Rarely do I run across something that makes my head explode…which is probably a good thing because exploded brains are messy…but this is definitely one of them.
It’s that impactful and it will completely change the way you look at things.
I discovered it several years ago and it has transformed my ability to understand and help people and coaching clients to an amazing extent.
It’s called Six Human Needs Psychology and was originally developed by Tony Robbins and Chloe Madanas.
In a nutshell, it’s based on the principle that all of us – everyone from a firefighter to a stay-at-home mom to a suicide bomber – all have the same six human needs and we just meet them in different ways depending on our beliefs and values.
And it’s these needs, or more accurately the need to fulfill them, that drives our behavior 100%.
Crazy thought right!? But it’s true!
The first four of the needs are Certainty, Uncertainty/Variety, Significance, and Love/Connection. These are the physical or primal needs that everyone attempts to satisfy.
The last two of the six needs are Growth and Contribution and are the needs of the spirit. Not everyone is at this level but in order to live a truly fulfilling life you must eventually meet these two needs. You can’t do it by meeting the first four needs alone no matter how hard you try.
This is because it’s only when life becomes about us growing to our potential and us serving others in our greatest capacity that we can live an abundant, purposeful, joy-filled life.
Makes sense to me and we see similar principles in other places as well.
Now this is interesting…although we all pursue these needs (at least the first four), we typically value 2 more than the others. These two are called our “Driving Force” and are responsible for most of the habitual behaviors we engage in.
A note on valuing the needs – it’s not what you “value” in your head consciously, meaning you say “Oh I want to be about growth and contribution because those are the highest needs.” No – it’s figuring out the needs you most often try to fulfill based on your behaviors. You work backwards from your actions to figure out your intentions and motives and what need(s) you were trying to meet. Get it? Cool.
In Part II we’ll talk about the needs themselves in more detail and run through some examples. This post is getting long and I NEED to get to bed. 