Once we learn to understand the language of our legitimate
needs and our deepest desires, we can begin to harness their power
in our everyday lives to increase our energy, vitality, and love for
life.
If we make a point of observing ourselves in different situations,
little by little, we will become more aware of the people,
places, and activities that invigorate us and those that drain our energy
and destroy our passion for life.
Our desire for food, exercise, sleep, relationship, study, and
quiet times of prayer and reflection are all responses to our legitimate
needs for the people, places, and activities that work together
to make us whole. Our deepest desires lead us to the satisfaction of
our legitimate needs, which in turn produces health and harmony
within us. All this is part of the divine engineering set in motion
within you to assist you in the fulfillment of your essential purpose.
Our desires and needs are very closely linked. We desire deeply
because we need deeply. The careful matching of our deepest desires
and our legitimate needs requires and demands careful discernment.
Your health and your happiness depend almost entirely
on the development of this ability.
There is a profound and providential connection between our
needs and our desires. To ignore our needs and desires, and their
relationship to each other, is to ignore our very self. Your body,
heart, mind, and spirit all yearn for you to be healthy in every sense
of the word. They collaborate with one end in mind, that you may
become the- best- version- of- yourself.
Matthew Kelly
From The Rhythm of Life
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