Meeting Your Essential Needs Drives Your Behavior!
Something that I share with my clients at The Visionetics Institute is that there is no such thing as insignificant or inconsequential moments. We have a tendency to dismiss this we don’t understand or can’t find relevance in, but dismissing or ignoring something does not eliminate its meaning or impact.
All human behavior is need-driven, even when we attributed it to desire. If you want to understand and manage your behavior, you must first develop a lucid perspicacity of what drives that behavior — your fundamental needs. Every person on this planet is driven by certain universal and fundamental needs. These fundamental needs are “certainty,” uncertainty (which actually combats the boredom and feeling of unfulfillment associated with absolute certainty), significance, and connectivity (which includes the feeling of being loved and respected by others).
There are multitudinous ways that people meet these specific needs, with some being good and others being bad for everyone involved. For instance, some people achieve certainty in life through their sense of identity. Because their self-image is such that they believe in themselves, they have developed an understanding that they have the capacity to overcome any challenges that they may face. Others find certainty in their faith in a higher power, believing that their relationship with the higher power provides the resourcefulness necessary to overcome the obstacles they face.
Conversely, there are those who choose to use deception and cheating to provide their sense of certainty. They seek unfair advantages that tend to create weighted situations where things fall in their favor. Of course, there are always negative consequences to this type of behavior but rarely do these individuals make the connections.
Preorder your copy of Critical Mass, a book that serves as the comprehensive guide to living life at the level of your design.
Fortunately, there are two principles that also serve as character needs — not part of the essential needs cluster, but needs that help guide behavior to produce a more positive lifestyle. Basically, the way that I ensure that the behaviors I exhibit in order to me my essential needs are acceptable is by using the fifth and sixth needs as a collective barometer. I ask myself if the behavior that I have exhibited is leading to personal growth — is it expanding my capacity and reach to help empower, inspire and encourage others?
Next, I take an introspective examination of my
behavior to determine if it is serving needs outsides of myself. Is my behavior facilitating my “work” and not solely meeting my own fundamental needs. This means that when you are working to live life at the level of your design, you are living to impact the world around you in a positive way that sees people grow as well as become inspired and empowered.
If your behavior is not producing personal growth and you are not expanding in the area of external contribution, you are not living life at the level of your design. You are not fulfilling your purpose. You may be meeting those essential needs, but you are doing it using a modality that does not possess any intrinsic value. How you meet your fundamental needs is immensely important to the process of optimizing your impact on those in your periphery, which is the key to personal fulfillment and happiness! ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
