HUMAN NEEDS PSYCHOLOGY
Human Needs Psychology is a practical inquiry into human motivation, as well as a compendium of effective strategies for promoting both individual and group change. Many human problems can be resolved by clarifying our beliefs, values and purpose, and by making strategic decisions and taking specific action. Problems are solved most effectively as a result of a person’s increased growth, responsibility and mastery of his or her emotions, needs, decisions and purpose. The goal of Human Needs Psychology is to give the interventionist skillful and non-invasive means for promoting rapid, sustainable change and personal growth.
A unifying concept of Human Needs Psychology is the belief that the key to both understanding and changing human behavior lies in our ability to understand and manage our Six Human Needs, which are the driving force behind human behavior. While we acknowledge that each human being is a unique and special soul, we also share brains and nervous systems that function in the same way. Every human being – whether a migrant worker or royalty – has the same fundamental Six Human Needs. Whether one is attempting to understand an individual, couple, or a group, the Six Human Needs provide a practical key for identifying what people need, what is preventing them from being happy, and what strategies will be most effective in promoting human change, progress, and fulfillment. These are basic needs, not merely desires but profound needs that underlie and motivate every choice we make. There are six basic needs that every individual has to fulfill in order to survive:
CERTAINTY/COMFORT
The first need is for certainty. We want to feel safe, avoid pain, and feel comfortable in our environment and our relationships. Every individual needs to have some sense of certainty and security – a roof over one’s head, knowing where the next meal will come from, knowing how to obtain care when one is sick, knowing that a neighbor won’t attack us. These are just a few examples of what constitutes a basic sense of certainty.
The helpless infant needs certainty as well as the child, the adult, and the elderly person. The degree to which certainty is needed or desired, however, varies from person to person. Some people feel secure living in one room and collecting an unemployment check. Others can feel certainty only if they make a million dollars each year. Even though some certainty is necessary to all of us, what constitutes certainty varies from individual to individual. Code words for certainty are comfort, security, safety, stability, feeling grounded, predictability and protection.
UNCERTAINTY/VARIETY
The second need is for uncertainty – for variety and challenges that will exercise our emotional and physical range. Everyone needs some variety in life. Our bodies, our minds, our emotional well-being all require uncertainty, exercise, suspense, surprise.
The person caught in the same routine day after day will seek change and look for uncertainty. Just as a sense of security is reassuring, so the excitement that comes from variety is necessary to feel alive. For some, variety may be satisfied by watching the news on television. Others may seek extreme high-risk activities such as extreme sports or compulsive sexuality to satisfy the need for uncertainty. For many, a major source of variety is to experience problems.
Code words for uncertainty/variety are fear, instability, change, chaos, entertainment, suspense, exertion, surprise, conflict and crisis.
SIGNIFICANCE
The third need is for significance. Every person needs to feel important, needed, wanted. As babies we all needed to feel that we were number one. Children in a family compete with each other and find a way to be special, to feel unique. Significance comes from comparing ourselves to others – in our quest for significance, we are always involved in hierarchical pecking orders and question of superiority or inferiority. We can feel significant because we have achieved something, built something, succeeded at something, or we can seek significance by tearing down something or somebody.
In its positive aspect, significance leads us to raise our standards. But if we are overly focused on significance, we will have trouble truly connecting with others – comparisons focus on differences rather than commonalities. For some, significance comes from providing for the family, for others, from doing meaningful work; some need to make a major contribution to humanity; some require immense wealth. Some people achieve a sense of significance by failure, by being the worst at something or by having low self-esteem. Whatever the measure of significance, a sense of being important is necessary to all human beings. Code words for significance are pride, importance, standards, achievement, performance, perfection, evaluation, discipline, competitions, and rejection.
LOVE/CONNECTION
The fourth need is for the experience of love and connection. Everyone needs connection with other human beings, and everyone strives for and hopes for love. An infant needs to be loved and cared for during a long period of time if it is to develop normally. Infants who are not held and touched will die. This need for love continues throughout our lives. It is epitomized by the concept of romantic love, the one person who will devote their life to us and make us feel complete. In some cultures, romantic love doesn’t exist; it’s replaced by the love of relatives, friends and tribe. Some people rarely experience love, but they have many ways of feeling connection with others – in the community or in the workplace. The need to be loved is characteristic of all human beings. Code words for love/connection are togetherness, passion, unity, warmth, tenderness, and desire.
