#26 Growth: Unveiling Your Inner Drive - Navigating the Six Human Needs

We explore the transformative power of understanding the six human needs. Dive into the delicate balance of certainty, uncertainty, significance, connection, growth, and contribution for a more fulfilling life. Learn actionable steps and gain insights for living authentically. 🚀

Reference Video: https://youtu.be/1lbpqcxOPVI?si=yMukSOGQDusfgKNZ

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This is a topic that has truly transformed my perspective on life – the six human needs, inspired by the insights of the incredible Tony Robbins. In this blog post, I'll share a brief yet powerful overview of these needs and how they've influenced my personal growth journey.

Understanding the Six Human Needs

At the core of our existence are six fundamental needs that drive us forward in our quest for a meaningful life. Let's take a quick look at each:

1. Certainty: We all crave stability in life's essentials – food, water, shelter. Seeking certainty is natural, but it's vital to recognize when it becomes an unhealthy fixation.

2. Uncertainty or Variety: Embracing the unexpected and adding spice to life. Balancing certainty with variety prevents stagnation and fosters growth.

3. Significance: The innate desire to feel special and important. While seeking recognition is natural, doing so in unhealthy ways can lead to negative patterns.

4. Love and Connection: Humans yearn for connection – with people, ideals, values, or a sense of identity. It's crucial to balance this need to avoid negative patterns in seeking love and connection.

5. Growth: Everything is either growing or dying. True fulfillment comes from continuous personal and spiritual growth.

6. Contribution: Beyond ourselves lies a deep need to contribute to the greater good. Stepping into growth and contribution brings unparalleled joy and fulfillment.

Navigating the Paradox

Life is a delicate dance between these needs, and recognizing when and how we seek them is key. Seeking certainty can turn unhealthy if driven by fear, just as pursuing significance can lead to negative patterns. It's about finding a balance that aligns with our values and promotes positive growth.

A Personal Reflection

On my own journey, I've shifted from seeking certainty and significance to embracing uncertainty and significance in healthier ways. Regularly evaluating my actions in different aspects of life has been eye-opening, allowing me to identify areas where I can redirect my focus for a more balanced approach.

Take Action: Positive vs. Negative

To gain clarity, consider listing each need and identifying positive and negative ways you seek them in your life. This self-reflection exercise can unveil patterns and guide you toward a more balanced and fulfilling life.

Understanding and navigating the six human needs has been a game-changer for me. It's not about labeling needs as good or bad but recognizing where our primary focus lies. By fostering a healthy balance, we can live authentically and find true fulfillment in our journey.

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with these human needs in the comments below. And if you're curious to learn more, check out Tony Robbins' insightful videos on the topic – I've dropped a link in the show notes.

Here's to a life filled with balance, growth, and meaningful connections!

Transcription:

00:00

What are you craving most in life? Today we are talking about the six human needs and this comes from Tony Robbins. I'll drop one of his links for a YouTube video of his in the show notes but I wanted to break these down because I've talked about them in other episodes and I wanted to make sure there was a place where you can find this and hear some of my thoughts around them and how I've, as I've learned about this and walk through this and continue to do growth and mindset work around this.

00:30

This has really impacted me and really helps me determine what's going on behind the scenes. What am I motivated? Where's my motivation lying? What am I seeking first? And is that healthy? So let's jump in. So the six human needs are, and I'll dive into these deeper, but I'll just run through them first, are certainty, uncertainty or variety, significance, love and connection. And then there's two spiritual needs, which are growth,

00:59

and contribution. And I'll explain more of that in a bit. So these are fundamental drives within each one of us that compel us forward in the quest to experience life and finding a life of meaning. And so there's no conscious effort necessary. Our will to satisfy these primal needs is automatic. And I think that's important just to note.

01:27

So, and where this comes from is really what we're seeking first and most. So I'll come back to that. But so let's talk about certainty first. So we all crave certainty, right? We all want stability around basic necessities, you know, food, water, shelter, other, you know, kind of material resources, right? When people can't control these, they often look towards...

01:56

Like through a kind of state of mind, like whether it's positive outlook or you'll see people when they're in a really, sometimes dark place, that's when they'll turn to God more, which is, I think God can use all things together for good. And he does provide, I mean, so many things. And that's, we know that that is such, I mean, whether you have it all or whether you have nothing, we have nothing without God and accepting him.

02:23

as our Lord and Savior, right? And his love for us is.

