Things required to live a healthy life are needs, everything else you desire is optional, albeit might be required to maximize your happiness.

Separating needs and wants can be a difficult task, but having a clear idea which is which can be most helpful. Needs are clearly a priority and should receive your focus.

Focus

Avoiding conflict between needs and wants helps ensure your efforts are focused on the best value proposition. That is, attaining the goal that gives the best return.

This requires self awareness coupled with the ability to be brutally honest with yourself. Categorizing needs versus desires is easier if you take the timee to define the attributes of each from a personal perspective.

You can then map the object of your desire to the qualities you defined as required to live or nice to have. This makes labling things as wants or needs easier to do.

Want or Need

Determining if something is required, versus just desired, means drawing some lines to suite your own personal situation. One size does does not fit every case.

Your bar should depend on impact. If you don’t attain an objective, what happens? In many cases life as you know it will go on, but could be negatively impacted.

A deficit of positive results is obviously impactful as well. The key to whether a thing is required (whether to avoid the negative or accent the positive is somewhat objective but completely related to impact.

Things with impacts devestating to you are needs, everything else is not.