Why We Do What We Do

This post originally appeared as an original blog post at ty-hicks.com. See the full, original post here.

SUMMARY

Have you ever kept around a bad habit for way too long? Have you ever stayed in a bad relationship for way too long? Have you ever knew that you wanted your life to be one way but you kept acting in a very different way?

What the hell is going on here? The reason that we very often will act in ways that violate our deepest values is because our current, limiting actions may still be meeting our basic needs at a subconscious level.

Human Needs Psychology and the work of Anthony Robbins and Cloe Madanes have some powerful insights into this phenomenon. Their work submits for consideration that all human behavior is oriented around meeting one or more of six, universal human needs:

1. Certainty – The need to have basic continuity in your world; to know that your basic needs for security and survival are met, but also to have continuity in your relationships, finances, future – everything.
2. Uncertainty / Variety – While having basic certainty is important, we cannot live in a state of utter certainty about every experience that we have. Human beings have an innate need to experience things that provide positive stimulation – that which is novel, mysterious, and induces curiosity.
3. Significance – Every human being has a need to feel special, unique, and worthy of love and attention through some means or another. Whether people choose ego-serving methods or contribution-oriented methods for significance is their choice.
4. Connection / Love – We are all hardwired for connection with others. As infants, if we do not get enough connection, we can literally die. Our ancestors had an evolutionary advantage to being in groups, and so when we feel ostracized or alone it is one of the worst feelings imaginable.
5. Growth – If we are not growing, we are dying. Our minds, bodies, and souls are either expanding or retracting daily. The feeling of being "stuck" is one that we can tolerate for only so long before we snap and have to make a change.
6. Contribution – In order to feel truly fulfilled, human beings most give something back beyond themselves. This is often the least recognized and honored need yet it is the surest vehicle for us to obtain the lasting pride that we have mattered.

When we keep around old behaviors, habits, and beliefs that no longer serve us, it is because they are meeting one or more of our basic needs. In order to create lasting change, we have to find a new way to meet those needs and to do so in a way that empowers us.

While each of us must find a way to meet these six needs, we all choose different means to do so. The choice is always ours in who we want to become. Do you want to be significant because of the things you own or because of the things you do for others? Do you want to feel connected by having huge complaints and problems that give you attention or by spreading love and joy wherever you go? Do you want to have certainty by never tasking risks and accepting challenges or by acknowledging that, if you are committed enough, you can and will find a way?

What will you choose?

FURTHER EDUCATION

• I put together a free mini-course on how to take control of your personal psychology and accelerate your progress. Check it out here.
• I assembled three of my favorite trainings on how to effectively and ethically influence anyone into a completely free mini course. Get it here.
• Looking to get a better handle on your financial future? Check out my free introductory trainings here on how to handle this area for good.

QUOTE CARDS

TRANSCRIPT

 Most of the people that you're going to encounter don't want to go in the direction that you're trying to go, right? That's going to be the reality. So that's absolutely fundamental. What I would submit to you is that if you want to influence someone else, you've got to first understand what already influences them, because so very often we're trying to get somebody to go in a particular direction by pushing them in that direction and saying "Hey, this is a thing you should really care about, and here's why, and, you know, here's X, Y, and Z reason why that's the case."

And what happens is most influencers commit the fatal fallacy of trying to influence based off of what influences them. And that will work fantastically if and only if the person you're talking to thinks exactly like you do. Instead what you have got to understand is that you've got to get deeply curious about what influences them, right?

Remember that map, okay? Everyone of us is walking around with a different map so you've got to first say "Hey, I need to get curious about understanding what this person's map is." Some people will join an organization or they will go after something because it's just a personal standard for them – it's about integrity; it's about values.

For some people, economic incentives are the real mover for them, and that's unfortunate because those people typically don't become the absolute shapers of an organization. Some individuals are in it for significance right? They want the ego thing; they want the plaque on the cubicle. They want the thing on the business card. They want to be able to post the facebook update and say "Hey, I've got big news!" 

Some people want to do it because they want to get connected with a like minded group. They genuinely have a human need that tells them "I need to be a part of some people, a group of people who really think and feel like I do." Some people do it just for variety and stimulation. 

All of us do it for some of these reasons. In my work with people in strategic intervention where I help people understand why they say they want their life one way and they actually behave in a different way, the framework I give them to understand is this concept of the Six Human Needs.

Believe it or not, human needs psychology I think provides the absolutely most productive and useful framework for understanding why any organization or any individual does things a certain way, and there's really six answers to why humans behave in a particular way. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can use this lens and apply it to your own experiences, your own behavior, and see how much you find, but I've yet to find somebody who really says "I really disagree with this."

So those six needs in brief are 1) Certainty, so human beings have got to have a basic feeling that they can be certain that there will be continuity in their environment. Continuity in their relationships, stability that they will be able to predict with some level what is going to happen next. For example, if this room started to shake and there was an earthquake... the San Andreas is giving way or something then what I'm saying instantly goes out the window. All of a sudden finding physical safety becomes priority number one. Do you all get me? So your human behavior would be oriented toward certainty. 

Have you guys ever met somebody who's got like a 17 color-coded planner? You guys ever seen this? Any of you like this? That is a certainty-oriented individual. That may be their top need because for them in order to feel in control of their world; in order to feel in control of their environment, everything has to be just so you, and everything has to be organized in a particular way.