GROWTH
The fifth need is for growth. When we stop growing, we die. We need to constantly develop emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. We grow and change physically as we develop from infancy to adulthood and old age. We grow and change emotionally with every experience, and we grow intellectually as we respond to events and to the world around us. Anything that you want to remain in your life – your money, your health, your relationship, your happiness, love – must be cultivated, developed, expanded. Otherwise, it will degenerate. Some people satisfy the need to grow by working out physically or by reading books. Others need to study and learn constantly in order to feel that they are truly growing. In order to truly fulfill the need to grow, one needs to find something to serve that is larger than one’s self. When you are growing only for yourself you become satiated. But if there is something you’re here to serve that is larger than yourself – your children, your family, your community, the world, a mission – it gives us a continuous drive to grow because we’re growing in order to give something, something more than just giving to ourselves.
CONTRIBUTION
The sixth need is for contribution – to go beyond our own needs and to give to others. A life is incomplete without the sense that one is making a contribution to others or to a cause. It is in the nature of human beings to want to give back, to leave a mark on the world. Giving to others may mean giving time to community service, a charitable donation, planting trees, writing a book, or giving to one’s children. Not only can everyone contribute in some way, but contribution is essential to a sense of fulfillment and to happiness.
The first four needs, certainty, variety, love and significance, are essential for human survival. They are the fundamental needs of the personality – everyone must feel that they have met them on some level, even if they have to lie to themselves to do so. The last two needs, growth and contribution, are essential to human fulfillment. They are the needs of the spirit, and not everyone finds a way to satisfy them, although they are necessary for lasting fulfillment.
When our needs for love, growth and contribution are satisfied, they tend to encompass all our other needs. When we focus on something beyond ourselves, most of our problems and sources of pain become less significant. Contribution is the human need that effectively regulates your other five needs. If you are focused on contributing to others, you have the certainty of being able to contribute (there is always a way); you have variety (contribution is highly interactive); you have significance because you know you are helping others and improving their lives; the spiritual bond created when you help others gives you a deep sense of connection; and you grow by creatively helping others.
Everyone experiences the same Six Human Needs. However, everyone finds different ways of satisfying those needs. Each of these needs can be met in ways that are positive or negative. Some ways of satisfying these needs are good for the person, good for others, and good for society, and some are bad for everyone.
The needs for certainty can be met by going to school and obtaining a degree that will ensure the possibility of making a good living. Or it can be met by doing as little as possible and avoiding challenges. It can be met by stealing from others and hoarding money and material possessions. Or it can be satisfied by holding rigidly to a dogma or a doctrine.
The need for uncertainty/variety can be met by reading on different subjects and meeting different kinds of people. Or it can be met by engaging in high-risk sports or by risking one’s life through violent behavior. It can be met by engaging in extramarital affairs or simply by watching a movie once in a while.
The need for significance can be met by being the best at something – or by being the worst.
The need for love and connection can be satisfied through performing good deeds and being kind, or by dominating others who are forced to show appreciation.
One can grow into becoming a better person – or a despicable human being.
One can contribute to the destruction of others – or to the well-being of many.
There are healthy and unhealthy ways of satisfying the Six Human Needs and some ways of satisfying these needs are obtainable but not sustainable. For example, you can smoke a cigarette and get immediate comfort and certainty. If you’re stressed out, the cigarette gives you variety because you go into a relaxing state instead of the stressed state. By breathing in a deep way and having that cigarette you can feel that you’re giving yourself a gift even though you’re killing yourself. By smoking you are meeting three of the human needs and any time you meet at least three needs, it’s an addiction. Smoking meets your needs in the short term, in that sense it is obtainable. But it’s not sustainable because you’re denigrating your body, taking away your health and doing something that will distance you from others in the long term.
