THE FUEL BEHIND YOUR BANDWIDTH
Core Needs
Six human needs that, met, give you room to expand — and starved, pull you into contraction. Core Needs sit alongside Bandwidth, not inside it: your Core Needs are the fuel; your Bandwidth is the gauge reading how much capacity that fuel gives you right now.
The six
Autonomy
Acting from genuine, self-possessed choice rather than compulsion or fear.
Competence / Mastery
Meeting real challenge with real, tested capability — building it, not faking it.
Relatedness / Belonging
Being genuinely known and connected, not merely surrounded.
Self-Esteem
A steady, unborrowed sense of your own worth.
Trust
Enough safety in yourself, others, and the world to lower your guard.
Purpose / Meaning
A sense that what you do matters beyond the moment.
One dashboard, four dials
Core Needs are the fuel tank. Bandwidth is the gauge reading. Your Archetype is the engine the fuel powers. Your Embodiment is the handling — a separate dimension entirely. Different archetypes tend to run on a different "home" need, which is part of why the same low tank shows up so differently from one person to the next.
A note on borrowed capacity. Leaning on others when you're depleted — asking for help, more time, a friend to lean on — is healthy and human. The question isn't whether you borrow, but whether the borrowing is a temporary bridge back to building your own capacity, or a permanent substitute for ever developing it. Only the second is worth watching for — because it can look identical to real capacity on the surface while staying brittle underneath.
Drawn from Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) and Elena Aguilar's Core Human Needs synthesis, itself drawing on the work of Gabor Maté.
This is an overview. A fuller Core Needs treatment — and a dedicated way to read your own six — is planned, not yet built.