Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 40 - Let's absolutely lose the absolutes (although not ALWAYS absolutely...) - is now LIVE!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

We're not very often aware of it, but many of us use absolutes frequently in our day to day language...and we might not be aware of how this could be unconsciously impacting many of our needs...and the needs of others.

In this episode we cover:

• What are absolutes?
• Some examples of absolutes
• How the use of absolutes can compromise needs
• How to begin to shift unsupportive language
• A small word that can be a great antidote to some absolutes
• How absolute language can be very exclusionary
• How absolutes can sometimes block you from the things that meet your needs
• Why exceptions and nuance is so important when it comes to meeting your needs
• How absolutes can compromise our Personal Power Need
• How the use of absolutes can sometimes undermine your credibility

The C word episode that we referred to is Episode 19 - The C-word

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 39 - Just HOW toxic is Toxic Positivity? - is now LIVE!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Toxic positivity is a term that has been used more and more frequently over the last ten years, but the question is, how toxic is it REALLY? The answer? Very...and it can be compromising your needs in ways that you aren't even aware of...

In this episode we cover:

• A little comment about negative self talk and how we are human too
• The difference between blaming ourselves and holding ourselves accountable
• What is Toxic Positivity?
• How Toxic Positivity compromises your needs and the needs of others
• The difference between forced positivity and genuine healing
• How toxic positivity blocks the healing process
• How toxic positivity shows up on social media
• How toxic positivity blocks you from being able to the work around dismantling privilege
• How often 'inspirational posts' can engage with toxic positivity
• The difference between wanting to create something supportive, nourishing and constructive from a space that is neutral and using toxic positivity to mask reality
• How frequently toxic positivity shows up in personal development spaces
• Why personal development often is a barrier to true personal healing
• The danger of toxic positivity when it comes to trauma
• One of the main reasons we engage in toxic positivity
• Why sometimes the shit sandwich can be toxic positivity
• The difference between offering support and wanting to try to 'give' someone 'positivity'
• The importance of being human and of wholeness in navigating and experiencing life
• Some ideas and suggestions of ways to support someone when they're going through a challenging time

The TED Talk 'Beyond Closure' by Nancy Berns and TEDxDesMoines that we reference can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0rCfXSdYPE

The episode where we talk about the emotional tunnel is Episode 32 - Why (generally speaking) there are no such thing as negative emotions

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 38 - Why telling anyone else how they ‘should’ meet their own needs is a big no-no - is now LIVE!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

So often in our attempt to try to 'help' the people around us, we can find ourselves telling them what they should be doing to get their needs met. Not only is this very rarely helpful, but it can actually end up compromising your OWN needs too! Want to find out more...today we talk all about this, as well as an additional minisode on how to meet your needs in different circumstances!

In this episode we cover:

• A little minisode on how to meet your needs in different circumstances
  • How to learn what meets your needs, without knowing what will meet them
  • How to create habits around meeting your needs
  • How your value and personal power needs come up when superiority comes into the equation
• The incident that prompted this episode
• Why it's rarely helpful to tell someone else how to meet their needs
• Where the reaction is coming from when someone says something that impacts you
• The ways in which a 'well intentioned' comment about what someone should or shouldn't do can negatively impact someone
• Why this applies in business too, and how it can harm you, especially when it comes to sales
• The different kinds of energetic awareness and how this is relevant
• How your unmet needs can subconsciously affect the advice you are giving to others
• How to give suggestions to others and ensure that these suggestions are 'clean' from a needs perspective
• The multitude of things that could affect the way of meeting the needs that would work for a person, things that you will likely not be aware of
• How there's a difference between the things that meet your needs well and things that just meet your needs 'less badly'
• Why most people exist at the crappy end of the scale in the ways they meet their own needs
• How you CAN be supportive to others and their needs without telling them how to meet them
• Why even Claire who developed The Universal Needs won't tell people how to meet their needs
• The first question to ask ANY person before making suggestions on ways that might help them meet their needs
• How this approach can undermine your relationship with that person, compromise trust and create resentment
• How many people working in the personal development space take this approach with clients, telling them what to do, and how this can cause harm to multiple needs
• How you can say no to someone who tells you how to meet your needs, without even needing to say no

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 37 - Task switching is not the same as taking a break - is now LIVE!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

So often our daily lives are so busy that we just hop from one task to the next to the next, in an attempt to get a 'break' from the thing we're currently doing. But sometimes what we REALLY need is a break, and not only is this task switching preventing us from resting, it can sometimes be compromising our needs in other ways too.

