🌱 What Are Your Needs? The firmament from where Values emerge & Virtues express

## 🌱What Are Your Needs?

## Needs & Values: The Ground From Which Virtues Grow

In order to explore the world of relational capacities, it is of great importance that we become familiar with our authentic needs and values — because these are the conditions from which virtues naturally emerge, rather than traits we force, perform, or demand of ourselves.

Needs, Values & Virtues
Needs are the ground beneath our feet — the stable base that lets us stand, breathe, and stay regulated. When the ground is shaky, we don’t become “worse people”; we become wobbly, reactive, defended.

Values are the compass — not a map that guarantees the route, but an inner orienting signal that helps us choose north again and again, especially when things get messy or unclear.

Virtues are the way we travel — the quality of our movement: patience in the pace, honesty in the words, courage in the turning, compassion in the contact. Virtue isn’t a performance or a demand; it’s what becomes possible when the ground is secure and the compass is held with integrity.

We all have needs — physical 🫶, emotional 💭, relational 💞, and existential ✨ — yet many of us were never taught how to identify, name, or honor them without shame, over-explaining, or self-abandonment.

In this gathering, we’ll gently explore:

• What needs are 🧠 (and how they differ from wants, demands, or strategies)
• How unmet needs quietly shape our moods, relationships, and patterns
• How values guide meaning, choice, and direction
• Why virtues (patience, honesty, compassion) arise organically when needs are honored and values are lived
• How needs can be named without blame, pressure, or obligation

This is not about fixing 🔧, persuading 📣, or debating ⚔️.
It’s about awareness, self-attunement, and choice.

You’re welcome to speak 🗣️, reflect silently, listen, or simply be present. Participation is always optional — all ways of showing up are honored.

### ✨ Optional Preparation Exercise (before Thursday)

Take a few quiet minutes and list 10 or more needs you currently have 🖊️📄.
No explaining or prioritizing — just notice and name.

If helpful, use Maslow’s framework as a gentle guide 🧩 (not a hierarchy of worth, but a map of common human needs):

🌿 Body & Safety
Rest , nourishment , physical comfort, predictability, emotional safety, clear boundaries 🚧

💞 Belonging & Esteem
Connection, being seen or understood, affection, respect, appreciation, agency / choice

✨ Meaning & Growth
Purpose, creativity, learning, authenticity, growth...

This list is for you — sharing is entirely optional.

🌀 Gentle prompt if you get stuck:
“If I felt fully safe, what would I allow myself to need?”

### 🌱 A brief grounding on needs

Needs are universal requirements for well-being — not weaknesses or failures.
They are signals, not demands 🚦.
When ignored, they often speak indirectly through stress, conflict, withdrawal, or exhaustion .
Naming a need is often the first act of self-respect 🌸.

### 🌙✨ Closing Thoughts...

On Needs, Values, and the Quiet Birth of Virtue

There is a life beneath the life you perform,
asking first not for excellence,
but for honesty.

Needs arrive as invitations,
not commands—
a simple truth knocking
before it becomes suffering.

Values are what you stand for
when no one is watching,
the invisible geometry
shaping your choices.

And virtue—
virtue is not something you practice
like a discipline or a pose.

It is what appears
when nothing essential is being denied,
when the ground beneath you
is no longer in question.

You do not strain toward goodness.
You settle into alignment,
and goodness finds you there.

— Original poem written for this gathering
— in the contemplative tradition of modern poets such as David Whyte (b. 1955)