Did you know that we all have 6 profound needs that must be met in order to live a happy and fulfilled life? This might come as a shock to you, but yes… you have needs and when they are not being fulfilled, it can create chaos, anxiety and a whole plethora of problems. What’s awesome is when we identify these needs, we can see how changes can be implemented into our lives that will make a profound positive difference.
The science behind it is actually quite amazing. This concept was initially birthed by Sigmund Freud and most famously pulled together by American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, who first proposed the six basic human needs. These needs were further adapted by Anthony Robbins who recently turned Maslow’s theory into an amazing tool for life transformation: The 6 Basic Human Needs. I had the privilege of studying under Anthony Robbins and am excited to share this tool with you now.
So what are these needs and why are they important?
The 6 Basic Human Needs are: Love/Connection, Variety, Significance, Certainty, Growth, and Contribution.
The first four needs – Love/Connection, Variety, Significance and Certainty – are necessary for survival and a successful life. The last two needs – Growth and Contribution – are necessary to experience a fulfilled life.
Some of you may be thinking, “I need WATER and FOOD, CHOCOLATE, CLOTHES and JESUS!!!” And you are correct – every one of these items fall within the 6 Human Needs.
As you read through the following 6 Basic Human Needs, there are several questions you can answer at the end of each section to gain clarity on how you have been fulfilling your needs in both positive and negative ways. This clarity will call to your attention the negative practices you have in place which then allows you to discern positive changes you can make to live a happier and more fulfilled life.
Let’s dive in…
Love & Connection
Everyone needs to feel connected with someone or something. We all hope and strive for love – to give and to receive. The need for love and connection begins at the start of life – babies and children need love and touch – and the need continues throughout life. In adulthood, this need is rounded out with the concept of romantic love, marriage and/or the devotion to one person.
Whatever your culture, love and connection are not only universal, but key to healthy emotional well-being. These needs can be satisfied in either positive or negative ways and can therefore be good for you or can be negative for you and those around you.
Let’s look at a few positive and negative ways we satisfy our need for love and connection…
Positive means:
love and connection from immediate family members and/or close friends through quality time
connection with community and/or work
performing good deeds, volunteering
being kind, receiving kindness
marital intimacy
words of affirmation
cuddling with your partner or your children
loving on your pets
connection to religion
giving/receiving gifts
eye contact
acts of service
physical affection
joining a club
Negative means:
dominating and controlling others who are forced to show appreciation to you because you help them with one of their needs
being helpless so people have to take care of you (you receive attention, compassion, physical/financial help)
always talking about your illness (creates connection, love, and empathy from others)
staying depressed (you receive attention, compassion, empathy, and help from others)
emotional eating (a form of self love, self soothing, self connection)
deviant sexual activity (a sense of connection, superficial love, attention)
addiction (a form of self soothing, self connection)
children displaying rebellion or other bad behavior to seek attention from busy or neglectful parents
In order to see how you seek love and connection in your life, answer these questions:
What do you do to feel love and connection? Is it by giving, receiving, or both? What do you do to receive love and connection from others? How do you give love and connection to others? Do you experience love on a regular basis or do you hold back because of fear? How can you improve your fulfillment of love and connection in healthy ways moving forward?
Variety
Ah, variety — the spice of life! We all love variety to some degree.
What’s interesting is this: for one person variety means watching a television show, wearing blue socks instead of the usual black, or ordering something different from the menu of your favorite restaurant. For the next person, variety means base jumping, gambling upwards of $500,000 a pop, or swimming with sharks off the Gold Coast of Australia.
We all want and need variety in our lives. Variety exercises our emotional, psychological, mental, and physical range. Variety is one way to combat depression and anxiety. A good dose of variety is healthy and the excitement that ensues is necessary to feel alive.
Some forms of variety create suspense and surprise, and this keeps us on our toes. Variety can be fun and exciting for some, and feel risky and terrifying for others. Which category do you fall in? On the flip side, the same monotonous routine breeds boredom and, if not addressed swiftly and correctly, can foster harmful experimentation in the form of change, all to satisfy the need for variety and conquer boredom.