In this episode we cover:

• Why Serena was horrified with Claire's fish and chip food pairing
• Why not everything we think of as taking a break is ACTUALLY taking a break
• Why task switching is not the same as taking a break
• Why we feel like we need to be constantly productive and progressing
• What need we're trying to meet through doing this
• The thing that will make you more productive and do things quicker
• Why it's important to be aware of 'switch time'
• Why being a proficient multitasker isn't always a good thing
• Some examples from our lives when we weren't mindful of this
• How to manage your tank to not compromise your capacity
• The privilege of being able to fill your tank...a privilege that many DON'T have
• The privilege of time and the time of privilege
• How our body isn't always the whole story in what our capacity is
• Why watching Netflix sometimes meets your needs in very nourishing ways
• Why Serena's Netflix 'recommended for you' is an interesting list!
• Why your age doesn't matter when it comes to finding the ways of meeting your needs that work for YOU
• How having different ways of meeting needs isn't about judgement, and can actually inspire new ideas

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 36 - Self Worth Series - "Why it's so hard to feel 'enough'" is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

If everything we do, every second, of every day, is done to meet our needs... then why is it so hard to feel like we are enough? So many people struggle with the feeling of not being enough. They aren't (pretty/smart/thin) enough, not a good enough (partner, parent, employee) and simply not doing enough. Our society teaches us to do more, be more, have more, implying that we are not enough, but we're here to tell you that you are.

In this episode we cover:

• Why most people do not feel 'enough'
• How we live in a society that continually enforces the belief that we are not enough
• The messages that we receive from this enforcement
• The manifestation of 'not enoughness'
• Some examples from our own experiences of feeling 'not enough'
• The Universal Needs Ecosystem
• The challenges of trying to be a healthy tree in the middle of an unhealthy forest
• The steps to positively effecting the whole forrest by taking care of your own tree
• How to start this process

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 35 - Self Worth Series - "The link between self worth and self care" is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Self-care has become an increasingly trending topic for over a decade, but what is self care really, and how does it relate to our self worth? What many perceive self-care to be is only a small fraction of what it really is and many people struggle with allowing themselves the time, space and general belief of worthiness to practice consistent self-care. In this weeks episode we show you how the more you practice self-care, the worthier you feel, so the more you practice self-care and so on...

In this episode we cover:

• What is self care; defined
• What self care is not
• Why time is like a suitcase
• Why your Universal Needs are essential to self-care
• Some examples of self-care, what people think it is vs what it often looks like
• How binging on Netflix (and other streaming services) can be a Green Spectrum way of meeting our needs
• Why the common tips for dealing with depression aren't always helpful
• What a hard stop is and how it can be one of your best tools for getting your needs met
• One of the simplest ways to set a boundary to help support you with your self care
• Why a lot of people struggle with self care
• The symbiotic relationship (downward spiral and upward spiral) between self worth and self care
• What are the four levels of learning, and how does this relate to our self care?
• Our symbiotic experiences of self worth and self care

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 34 - Self Worth Series - "The difference between self worth and confidence" is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Would it surprise you to hear that some of the world's most confident individuals have the lowest sense of self worth? We use to be two of those people. In today's episode we will share from our own lives, how we went from confident performers to showing up in the authentic knowing of our own self worth.

In this episode we cover:

• Our own experiences with self worth and confidence
• How confidence it a series of behaviours that you 'put on' and perform
• The exhaustion experienced when we are coming from a place of confident performance rather than authentic self worth
• Where your self worth need lies in your Universal Needs Tree
• What authentic self worth is
• Why our internal self worth is so compromised in our current society
• The difference between self worth and self value
• One person's experience of the difference between traditional therapy and The Universal Needs work
• How authentic self worth changes how you show up in life
• How other people can affect confidence, but not self worth
• Examples from business and relationships
• The creation of competition from confidence and the elimination of the game with self worth
• Why being in competition with yourself and who you were can be destructive and how to shift this to a more supportive way of approaching self growth
• How it is very hard to meet your needs in a Green Spectrum way if you are meeting some of your needs in a Red Spectrum way

The episode we refer to where we speak about the relationship orbits is episode 17 - What to do when you're waiting for an apology that will never come.

The episode we refer to where we speak about being Selfirst is episode 2 - The wisdom of Joey Tribbiani.

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 33 - "Anger, judgement and Carrots. What to do with emotional minestrone..." is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

In our last episode, we discussed how there are (generally speaking) no such thing as negative emotions, and when that episode finished, we realized we still had a LOT to share. So today we're going to dive a little deeper into the world of emotions and specifically into anger, judgement and how it's not possible to leave your personal emotions out of your professional life.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that in this podcast we are talking about emotions as they apply in a general context - we are not talking about depression, and other emotionally related diagnoses. While these approaches may help with some aspects of these, a diagnosis requires a different approach, we do not cover that in this episode.

