Satisfy Your Need for Subsistence by Following an Ancient Pathway Towards Stress-freedom
Did you know that unsatisfied needs cause stress and pain? Have you heard about a 2,300-year-old tried and true method for choosing happiness-boosting satisfiers instead of happiness-busters?
I define need as a condition requiring relief; anything that is necessary but lacking. To avoid stress and pain people must satisfy their needs. Fundamental needs are universal, that is, the same in all cultures throughout the ages. We all have the same fundamental needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, freedom and transcendence.
Need-satisfiers may vary among cultures and times, but one aspect is universal: The way in which we satisfy our needs can boost or bust our happiness. Oxygen, nutrition, shelter, clothing and sleep are satisfiers of the fundamental need for subsistence. What kind of nutrition, shelter or clothing we use to satisfy our need for subsistence varies largely from culture to culture and from individual to individual.
We all need the six major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins and water. What we eat, however, is largely determined by the perceived palatability of foods. A simple diet of water and bread, fruits and vegetables is easy and cheap to obtain. Stress results when we adopt ideas (prompted by our family, friends, authorities or the all-pervasive advertising industry) that only a certain kind of sweetened and carbonated beverage can quench our thirst or only expensive and sophisticated dishes satiate our hunger.
Working long hours and getting stressed by peers, supervisors and customers can be the result of a false belief in having to pay the mortgages for a house which is far bigger than needed for sheltering us from the frost or heat. And billions of dollars are made by another industry entirely based on our inappropriate estimation of our needs and our false belief that we may obtain happiness through status: the fashion industry.
Hundreds of scientific studies furnish thousands of proofs for the rightness of an ancient philosophical school whose members dedicated their lives to the pursuit of happiness: the happiness-school communities of the Epicureans that flourished for 800 years between 300 BC and 500 AD in the Greek-Roman world. Their recipe was simple: The good life is a simple life lead in the safe circle of like-minded friends, satisfying our natural needs in a simple and appropriate manner. Their pathway to happiness was to follow simple pleasures that cause no harm to themselves or others, carefully avoiding activities or even thoughts that might lead to pain or disturbance.
What they did to reach the state of simple happiness is something we all can do:
- ask whether our fundamental need for subsistence is met by the appropriate satisfiers, i.e., whether we are overfed, overclad or overhoused
- readjust the satisfiers to the need: Eat and drink simple food and beverages, wear simple clothes and live in houses that are not bigger and costlier than necessary.
The result will be an immediate and substantial decline of our stress level and at the same time an upsurge in our sense of control, stress-freedom and self-respect. In other words, an instant increase of our happiness.
Today scientific research endorses the tenets and the lifestyle of the ancient Epicurean happiness experts, and they can be safely copied for making individuals truly happy and saving our natural resources at the same time.
You can make a first step today on this ancient and proven pathway from pain to pleasure by aligning your need for subsistence with tried and true happiness-boosting satisfiers, like opting for appropriate housing, clothing and food. If you need support or additional resources for the next steps, just browse the Internet for the happiness-boosting Epicurean pathway from pain to pleasure, from stress to stress-freedom.
getting congruent: aligning plan and goals with needs, strategies and actions with values
After having rediscovered, sharpened and trained their think-tools the guidees learn to apply them for getting congruent: aligning their plans and goals with their fundamental needs, their strategies and actions with their values.
Incongruence between needs and desires, goals and needs, strategies and values are at the root of stress. Eliminating the incongruence the guidees eliminate the very causes of stress and make the way free towards stress-freedom, which is the first station on the road to happiness.
This is a process of fine tuning and habit formation under experienced guidance.
satisfiers that contribute to happiness through stress-freedom
After having understood the link between their needs and their desires the guidees learn to analyze the link between their fundamental needs and the satisfiers of these needs, as proposed by Max-Neef.
The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that “wants” are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system – i.e. they are interrelated and interactive.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation (in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom.
Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: e.g. the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity – the examples are everywhere.
Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; educational games.
The guidees are guided to develop their own synergic satisfiers: these are satisfiers that are congruent with their own individual value system and with their life-goals.
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