I remember as a young one my sweet mom taking on the daunting task of teaching me the difference between "wants" and "needs." I found that the basics was pretty clear about food, water, oxygen, roof over the head, love etc. Things became quite blurry to me though when it came to toys. I remember seeing a yellow Tonka dump truck that my other friends had and I was positive that I needed it. In my mind I was 100% certain that if I had that dump truck that my happiness would increase immensely and having happiness had to be a need right? In fact, this was around the time my mom was teaching me how to pray. I remember kneeling down by my mom saying my prayers and at the end asking for the yellow Tonka dump truck. Well, let me just say I learned a couple of lessons from my mom. My mom helped me see that I would actually live without having the truck and that giving thanks during prayer and praying for others rather than a dump truck was always a good thing to do. Well, I can say that over the years the line has been pretty clear between "wants" and "needs" with only a handful of blurry occurrences. About six years ago I went out to get some milk and came back with a computer. There has been only one time in my marriage where I thought I was going to have to sleep on the couch and that was it. I tried to find a positive side to it thinking maybe she won't send me out for milk again. Needless to say that didn't happen ... I just have to promise now that I will only get milk or any other things we need.
The first time I met with my Psychiatrist she asked me "what do you want to do today?" I thought the question was a little odd since she was the one with the "Dr." in front of her name. She could read my perplexed look on my face and asked it a different way, "before this day is through, what do you WANT to do?" I was perplexed again. I thought about certain foods that sounded good, kissing my wife and playing with my kids. She then asked if I liked movies and when was the last time I had seen one. I like movies but the last one I had seen had to be one of those animated kid movies. We talked a lot about a variety of things that day but she gave me the assignment to go see a movie. Sad to say that cool Psychiatrist retired and I met with another one who ended up having one of the coolest sayings on her wall ... it reads "Today I Will Not Should Myself!" One thing I found out very fast meeting with my Psychiatrist and Psychologist was that I wasn't allowed to use the word "should." This made answering questions or having any conversation quite interesting. I have learned that being a people pleaser I live in the world of "I should" so there is no balance when it comes to I want, I need and I should. Living in the world of "I should" brings no happiness at all because whatever you do it wasn't the "correct thing" because you should have been doing something else. That is quite the tornado to be caught in. Every morning I think about the things I want to do and the things I need to do and strive to keep the balance. Most of all I listen to what my body is saying during the day and work on making the right adjustments. I actually get a kick when a person tells me that I should have done this or shouldn't have done that. I usually tell them either I didn't want to or I didn't need to and watch their reactions. I will say that helping people in need for me is in the "want" category and who knows maybe someday I will buy two Tonka dump trucks ... one for a person that's down and one for me.
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