Positive means:
different forms of exercise
participating in a club
going to a spa
extreme sports
attending live arts
spontaneous date nights with your spouse/partner
travel
learning a new hobby or skill
watching the news, a quality tv show or movie
Negative means:
deviant sexual behavior
creating drama / conflict / problems
violent behavior
emotional eating
viewing pornography
becomes overly excited during crisis
experimenting with addictive drugs and/or alcohol, can lead to addiction
cigarette smoking
It is crucial to plan Variety in your life. How do you meet your need for Variety?
What do you do with your physiology, focus, and language during your variety vs. times when you experience boredom? What are the differences in your feelings and behavior between the two? Do you have problems, hesitations, or fears that give you emotional uncertainty and prevent you from trying new things? How can you enhance your needs for variety in healthy ways moving forward?
Significance
Who doesn’t like to feel special, significant, or important to another person or group of people? To want to feel important doesn’t make you prideful, needy or a narcissist. We need to feel important, needed and wanted in life.
This need begins when we are infants; babies and children need to feel #1 in their parent’s lives. The need is so great that siblings begin to compete with each other for attention – hence “sibling rivalry”. Children will fight for a way to feel special and different from their sibling(s). They do this in positive ways (humor, academics, who is better/faster at completing chores, talents, who has better behavior), and in negative ways (naughty behavior, telling lies to cover up mishaps and out of fear of rejection or discipline, tantrums, rebellion to gain attention). Lack of feeling significant is a form of low self esteem because it stems from comparing ourselves to others. A hierarchical pecking order develops and we begin to question our superiority, inferiority, and in the end, significance/importance.
On a positive note, this is one element in life that makes us raise our standards. On the flip side, if we become hyper-focused on significance, we develop difficulty connecting with others because comparisons breed differences, not commonalities.
We feel connected with others in two broad ways: (on a deeper level) – when we realize they genuinely care about us and we care for them, and (on a more superficial level) – if we have things in common. The first step to helping someone feel significant is to allow them to feel that you genuinely care for them.
Do you struggle with insignificance? If so… is this because of the way your parents raised you? Is it a byproduct of a poor relationship with your siblings growing up? A mean teacher who, in school, told you you’d never amount to anything? A bully? It doesn’t always matter WHY a person has low self esteem. What matters is how to combat it.
Without feelings of significance, we are left to feel small and unworthy.
We all have these same 6 human needs, but find vastly different ways of satisfying them. Our needs can be satisfied in positive, neutral, or negative ways. Some people find significance by being different – personal style: clothing, tattoos, hair style, piercings. Others find significance through personality: “the life of the party”, “the wise one”, or “the dramatic one”. Artists can find significance through the popularity of their paintings, photography, or music. Have a look at the list below for examples of finding significance, both positive and negative.
Positive means:
serving one’s country in the military
providing for your family
meaningful work (career, home-making, volunteer)
major contribution to humanity (invention, medical breakthrough)
financial wealth (provided you do charitable things with your money)
success – being the best at something (athlete, business, entertainment)
breaking through big problems
through spirituality
achievement
built something great
successful at something healthy / positive / good
Negative means:
failure – (some people actually feel significant if they are the worst at something, this brings them attention and help, which fosters feelings of significance)
being the sickest in the group (for the same reason as above)
pride – pride sometimes sets in when a person’s self esteem is so low, they force themselves to belief they are greater than they really are at something so they feel important
by tearing down someone or something, trash talking, gossip
for children – who has the most toys
for adults – who has the nicest, most expensive car / home / clothing
gang violence makes a gang member significant
In order to see how your need for significance is affecting your life both postively and negatively, answer these questions:
What do you do to feel significant? How do you make others feel significant? Do you experience significance on a regular basis? If you are married, do you feel that you are the most significant person in the world to your spouse? Do you make your spouse feel like the most important person in the world to you? If you are a parent, are you most important to your child/children? Do they feel most important to you? What can you do moving forward to satisfy your need for significance in healthy ways?
