The Administrator

Our self-control is always caught between extreme choices. If we want to live and develop, these basic needs must be met.

• Safety: We need to perceive and react to dangers in good time. We want to keep our feet on the ground.

• Enforcement: We want to grow, have adventures and develop our abilities. We strive for the top.

• Belonging: We cannot and do not want to live alone. We need fellow human beings and want to be at the center of a group.

• Recognition: We want to be sensing and proud of ourselves. We set ourselves apart from the group in order to be seen.

• Rationality: When we do something, we need to recognize the sense and reality of it. We act coolly and deliberately.

• Empathy: We want to live harmoniously with ourselves and with others. We are warm-hearted and empathetic.

Every personality sets its own priorities, usually from birth.

In the administrator’s ‘inner team’, safety and rationality have the highest priority.

If we imagine that each need is represented by a deity, as the ancient mythologies tell us, they sit at the head of the table and are advised by the others.

Whenever possible, safety and knowledge determine our decisions. They are the source of the strongest feelings that make us aware of opportunities and risks.

The natural opponent of knowledge is empathy. It moves closer to safety and offers it the opportunity to orient itself emotionally. If we want to be secure, we should consider the feelings of our fellow human beings.

Cognition needs information, preferably from a network of different people on whom it can rely, and this offers it belonging.

The pursuit of recognition and the energy to assert oneself are rather alien to the administrator. Both make little sense to him and can be associated with risks, because pride comes before a fall.

The safety (green, consistency, reliability) needs the cognition (rational information) and vice versa uses the cognition, continuity and reliability.

These two priorities determine the administrator’s feelings, thinking and actions. If he is satisfied, there is peaceful cooperation in his inner team. To achieve this, the other basic needs should also be integrated and taken into account. This could happen like this:

• White (empathy) feels into the possible consequences and uses his imagination to develop ideas that focus on sustainability.

• Blue (recognition) compares alternatives. He is looking for the best choice.

• Yellow (belonging) is concerned with communication and motivating those involved or affected.

• Red (enforcement) has a desire to actively participate in certain situations and to fight for everything important if necessary.

These instances, sometimes described as ‘deities’, use their own sensory channels.

• Green safety wants to be able to grasp, comprehend and, if necessary, hold on to something.

• Black cognition wants to analyze reality from different angles. It uses motor skills.

• White empathy wants to empathize. Harmony is conveyed through smelling and tasting.

• Yellow belonging listens to partners and friends in order to harmonize with them.

• Blue recognition is looking for the best possible solution, which it tends to find in its self-talk.

• The red need for assertiveness goes through the world with open eyes. It has visions and wants to be able to see opportunities early on.

Because these personality traits represent different and opposing needs, they need a common direction. As long as we are not consciously clear about how we want to live, what makes sense for us and how we can confidently go our own way, the members of the inner team turn to consciousness with dreams, thoughts and feelings. We feel inner conflicts, because a common alignment and order is required.

We are looking for a future scenario that satisfies all six conflicting basic needs and fits the personality of the administrator. The better we succeed in incorporating all emotional aspects, i.e. all opposing basic needs, into our plans, the more we feel the energy within us for a task that really satisfies us.   …