Coming Home: The Pathway to Thriving
In last week’s journal, I wrote about the things that help us get through our hardest days, and how those things speak to our fundamental human needs.
So here’s the question I’ve been sitting with since then:
What does it actually take for our needs to get met?
At first thought, it sounds like having our needs met is an external job—that someone will come into our lives and “meet our needs.” But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Having our needs met, and ultimately thriving, is not something that happens to us.
It would be so easy to believe that having our needs met depended on other people. That if we had the perfect parents, the right partner, the ideal social circle, then everything would fall into place—that everyone else would satisfy our every need.
But that’s not how it works.
Thriving is a deliberate choice that we need to make for ourselves. To take time to know ourselves deeply. To make our core needs a priority. To allow our whole selves to be fully seen.
We must do our own deep work first. We need to know who we are, identify our core values, and only then can we clarify what our needs are. Once we have that clarity, we can stop waiting to be seen by others and start creating our lives to meet our needs.
So if thriving starts from within, why do so many of us struggle to get there? Why do we so willingly hand over our needs, and with them our power, to others?
There are three patterns of performance that consistently get in the way of our needs being met.
People Pleasing
When we are constantly focused on what others need from us, we lose touch with what we need for ourselves. We allow the act of people pleasing to seemingly fulfill our needs, but underneath the surface, we keep ourselves small and safe without acknowledging our true needs. We focus on others and use the cover of fulfilling their needs to distract ourselves from honoring our own. Over time, we become so practiced at taking care of everyone else’s needs that we forget our own even exist.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism keeps us in a constant state of hustle and motion. It creates an illusion that keeps us doing so much, but most of which never actually contributes to meeting our needs or feeling fulfilled.
We think that if we can get things to look perfect, then we’ll feel perfect. But perfectionism never allows us to stop performing. We fool ourselves into believing that our pursuit of perfection is enough and qualifies as fulfilling our needs. Because if it looks good, then it must be good, right? So we continue a performance that never acknowledges or meets any of our true needs.
Living Divided
Perhaps the most quietly damaging pattern of all is when we divide ourselves to fit into the roles that life expects of us—the doting mother, the reliable colleague, the strong friend, the unassuming daughter. We give each role a version of ourselves, carefully curated to meet its expectations. We believe that if we keep each version of us neatly separated, then we can control or reduce any chaos or uncertainty.
But in doing so, we fragment who we are and we lose our wholeness. And when we are not whole, we are not in integrity with our authentic selves. We are simply performing each role, while hiding our true selves completely. And in this fragmented life, we can neither identify nor fulfill our core needs.
I lived this life for so many years. My perfectionist self thought my life would be easy if I compartmentalized myself. I assumed I should keep things simple and please everyone else and give others what was best for them, and in return I would automatically feel fulfilled. I thought I could control outcomes and outrun any uncertainty. But all I was really doing was performing, to the point that I believed my own performance and lost sight of who I was and what I actually needed.
I waited indefinitely for others to just know what I needed and provide it for me. There was no way for my needs to be met because I didn’t even know what they were. It wasn’t until I stopped hiding behind what I thought was expected of me—the pleasing, perfectionism, and performance—that I could finally begin to thrive.
And I know I am not alone in this.
What I’ve come to understand from the clients I coach and from my own journey is that when we people please, perfect, and perform our way through life, two quiet but profound consequences follow.
The first is that we become disconnected from our authentic self. We force ourselves to forget who we are in order to live up to these performance expectations. And accordingly, we can never truly know ourselves, or identify and honor our core needs.
The second is that others cannot connect with our authentic self either. They will only know the surface, performing version of us that we choose to display. Deep and intimate relationships become impossible when the people in our lives never have the opportunity to know the real you—and energetically, they will sense that they are receiving an incomplete version of who you are.
Our needs only get met when we allow ourselves, and then others, to see who we really are. Not the version of us that shows up to keep the peace, to earn approval, or to fulfill a role. But our real, whole, authentic selves—including the vulnerable and "messy" parts we try to cover up with these performance practices.
When we perform, we hide that beautiful, authentic person. We present a version of ourselves that feels safe, more acceptable, more controlled. And while that performance may seem like it’s protecting us, it comes with a cost. The people in our lives end up seeing a version of us that isn’t fully real, and our deepest needs go unseen, unspoken, and unmet.
Thriving begins with a simple but courageous act—coming home to yourself. Knowing who you are beneath the roles and the expectations. Understanding what you truly need, not what you think you should need or what feels safe to ask for.
When you know yourself that deeply, everything shifts. You develop the self-trust and confidence to stop performing and start being. You stop waiting for your needs to be guessed and start allowing them to be known. You show up in your relationships as your whole self—and your whole self is exactly who people can love, support, and truly see.
This is where thriving begins.
What is one need that you have been afraid to name or ask for? I'd love to hear from you. And if this resonates with you and you're ready to do the deeper work of knowing yourself, I'd love to support you on that journey.
Photo: D. Bana Photography