Certainty
Certainty is the desire to feel safe, to be comfortable in your environment, and to experience pleasure while avoiding pain. Without Certainty, one is left to live in fear. With a great amount of Certainty, you feel stable, grounded, protected, secure, and can predict certain necessary safeguards in your life.
Like every other basic human need, the amount of necessary Certainty varies from person to person and is fulfilled in different ways, both in positive/healthy ways and in negative/unhealthy ways.
One person experiences Certainty with a one room apartment living on minimum wage, another feels Certainty if they know the shelter three blocks away will accept and feed them for the night, while another only feels Certainty if they make over two million dollars annually. Like the other five needs, it’s relative – based on your psychological blueprint.
The human brain is not designed to handle a massive amount of uncertainty. It’s too stressful. Therefore a person will go to great and desperate lengths to obtain Certainty in life.
Avoiding pain is one of the brain’s survival instincts because continuous pain causes damage, and continuous damage leads to poor overall health (psychological, emotional, and physical) and eventually death.
The quality of your life depends on how well you adapt to uncertainty. If you handle uncertainty well, you will handle life well. That kind of flexibility and adaptivity breeds motivation, creativity, the ability to learn and the desire and ability to change.
Positive Means:
having a roof over your head
having enough food
knowing how to obtain health care when needed
knowing your neighbor won’t attack
job security
marriage security
maintaining a close relationship with your children after they leave the home
holding faithfully to religious beliefs
security in family relations and friendships
Negative Means:
hoarding (brings a false certainty that you’ll never do without)
over-eating (blood rushes to the stomach, you breathe deeply and harder, and feel alive)
smoking (you inhale more deeply and harder, waking you up, making you feel more alive)
trying to control others (example: trying to control your spouse out of fear of abandonment, failure, etc. so you feel safe/certainty)
trying to manipulate others (same reason as above)
alcoholism (it’s a certain/guaranteed way to relax, ease social situations)
complaining / always having a problem (brings certainty of attention and compassion)
micromanaging (brings certainty that things will be done your way)
withdrawing (brings certainty that you’ll be missed or talked about, and may bring attention)
being clingy towards your spouse/friend/child to make you feel Certainty
The first step to gaining Certainty, if you feel you’re lacking, is to look at your overall life and realize you’ve already made it through so much; you’ve always been able to do it; you’re okay now; you are not your circumstances; to persevere and work to improve. The second step is to step back and look at all the blessings in your life – and be grateful for them. Spend time in gratitude for what you have.
Answer these questions:
How do you obtain Certainty? When you feel uncertain, unsafe, unstable, or ungrounded, what do you do with your focus to feel more Certainty? Do you have an empowering belief? A religion to turn to? Do you focus on something in your past or on hope for the future? Do you find yourself using the same negative or positive language patterns? How can you better fulfill your need for certainty moving forward?
Growth
Everything in existence is either growing or dying. Humans need growth in every capacity: spiritually, intellectually, physically, and emotionally. Development in all four areas is key to a healthy life.
Does spiritual satisfaction exist? I’m not sure. Even during great spiritual growth, although temporarily grateful and enriched, we are left with the desire for more – thus the need to continue growing closer to God. From infancy to adulthood, we constantly grow and change physically. Although we don’t continue to grow in height, we do continue to physically change until death and through it all, our bodies hunger for activity.
Physical activity is necessary for a healthy body, less we sit, gain weight and lose muscle, and disease sets in. Emotionally, we change and grow with every life experience, from events in our personal lives to events in the world. Intellectually, we respond to all stimuli around us. Intellectual growth is a lifelong endeavor and occurs daily through reading, learning hands-on, and witnessing other’s success and failure.
When we stop being physically active, our bodies degenerate. When we stop growing intellectually, our memory fades, cognitive ability diminishes, and the brain physically shrinks. When we stop growing emotionally/psychologically, we regress in appropriate thoughts, feelings, and behavior. When we stop growing, we die.
Whatever you value in life: marriage, health, relationships, career success, integrity/character, money, love, generosity, contribution, virtue – all must be cultivated, worked, practiced, expanded. It takes energy and hard work, but is the reward not worth it?
