Reframing the Narrative: Self-Care as a Leadership Tool

In this episode, we delve into the importance of naming your needs as a leader. We provide practical insights and share personal stories to help you gain clarity and take intentional action to prioritize your needs. By the end of this episode, you will better understand how to name your needs, create space for self-reflection, and rewrite the narrative that drives your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Naming Needs

Many leaders pay attention to the priorities and mission that’s right in front of them, and often don’t take care of themselves in ways that allow them to be their best. It’s important to change the story and invert so that we can meet our needs and not the needs of others. Naming our needs is about awareness; self-awareness, awareness of our environment, and awareness of what we need as humans within our environment. As humans, we have so many needs and oftentimes, we aren’t in the practice of naming them.

Successful leaders are able to name their needs. Think about your needs as a human being. What are the types of needs that you need for sustenance, rest, and rejuvenation?

Normalizing Needs

When we give a name to a need, we normalize it. By saying the need out loud, you realize that there are other people going through the same type of need or challenge, and some of your challenges are common to humanity.

As you normalize something, you can begin to neutralize it and take the power back. By naming and normalizing, we can neutralize and disempower the actual challenge or the difficulty that is we’re facing.

Reframing the Narrative

Needs have tremendous influence. Once you name and know what you need, a new story or narrative can begin. When we feel overwhelmed by emotion or challenge in our circumstances, sometimes it’s the narrative that’s being told to us. When we begin to name things, we give ourselves the chance to begin rewriting the narrative that is based on our needs.

To begin the process of naming needs and reframing your narrative, start by thinking about how you feel when you are healthy. Are you healthy now or when were you healthy last? What were you doing? What were some of the needs that were being met there that aren’t being met now?

Next, give yourself permission to care for yourself. Sometimes, the act of self-forgiveness creates the space you need to get away from the guilt and shame that you’re self narrating to yourself to create a new narrative.

Questions for Reframing Your Narrative

To dive deeper into naming your needs, consider the following questions to explore the different types of needs in your life:

1. Emotional: What do you need emotionally? Our emotional experience of the world is sometimes the first lens through which stress enters our life. How are you doing emotionally, and can you name what you are feeling? Can you name the emotions that are underneath the surface or the emotions that are informing how you’re responding to the data you’re receiving?
2. Physical: What do you need physically? Do you need more rest? Do you need a different chair? Do you need a different kind of nutrition? Is there any kind of substance abuse? What do you need physically?
3. Intellectual: What do you need to generatively feed your mind? Some things can become a distraction or noise. It could be social media, an app, or something that you’re watching or streaming that is polluting our mind from thinking clearly.
4. Relational: What do you need relationally? What type of connection do you need? What type of activities do you need to nurture your relationships? What kind of needs do you have of your time? Do you need more time for something in your life? What kind of needs do you have for planning?
5. Social: What type of needs do you have socially? Do you need to get out more, go out for dinner or drinks, go to a movie, etc?
6. Spiritual: What do you need spiritually? Is there a practice where you’re connecting to something transcendent that gives you a different type of grounding?
7. Environmental: What do you need in the place where you live? Think about your home, bedroom, or the places you relax. Is there something that you need to shift or change in that environment that can help you meet the needs that you have? What do you need to do with your temporal space? Do you need to get out of your location or space?

Reframing Your Narrative

Reframing your narrative doesn’t need to be complicated. A simple way to start is by naming two needs that you have today that would change the way you feel when you go to bed. What do you need right now?

We would love to hear about how you’re reframing your narrative and naming your needs – connect with me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.