02:28

incredible and and unconditional no matter what we've done or haven't done anyways So certainty then uncertainty or variety So if we have all the certainty in the world and we have our whole path nailed down you'll oftentimes see people kind of like throw a wrench in things and because people haven't we crave variety and uncertainty and so

02:58

Oftentimes they'll, you know, maybe it's going on a trip or going on an adventure or Oftentimes we'll see this with relationships, you know, they have the perfect person and the relationship is fantastic, but they get bored Right and start to seek Things in other places because they crave that variety, right? And I mean that's I'm not gonna get into the topic of relationships and how important you know there's lots of people out there that you know, we talked about keeping the spark alive and variety and

03:28

having that uncertainty, you know, the piece where you're, you know, when you first start getting to know someone and continuing that as you, you know, are in a long-term relationship, married to them, etc. Right? Number three is significance. Everybody needs to feel special and important in some way. Now, first of all, you are special and you are important because you're a child of God. Hopefully you accept that in your heart.

03:57

And so we see the world, there's a whole lot of like, everybody's trying to like be special and be important and different and all of that. And we're seeking that first. And here's the key with all of these is, it's not that any of these are bad at all. It's, if you're seeking one of these, especially these four the most or first, in an unhealthy way, it can lead to really

04:27

unhealthy patterns and mindsets and just how you operate. So we seek significance through obtaining recognition from others. And when we feel insignificant, this can make people sometimes try to feel significant by getting angry or they might try to seek significance through like due to the size or complexity of their problems, right? Like, oh well.

04:54

my problems are bigger than your problems, and we see a lot of scarcity come up in that, right? And people kind of, that's their identity of like, oh, you know, like even we see that often with people who are ill and struggling with their health is they're like, well, you know, my problems, well, you know, this, right? And you kind of see that there's like that, this weird competition that happens. And again, this is all said from a place of love and understanding because

05:23

I've been here, I've walked this journey, and so I feel it. Number four is love and connection. So humans need to feel connected to something or someone, a person, an ideal, a value, a habit, or a sense of identity. Connection may take the form of love, or it may be created by a sense of belonging or a spiritual sense. People, like the rest of them, people can fulfill this in a positive way or like fulfill this...

05:52

need in positive and negative ways, right? And I think that's really important that it's, if all we're doing is seeking love and connection, just, and I'm gonna say this again, God's unconditional love, we are accepted. We are loved unconditionally. He's the only one that will ever love us truly unconditionally. There's no human on the planet that, you know,

06:22

that's we're humans and that's, I mean, there's some people that are incredible and come close to that, but trying to seek that on the planet is quite frankly unattainable. And like I said, you can attain that, looking for that in negative ways and positive ways. And if that's all we're seeking is love and connection, especially in negative ways, you're going to see negative patterns and outcomes from that. And then number five is growth.

06:51

everything is either growing or dying. Everything. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how many people acknowledge you, or what you have achieved. Unless you feel like you're growing, you're going to be unhappy and unfulfilled. And I think this can look very different depending on where you're at in life, as well as from a spiritual place, and again, depending on your beliefs around that. But...

07:21

How are you growing? I see people, and I've walked through phases where you're stagnant, you're not growing, you're not leaning into growth in any way. And it leaves you feeling very unfulfilled. And I mean, now, I'm gonna say this again, earthly things are never going to satisfy us or fulfill us. That's not what we're after. It comes back to a spiritual walk, right?

07:51

and what we're seeking, right, to be more Christ-like. Then number six is contribution. We all have a deep need to go beyond ourselves and to live a life that serves the greater good. In the moment that we do this, we experience true joy and fulfillment. Contribution is the ultimate secret to the joy so that so many people wish to have in their lives. That's huge. When you see people step into these two kind of spiritual needs of growth and contribution, that's when people

08:21

feel so much fulfillment, right? And again, I mean, contribution from a Christian perspective, right? How can we help people feel God's love, His unconditional love towards them, right? And how are we contributing to that? So, we have the need for certainty, but we also have the need for uncertainty. We have the need for significance, but we also have the need for connection, right? And those are often like a paradox.

08:53

And so looking at where this shows up in a healthy way and an unhealthy way is really huge. So something that I would encourage you to do is if you take a piece of paper and you can put these six things down and kind of have two columns under each one and what's positive and what's negative, where are you seeking certainty in positive ways and then in negative ways?

09:20

Where are you seeking uncertainty and variety? In positive ways and in negative ways. Significance, love and connection, and those four. And you can do it with, you can do it with growth and contribution too, but that's, those two, like if you're stuck in trying to gain certainty,

09:48

let's say through growth, right? And like constantly learning. So many people go and get stuck in that like learning mode instead of like action. Violet came to visit. And so you can seek those things or if you're constantly looking to contribute and give and you give so much that like, you know, till your fingers bleed and you kind of become a martyr on the other side of that, we can take those things to the other extreme, right?