In this episode we cover:

• Why we're bringing the air quotes back for the second week in a row
• Why it's not true that anger is always a masking emotion
• What determines whether anger is supportive and constructive, or unsupportive and destructive
• Is there any such thing as someone who is just an 'angry person'?
• The difference between harming someone and just not choosing to meet their needs (which are not our responsibility to meet, just not to harm)
• When venting at someone isn't harming them
• When processing your anger physically isn't harming another person
• How deeply nuanced understanding emotions in the context of needs can be
• Why in a work context it is not possible to 'leave your personal life at home'
• What happens when your emotional soup explodes all over your coworkers
• Why we are rarely just reacting to the situation in front of us
• Why some people aren't feeling much about all the challenging things we're facing right now
• Why some people judge others for being 'too emotional'
• What the path is back to our own humanity...and how it is a fundamental part of our Universal Needs
• How some of the most challenging emotions can be the best fuel for creating change
• How the emotions that feel less comfortable can support us in surprising ways

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 32 - "Why (generally speaking) there are no such thing as negative emotions" is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

A lot of people struggle with emotions, especially the ones they perceive as 'negative', but today we're going to share with you how there's no such thing as negative emotions...and how if you know how to, they can actually be one of your greatest allies...

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that in this podcast we are talking about emotions as they apply in a general context - we are not talking about depression, and other emotionally related diagnoses. While these approaches may help with some aspects of these, a diagnosis requires a different approach, we do not cover that in this episode.

In this episode we cover:

• Why there are no such thing as negative emotions
• How experiencing and expressing the FULL range of emotions is a NEED (a MUST)
• How we have come to rely on outside sources (like TV and movies) to get our emotional needs connected to in a way that feels 'safer' (due to other needs)
• The importance of normalizing all emotions for everyone
• How emotions are often perceived as 'weak' and what the truth REALLY is
• Why we tend to feel 'bad' about certain emotions
• The three main reasons an emotion comes up
• How there's a difference between a need and the preference we have for HOW to meet it
• Some ways to process challenging emotions
• What the emotional tunnel is and why it is so important not to get pulled out of it
• A tool for helping a child learn how to process their emotions
• How the processing of emotions doesn't always look the way we expect to
• Some examples of how we have processed challenging emotions
• How laughing at a funeral can meet your needs
• How all emotions are valid and valuable, they all help us to meet our needs

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Sh*t. It really is that simple - Episode 31 - "Should we tell you what the 12 Universal Needs are?" is now live!

Full Show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Today's podcast is going to be a little bit different because today we are going to have an open and frank discussion about how we are conflicted about whether to share the detail of the 12 Universal Needs with the public or not. We'll be debating the reasons to do it, and not to do it, and asking for you to share your opinions with us too!

In this episode we cover:

• We share a little Larry love...and how Serena respected his boundaries
• How Claire created a 'Plot twist' for The Universal Needs plans
• The criticism we've received about the podcast so far
• Claire's quote about opinions
• The two main reasons why we wouldn't we share the detail of The 12 Universal Needs?
• Why we prefer a big AND to a big BUT
• How the lack of understanding the Needs Formula can lead people to compromising their needs when they are actually trying to meet them
• How sharing the detail of the needs could be harmful
• How awareness of needs can be weaponized or used to manipulate others, and when it is, it harms EVERYONE including the person wielding the weapon
• The levels at which your needs are being met (or not)
• How our unmet needs are subconsciously pulling the strings on our every thought, feeling, action, choice, behavior...
• Why would we even CONSIDER sharing the detail of the 12 Universal Needs knowing all of this?
• Where is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs being used, and why is that a problem?
• How the argument is strong on BOTH sides of this choice
• How important the NUANCE of needs is, and how hard this is to understand without knowing all 12
• Understanding the power of the Needs Lens
• What REALLY created the labor crisis/Great Resignation...and how it's not what most people think it is
• Why overly simplifying needs can be harmful to yourself and others
• Why the needs might NOT be Universal...and how this was a surprise to Serena (live as we recorded!)
• How we are always discovering new applications and benefits of The Universal Needs work
• Why we are continually revisiting, refining and improving our content...and a transparent example of how we did this recently

The culture/community referenced by Philip Shepherd in the book Radical Wholeness that Claire mentioned in the podcast is the Anlo-Ewe (pronounced AHNG-low EH-vay) culture of West Africa.

Podcast Episode guide and full show notes: https://bit.ly/WellShitEpisodeGuide

Find our website and connect with us on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/theuniversalneeds

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.