Positive Means of Growth:
exercise
reading
study / learn something new constantly
personal development, growing into a better person
learn a musical instrument
take up a new hobby or sport
grow in faith
Negative Means:
sliding backwards
give in to harmful behavior (being controlling, manipulative, lying)
give in to bad habits
watching too much tv
Ask yourself:
How do you experience Growth? When you want to grow, what do you do with your focus? How do you plan to fulfill your need for Growth in healthy ways from this point forward?
Contribution
Contribution is the act of looking beyond oneself, going beyond one’s own needs, and giving to others with no hoped for or expected personal gain. It’s contributing to other people, a cause or to a movement. It’s a way to leave a legacy, a mark on the world, to make a difference. We contribute in many different ways, based on our talents, skills, abilities, interests, and desires.
Contribution is the king of the 6 Human Needs because it regulates the others.
If you focus on Contribution, you’ll have Connection and love with others while helping them. You’ll have Variety as you’re doing something different from your everyday routine. Significance is fulfilled because you know you’re helping others, improving lives, making a difference. You’ll have Certainty of being able to contribute. Growth occurs because anytime you contribute to others, you grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and, if there’s physical activity involved, you’ll grow in health. Contribution is key to experiencing a life of fulfillment.
Here are a few examples…
Positive Means of Contribution:
volunteer work
a service-based career: teaching, police, coaching, medical, religious
spending time with grandchildren, nephews & nieces, other family members, neighbors, the elderly
visiting nursing homes
community service
charitable donations
writing a book
giving to your children or other family members or friends
adopting a child
fostering children
Negative Means to Contribution:
contributing to the destruction of others
gossiping
ganging up with others on an individual (bullying)
selling drugs
being condescending
prostitution
creating negative art that influences others: pornography, bad music
politicians/government officials and the general public voting towards degeneration of nation
Ask yourself these questions:
How do you Contribute and why is it important to you to Contribute in the ways you do? What drives your desire to Contribute the way you do? Have you Contributed in negative ways? How, and what did you learn from it? Moving forward, how can you contribute in positive ways?
Conclusion
So to recap, the first four Human Needs (Love/Connection, Variety, Significance, and Certainty) are necessary for human survival and are the fundamental needs of the personality. The last two Human Needs (Growth and Contribution) are needs of the spirit and are necessary for a life of fulfillment.
When you have a belief or behavior that simultaneously fulfills three of the Human Needs, you become addicted to it. Please see the examples below:
Positive:
being in a healthy romantic relationship/marriage = fulfills Love/Connection (with your partner), Significance (you feel important to your partner), Variety (you do fun things together, changes your physical and mental states), Growth (as you grow together, learn more about each other, and depend on each other for fun), Certainty (knowing your partner will always be there for you, unconditionally), Contribution (you contribute to them and their life: their wellbeing, career, happiness, and spiritual life).
Negative:
alcohol/drug/eating addiction = fulfills Love/Connection (connecting and soothing oneself), Certainty (it’s always there and it’s a form of self-soothing), Variety (it changes your state: your mood transforms from anxious to calm, from depression to being numb or experiencing a euphoric high), and Significance (you now feel important as you’re catering to your needs and self-soothing and you also feel like you’re in control).
Can you now see how easily and quickly habits and addictions occur, both positive and negative? It’s so important to be mindful of your every thought, feeling, word and action.
The amazing part of this is if you choose to put the effort in, you will completely transform your life. You’ll go from being stuck, empty, anxious, depressed, and unsuccessful to becoming unstoppable.
Yes, living an intentional and purposeful life does take energy, thought, and practice, but incorporating these elements is the key to living a passionate and fulfilled life.
Until next time, love one another,
Jennifer
Woman Genius Co-Founder, Jennifer Price, is an International Marriage Interventionist and helps couples create relationships full of peace, passion and purpose. Also a Coach to Coaches, she helps clients transform into peak performing coaches by improving their mindset and skill, and by teaching them how to grow their online community and business.
Jennifer is a best-selling Co-Author with Jack Canfield in the book Success Breakthroughs. Jennifer currently splits her time between her two homes in Dallas, Texas, and central Virginia.