You guys ever put off doing a task you really need to do and instead you went and like cleaned your room or something? And it made you feel good? Why the hell do we do that? Well, the reason we do that is because you're certain you can clean your room. You know how to do that. You've practiced it. And it gives you this feeling of being in control of your environment. That other thing? That's a little scary. You don't know how to do that yet. Alright, so certainty – so people will do things to enhance or maintain basic certainty.

However, mother nature has a sense of humor because if you were absolutely certain of everything that was going to happen every single moment of every day, you would eventually get what? Bored, absolutely. So we have a second need for Variety – positive variety, stimulation, mystery, curiosity, the unknown, right? That idea of being swept up. Why do people go on roller coasters? That sensation.

So everybody has got that sort of experience. So think of like that person with the 12 colors coded planner and now I think have you guys ever had a friend or maybe a parent, for me it was my Mom, where you're like "Hey, we got to leave at six, come on it's time to go!" and they're like "Yeah, yeah we'll get there." You guys ever had somebody like that? Maybe you are that person? Okay, so this is why certainty and variety people... certainty and uncertainty / variety people don't mix so well all the time when that's their top need, right? So those people are more... they're less concerned about being certain. They're more concerned about like the journey or what have you. So that's number two.

Number three is Significance. So I don't care who you are, whether you're Adolf Hitler, Mother Teresa, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, whoever... You have got to feel that you are significant – that you mean something; that you are worthy in some way; that you are unique to somebody else or to, you know, humanity or whatever the case is.

People will do incredible things for significance. Why does somebody drop thousands and thousands of dollars on a Rolex watch? Is it because it's so durable? No, it's because they get a feeling from that, obviously right? Every one of us has got a sense of significance in some way or another. Some are empowering. Some people are like "I'm going to be significant by my contributions to the human race."

Some people say "I'm going to be significant by tearing others down, by being the loudest person in the room; by doing destructive things; by causing problems." Some people are significant by how much they complain and how much attention they bring to themselves. But we all have got to find some way to be significant.

Number four is Connection / Love. No matter who you are, you've got to have the sense that you are connected to other human beings and ultimately that you are loved in some unique way. This is why some people will join organizations or leave organizations, join teams, go to events, do all sorts of things. It's why some people will go the extra mile on a project if they think that they're going to get a sense of connection from their teammate, their teacher whomever, right? It will motivate some people and not motivate others quite as much, but all of us have that need at some level.

Number five is Growth. Have you guys ever had the feeling that you're sitting in one place for too long, not physically, but that you're not expanding? That you've been in a dead end job for example, or something like that? What was happening is your need for growth was not being satiated. Human beings have got a profound need to expand their emotional, spiritual, and physical range – to be able to enter into what is unknown and to make it known; to be able to have something more to give. We all have got to feel that we're growing. And if we're not growing, the truth is we're dying. You know in some sense of the word we're decaying our mind, our body, our spirit, our skills, right? You use it or you lose it. All the neuroscience shows that that is exactly how the brain works.

Yes, I'm so glad you mention that 'cause that's a perfect segue into the sixth and final need, which is Contribution. Sp every human being has got to feel that they're giving something beyond themselves in order to feel fully alive. That is absolutely true. In the 60,000 individuals I've worked with, if you do not feel that you are giving something back to somebody or something higher than yourself, you'll not be fulfilled.

And I think that ultimately every single person in this room wants to leave some legacy of some sort or you wouldn't still be listening to me yapping up here. So I think that that's the interesting need because when you focus on contribution first above the others, it effectively regulates all of the other needs. Because if you're focused on contributing first, you can be certain that you'll have an impact, right?

If you're contributing there's endless variety in how you can do it and ways that you can be stimulated through it. If you're contributing you can be boundlessly significant to others. If you're contributing, you can have deep connection and love with others. And if you're contributing there's immense ways for you to grow, so you have more to give.

Here's the last piece on the six needs 'cause Danya you asked "What causes people to be influenced, to be motivated in certain ways?" We all have those six needs. We all have to meet them, but each of us has got a different ranking of which ones are important and each one of us has got a different set of rules as to what fills those needs at a level 10.

So for instance, if you're focused on significance above all else, then I can tell you you're going to have a life of pain, because you're driven by being perceived a certain way, by feeding the ego, and when you're significance-oriented first, you'll always be comparing yourself to someone else. When you're so certainty-oriented first, you'll cut yourself off from challenges because what's more important for you is to be certain and stable than it is to embrace growth and change.

Now, however, you can either develop certainty by sitting in your house with all the blinds closed and never going out and experiencing anything or you can develop certainty by having sort of personal faith and saying "No matter what comes at me, I'm going to find a way." And so you can actually develop an inner foundation of certainty that says I'm embracing, endless variety 'cause I will always be able to handle it. 

So real personal power, I think, comes when we start to understand this; when we start to look at "Hey, why am I still smoking even though I say I don't want to smoke?" Well, the problem is smoking is meeting some of your needs. If anything is meeting three or more of those needs, it becomes an addiction. And so what you've got to do is be able to apply something else there to fill that gap. Most people who try to quit... How many of you guys ever seen or you know somebody who tried to quit smoking like a million times and it didn't work? That's because when they gave something up, they didn't feel in that void with something empowering that met those needs structures. You all follow me there?

Organizationally it's the same thing. Organizations can get stuck in a rut because they need certainty over the fact that they need growth. So what you have really got to be able to do is consciously say "What do I value most and what is my current top need that's driving me and what am I going to use that's going to drive me here on out?" And then, if you want to influence people, you've got to get deeply curious about what need structure they have because that will tell you what will motivate them.