When you express your desire or need, what words do you use? “I need…” or “I want…”? Why is this important and how can it help you get to know yourself better?
In this article, we’ll break down the theory proposed by Jason Estis in his broadcast “Need or Want.” Read on to learn how to shift from need to wholeness and receive what you want.
When you need something, you acknowledge yourself as incomplete
“If you need something, you create a debt. Because if you’re alive, your needs are met. If you need anything, it means your charge is low.
You’re looking for something outside yourself to feel whole.”
I need something to be whole.
When you say “I need,” you believe you can’t be happy without that thing, circumstance, etc. It implies that happiness and fulfillment come when you have it. That is, you will be whole, complete. You say “I need” as if affirming that right now you are not whole.
See also: How to Achieve Personal Wholeness
We always say that if you feel discomfort from not having something, shift to gratitude and focus on what you already have. Give thanks for it.
When you are in need, you make your present imperfect, unhappy, insufficient, thinking: “Once this happens or I have this, I’ll be happy.” But when “this” happens, you’re still in your habitual state, again escaping into the future.
The state itself is always primary. Learn to first experience happiness, to enjoy what is here now, no matter the circumstances. You can get there through gratitude.
Jason Estis believes that needing something means depending on the external, while everything you need is within you.
What to do to refocus from the outside to the inside
Step 1. Acknowledge that nothing external can make you whole
You’ve probably heard of the “soulmate” theory—that every person has a half, a love, meeting whom they will be happy.
But no one and nothing will make you whole.
Learn more from the webinar “Soulmate Theory. How to Find Wholeness in YOURSELF” and the article Why It’s So Hard to Find Your Other Half
Step 2. If I believe I need something to feel whole, but I am alive, then I don’t need anything for that. But I can want
Let’s use relationships as an example again.
If you are whole and you don’t have a partner, you don’t feel like something is missing for your happiness. You’ve learned to meet your own needs independently, rather than through others. You’ve built an inner support, an inner core.
Accordingly, you don’t need anything. But you can want a relationship. Not from a place of lack, but because you are filled with love from within and want to share it.
See also: Three Types of Relationships. Do Ideal Relationships Exist?
Step 3. If you want something, you are ready to make a fair exchange of resources
“4 resources: time, money, value, and life force.
When you are charged up and want something, you simply take action and do it, exchanging resources, knowing that at any moment you can restore the spent resource.”
For example, you buy something, realizing that you will earn more money later.
Or you invest your energy somewhere, counting on giving yourself time to rest.
“If you think you need something, your charge is very low. And you are trying to replenish it through the attention of other people.”
And this is called energetic vampirism.
A simple example from Jason Estis. Remember, what state is your phone battery usually in? Low or always charged?
“Conclusion: a person who needs something simply does not desire a fair exchange to get what they want.”
They expect everything to happen by itself or for someone to give it to them, buy it, bring it, do it for them. Hello, wizard on a blue helicopter.
What does a low charge mean? You are ready to hand over the solution to your issue into the hands of someone or something external. Because you yourself lack the energy, or other resources, or you think you lack them. That is, you take a passive position.
The active agent is excluded — you. And since we are talking here about us being the creators of our own lives, we ourselves are that main element that initiates the process.
When you say “I want,” you are the active agent and thus demonstrate a willingness to do something that will make it possible to get what you desire. You are ready to give your time, or money, or energy, accordingly, to make a fair exchange.
See also Why a person in a victim consciousness lacks the ability to choose
What drains and replenishes your charge
Worry, fear, anger, and shame — these emotions negatively affect your charge.
It’s like a vicious circle. You need something, you worry, get angry, feel shame because you don’t have it. A lion’s share of your energy goes into this. There is no energy, therefore nothing to make an exchange with.
Hope, joy, delight replenish your charge. And we have written and spoken about this many times.
Switch from negative emotions to acceptance and gratitude.
“To need” from the perspective of a state of lack
Compare when you say “I need, for example, to change my wardrobe” or “I want to change my wardrobe.”
Insert your own situation, the one that is currently bothering you, worrying you. The one you think you need.
When you say “I need,” you are coming from a place of need: “I am in need.” And this is a state of lack, deficiency. I don’t have it.
When you say “I want,” you are coming from the position that there is enough of everything in the universe, and I want to receive it.
Say “I want” and feel how your body responds in that moment, how your consciousness expands.
See also How to switch from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset
“Want” from an energetic perspective
«I want» is connected to desires, and desires are governed by the sacral chakra. Many people have blocks there. That’s why people don’t know what they want and even forbid themselves from desiring or wanting.
The basic right of the sacral chakra is: I have the right to want, to feel, I have the right to desires. If this right is violated (due to childhood trauma, etc.), then when formulating their requests, people will more often use «I need».
Because «I need» kind of justifies the right to desire something, but at the same time, it is very limiting.
Try replacing your «I need» with «I want», write them down on paper. Allow yourself to want.
When you say «I want», you expand. «I need» — you settle for the minimum, but «I want» — here there is already a choice.