As in everything human, there are paradoxes involved in the experience of these needs. A person may have a strong need for certainty, but also a strong need for uncertainty, and therefore might constantly suffer an inner conflict as to which need is most important to satisfy. The need for significance is often contradictory with the need for love. It’s difficult to love someone who always has to feel significantly important. That is why so many successful people, who satisfy their need for significance, have trouble in their close relationships and often feel that they are not truly loved.
Most of us focus primarily on two of the six needs. These two prevail over all others and become the primary driving force in our lives. These two needs are experienced so intensely that we will do almost anything to satisfy them. And when these needs are not being fulfilled, any relationship is in grave danger. When you identify a person’s two most important needs, you discover that person’s driving motivation, what gives meaning and a sense of satisfaction to his or her life. After you watch the film, you will receive detailed instructions on how to do this.
A person who pursues certainty will make different choices than a person who pursues love. People who share the same primary need can meet that need in very different ways. One person may give themselves the feeling of certainty by always controlling her environment and those around her; another person may give himself certainty by not trusting anyone; and a third person may give herself the feeling of certainty by having a deep religious faith.
Everybody needs to fulfill all six needs, but we don’t value them equally. So, if you value certainty at the top of your list, then everything in your life is about certainty first. If you value uncertainty, you’ll have a very different life.
Whatever you value at the top of your list tilts you in a different direction and direction equals destination and destiny. Two people can value the same need at the top of their list, for example, both want significance, but the difference is in how they meet that need. One, for example, a New York fireman, believes the way to get it is by saving lives. He or she wants to die for a stranger to be significant, to be a hero. Another believes that the way to be significant is to kill thousands of people – Osama Bin Laden. So the difference is not only that what you value determines your direction, but your map, your blueprint about how to meet those needs, the rules and beliefs you have, which control your day to day decisions, emotions and behaviors.
The Six Human Needs are the most effective way to track our level of happiness and fulfillment in our relationships. Once we understand how we satisfy our most important needs, we can see clearly what we need to change. It is important to differentiate between needs and vehicles – the actions, beliefs, and behaviors one uses to meet one’s needs. Most people have the illusion that vehicles are needs, but they’re not. For example, you might think that your primary need is to have money, but money is not a need. It is a vehicle for getting what you really want – which may be love, significance, certainty, or any one of the other three human needs.
After you watch the film, you will learn step by step how you can evaluate, understand and change your priorities. The way we prioritize our needs is not out of our control. If you are unhappy in a significant area of your life, it’s time to reflect on what your two most important human needs really are. You might then realize that the way you currently prioritize your needs is not conducive to your well-being or happiness.
For example, you might have certainty at the top of your list, and you might think that because you have a great deal of uncertainty, for instance, financially, certainty has to be at the top. But that is not necessarily the case. Many people live with great uncertainty, and yet they make love and connection their first priority. You can do that too. You can choose, for example, to put love or contribution at the top of your list, and you can decide to let love flow from you no matter how little certainty there is in your life.
For most people, the need for love and connection supersedes all other needs. Even when it is not acknowledged, the deepest need is for love.
The two primary fears most people have are the fear of not being enough – not being worthy or significant – and the fear of not being loved.
Most people need to feel worthy and significant in order to feel loved. Some children grow up feeling that they have to get good grades in order to be loved. Many adults feel that they have to become successful or make money in order to be loved by their families.
Many of the challenges that arise in our relationships develop because we are constantly trying to satisfy our basic human needs through other people while at the same time we are trying to satisfy the basic human needs of those we care for.
In the most fulfilling relationships, all our six human needs are met through the relationship, be it with spouse, family, friends, or colleagues.
When you satisfy two of the needs of someone else, you have a connection. If you satisfy four of their needs, you have a strong attachment. If you satisfy all six of their human needs, the person is permanently bonded to you.
Naturally, you want to satisfy your partner’s needs because it is good for the relationship, and therefore good for you. If you want a strong, loving, and lasting relationship with your partner, you have to satisfy their six basic human needs.
Understanding and satisfying the human needs of others is the key to a relationship, because it guarantees love and connection. It is equally important that you truly understand your own needs – which two are most motivating you, and which are most motivating your partner.