Question Four - the method

QIV. WHAT IS MY NEED?

Identify your operating needs.
All of them.

Look to your feelings.
Control, Influence and Seduction
Fear, Anger and Excitement
Look to the Mechanisms they are using.
Is it directed at you or someone else?
Does it help or hinder?
Is it actual or potential?

Identify them as Requirements, Desires and Attachments.

Identify how they are Complex, Compounding and Competing.

Clearly articulate your Needs and state the Dynamic.



The Method is a simple thing. But it is not easy.

If the source of power is need, then you can know that when you feel some power dynamic it is being driven by some need or set of needs within you.

The truth is the power against you originates within you. Finding that origin is the first step.

When you have successfully located the need being stimulated by the mechanism, there are any number of choices you can make. After all, power is about choice. Having choice in spite of the power dynamic being utilized on you, is true power.

Isolating and naming that need is not easy. When have people been good at understanding their own emotions and feelings? Feelings are exactly that kind of evasive and deceptive thing. We may act on them and respond to them but we seldom have a good handle on them. Needs are like that.

They are like that because most of our needs are perceived as feelings. Hunger, thirst, yearning, cravings, desires, attachments, loneliness, love, fear, excitement, and anger are all feelings connected to need. We feel our needs. That is why they can be converted to feelings of power. It is the feeling of power that is motivating. Power is a feeling that motivates our choice.

That is why it works.

That is also why power is an illusion.

Getting a good understanding, a clear picture, of our needs is not easy. But it is necessary. When we can see the need that is being triggered by the mechanism employed by the actor, we can comprehend the dynamic. We can describe it in terms of words. We can state it out loud. We can externalize it and look at it and get a grip on it again. And amazingly often the power within it will begin to dissipate.

There are times when the need is so real and so un-compromise-able that we may decide consciously that we will comply with the intentions of the actor. We may agree to succumb. But at least it becomes a choice again. Not some gut reaction based in anger and resentment and weakness.

To find the need we must be systematic. In the beginning this system will be slow and appear inefficient. You may question its value given the pressing way people play out power. After all, time is often the most significant element in the circumstance. We may have to make choices in milliseconds. The idea then of a lengthy analysis would seem ridiculous - certainly useless in such situations.

However, like every other kind of thinking and decision making we do, we have conditioned ourselves into considering a specific set of factors. When we choose a food off a menu we can often do it in a matter of moments because we have made such decisions a number of times before. We have practiced and we have become good at it. We can give due thought to ten or twenty factors and make decisions in a moment. The difference is that you have never seen power as a thing of needs before. So it has not been part of your consideration in the past.

In the past you have looked to the consequences and the consequences alone. Then you feel the power and you make the decision. In the future, with practice you can look to the operating needs and then choose to submit to them or not.

It is nothing more than a new sequence of thoughts that you must practice and implement. You are not doing something you haven’t done millions of times before. You are just doing it in a new way. Because you already do this kind of thinking, it will become easy within just a few tries.

The sequence is this – First, look at the feelings you are experiencing – what do they tell you? What are you afraid of? What are you angry about? What are you excited about? How is it that you feel controlled, influenced or seduced? What is the feeling that is motivating you and where is it coming from?

Second, look to the thing they are using to get you to change your choice. What is the mechanism they are using to create this feeling? Are they applying it to you directly or to someone else? Is it an attempt to help you in your happiness or to inhibit or hurt your happiness? Is it real and actual? Or is it a threat or promise?

Next consider how you might classify this need. Is this a requirement? Is it something that you cannot live without? Does it go to your survival or inflict pain? Is it a desire? Is it something that you wish for? Is it something that you want but can live without? Is it part of my dreams and wishes? Is it an attachment? Is this a person, idea or thing that you are compelled to protect or defend? Is it something that you can’t let go of? Is it something that will cause you to lose self esteem if you allow it to be compromised?

Finally ask yourself if this feeling of need is complicated. Is it complex? Is it part of a larger need or plan you have? Are there other needs which are competing with this one? Do I have to make a choice between satisfying one need over another? Does it feel worse because it is compounded with other needs? Am I feeling this need because of other needs which are going on at the same time?

Make sure you are taking enough time to see deep into that pool of needs and identify all of the ones that are operating.

Now you see the source of the power against you. You can even describe it. They are using their ability to ……….to help or hinder my need for……….to get me to make the following choice…………..

You can state your side of the dynamic.

Your side you say…?

There is another side?

Yes of course. People don’t use power without a reason. They are motivated to use power because they have a need. This is another of those infinite possibilities hidden inside the truth about power. If the source of power is the need of the subject, and the actor is only using power because they have a need, then their need is your source of power.

Yes, in every power dynamic there are two sides. And yes, every time someone uses power on you, there is an opportunity for you to use power on them.

If you really want to….