10:18

So looking at those things again in negative and positive ways is really important.

10:27

And then, which two needs have you been valuing most? So if you're constantly seeking significance and how you can be special, significant, or if you're seeking, you know, you're just always seeking certainty, the bottom line is we live in an uncertain world. We live in an imperfect world. Things are going to come up. And if you're so driven by certainty, and I used to be,

10:54

that used to be like a hardcore thing for me was I was seeking certainty so hard and then seeking significance. And I saw, especially like actually with budgeting and some of the identities that I took on initially with budgeting of people told me that, oh, well, you're really good with money. You know, I should I should just give you all of my money to manage. Like those are things that people told me. And so I took on that identity of that was like significant. And but that also wasn't healthy. And so I'm being able to shift.

11:24

in my finances and in teaching even to how can I serve, but not from a place of like, because I'm really good at this, because I'm on this journey. And like, I used to seek certainty from that place of like, I was in a scarcity mindset with my finances. So I'd like, budget so tightly. And that's where people are like, Oh, well, you're good at this. And I'm like, I actually am not good at this. I'm just good at really good at holding on to something and living

11:54

minded stories, right, and really rooted in that. It wasn't healthy. It wasn't from a growth place. It wasn't from a place of contribution. It wasn't from a place of healthy seeking certainty and variety. Yeah, and so being able to look at those and take an honest look is really, really important.

12:26

So as I continued, as I've been on this growth journey, I went from really seeking certainty and significance, and then I kind of went to seeking uncertainty and significance in some ways. And I'd say I'm still on that journey. Things have shifted a little bit more, and continue to depending on where I'm at. And also going through that exercise, and

12:54

in what ways, you know, in different situations where I'm seeking different things in negative and positive ways has been really helpful and interesting to me in being able to take a look at how am I showing up for my life and where do I get to dig in and do some work in this area and where am I seeking growth and contribution over significance or over certainty and that's a huge piece. So

13:24

I hope that that's helpful in sharing. Like I said, definitely. This comes from Tony Robbins and I'll drop a link to his one. If he's got a few YouTube videos on it, but really digging into that and looking at that because it is how we operate. And when you start to see that in your life of, OK, what am I seeking here? Um, positive ways, negative ways, right? Even with we can apply this, you know, I've seen in areas where

13:54

whether it be with relationships, with finances, with recreation, you know, my fun adventures and all of those pieces. What am I seeking here? Even in friendships, I used to like seek certainty in friendships so deeply over love and connection, not significance. I'd say there's maybe been times where I've been seeking significance in friendships.

14:24

But more often than not, it's seeking certainty and knowing and kind of that like unconditional love in friendships. And that's not the case. That's not how that works. Instead of being able to seek contribution and love and connection in those, that's been a big shift for me. And when you can look at, okay, what am I actually seeking here in this? How you show up and how you show up as a friend, how you show up as a spouse, how you show up in business,

14:53

in your career with your health and with working out and food and all of those pieces. I actually have the exercise here when last time I went through this, not that long ago, and in where I was seeking certainty in my working out and where I was seeking significance.

15:20

It's really, and you can have multiple, like they can come up in multiple ways, right? Like for example, I had, being single, I had dating come up in uncertainty and variety in a negative way. I also had it come up in significance, both in positive and in negative in different ways. And then also in love and connection, both in negative and in positive ways, and also under certainty.

15:50

Being able to look at like, okay, well, where is it coming up the most and also in what areas like what am I seeking at different times and what's how do I want to show up for that? Um, and we, you know, you see people show up like there's, you know, they're so desperate to have certainty in their future, let's say like, um, that in relationships, you know, they, they're just seeking that like, stable.

16:19

certain relationship, right? Not necessarily healthy. They just want that certainty, right? Or finances. They're willing to, you know, they're just like staying in that bubble and not looking to expand at all. They're staying on that hamster wheel because they think it's certain, even though jobs are never certain, right? Anything could change at any point in time for a business. Nothing is certain. We live on this earth, right? So,

16:48

Hopefully this is helpful and helps kind of pull back the curtain on like what's actually driving you and What are our human needs and like I said, none of them are bad It's what are you seeking the most and when you can get to a place where? You know, you're you seeking significance, um In ways is is not bad. It's where are you seeking first?

17:14

right? Is it in positive or negative ways and how is it impacting the rest of my life?