulfilling those needs.

Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders are mighty proud of their Harleys, but what most people don't know is that Harley-Davidson was headed to oblivion in the 1970s and early 1980s when Japanese manufacturers flooded the market with ...