Transcription
Everything people do, they do for a reason. There's only so many reasons. There's a million stories, but there's only six reasons, six needs we're trying to meet.
What's the first need? Do you guys remember? Certainty. We do a lot of things for certainty. Everything she was talking about to me was about certainty. If you listen, she felt uncertain. It's going to lose her child, uncertain about, "I'm going to go to jail." She was living uncertainty, wanting certainty, but producing uncertainty over and over again by what she pictured in her head, what she did with her body. She put herself in an unresourceful state, crying, sad, went back in the past, remembered selectively things. Notice when I ask questions, I got to stop distorting, deleting. We found out the picture was different than the way she made it in her head, but it was all about getting certainty. Certainty is the basic human need.
Then there's the need for uncertainty. Ironically, if you're totally certain all the time, it's great in the beginning, and then you're bored out of your mind. So what happens? We need variety. We need uncertainty. We need it to feel alive. Variety is the what of life? The what? Spice of life, right? So variety is the spice of life. But what's interesting is when people are totally sorting to a brad, when they have too much variety, they freak out. So is your goal to be the lukewarm middle? No, your goal should be able to produce both of them. You can produce certainty and uncertainty in the same situation. Why would you watch the movie you already seen? Cuz you're certain it's good, but you hope it's been long enough, you forgot enough that there'll still be variety when you watch them a second time. True.
Third need is the need for significance, the need to feel unique, to feel special, to feel important. Who has that need? Everyone. The only difference is what's number one, two, three, four, five, six. The top two control the direction of your life. So someone who's significance driven at number one, all these needs are important. Significance is very important, but there are different ways to get significance, different ways to get certainty. If significance is higher than love, you're not going to have much love in your life because you're always trying to prove that you're better than the other person. And many of us don't understand these patterns are affecting everything in your mind. So you have to understand, most of what affects your life are invisible forces. Think about that. The most powerful forces in your life are invisible. Gravity, without it you die. Too much of it, you're crushed. Radiation, too little, you die. Too much, you die. There's a certain balance of it, right? But the most powerful invisible forces are the beliefs and values that control every thought, feeling, and emotion of your life. Because what they generate is the thing you call your life, which is really the feelings you have, the emotions. Because it's not how many things you have. You can have all the things and want to kill yourself. The quality of your life is the quality of your consistent emotions. If there's any goal out of this week, is you want a new set of consistent emotions that are the ones you really want out of your life, regardless of what happens. So you're able to take whatever happens and squeeze out of it the greatest juice possible. But your need structures will affect that. And I'm bringing it up because when people speak, within seconds, if you listen, they're telling you their need structures. And some of you have needs organized in a sequence that makes it really hard for you to win.
Besides significance, feeling unique and special, important, what else is another? What's the fourth need? It's love and connection. Now, what's interesting is, see how certainty and uncertainty seem opposites? And if you go for one or the other, it's not enough. And be in the middle, lukewarm. You want to learn how to make yourself certain. You want to learn how to be able to use uncertainty. If you want to be unique and certain, those people get it, then they go, "You know, but I'm missing connection." And if you go connection, and they're totally in love with somebody, it's great for a while, and they go, "But what about me and my own significance?" And so you see there's a push-pull between these needs that create conflicts for people if they don't understand what you're going to learn in the next few days. And by the way, connection and love are not the same thing. Connection is crumbs compared to love. But most people settle for connection because love's too scary. They may have loved really deeply, and then it ended, and they don't ever want to feel that again. So they settle for the crumbs of connection. But everybody finds it. You can connect by having a dog, if nothing else works. And don't get a cat, they'll leave. Get a dog. You leave for two minutes, it's like you've been gone for six months. They love you every minute, right? So think about it. You're going to have connection with God through prayer. Have connection in nature. You have connection through a friendship. You know, there's so many ways for a connection.
Then those first four needs are the basic needs, needs of every human being. We need certainty, uncertainty. We need to feel significant. We need to feel connection or love. Everybody gets those, even if you have to lie to yourself, which is what most people do. The ultimate spiritual needs not most people do not meet, and that's why most people are unhappy. The fifth human need is growth. As we said earlier, you grow or you die. And when you grow, that's progress. That's when you feel alive. It's not even when you achieve the goal, it's making progress. It's the growth. And when you grow, you have something you can give, which is the sixth need, which is contribution. Because as long as it's just me, me, me, you can only feel so much by yourself. That's why whenever you have a great experience in life, something really special, what's the first thing you want to do? Share it with somebody. You know, when you share it, it magnifies it. You only feel so much yourself. That's why we have relationships, families, friendships, etc.
Now, of those six, people tend to have two they specialize in, meaning they value the most. So if someone values certainty and you try to change things, they get really pissy or freaked out. They're there at a certain time, and if you're not that time, they freak out. Somebody with variety wants to jump out of an airplane. Somebody with certainty is like, "You can go to hell." Somebody who's significance driven is wanting significance. Everybody wants it, but if it's number one, it's more important. Certainty, it's more important. Variety, it's more important. Love, it's more important. Growth or contribution? That usually creates real problems. Because the only way you know something significant is by comparing it to something else. And the biggest mistake we all make as humans is we unfairly compare ourselves to others. We're in a different stage of life, or a different level of development, or a different skill set, or a different focus. And we also distort, delete, and generalize how great their life is compared to ours. Which is why most people that go online, especially women, by the way, girls, young girls especially, get so depressed because they're comparing themselves to something that is totally fake and phony. People use filters, they create a world that isn't real. And then people look at themselves and go, "Not that I'm not enough." And it's much worse for girls because then there's the physical side of culture saying this is what's attractive or not.
If you find out what the top needs are when you're talking, you find out the needs, I already know what your problems are and what your opportunities are. If I'm going for certainty, I'm going to probably move this direction, and direction determines ultimate destination or destiny. You keep going in direction, you're going to get to a destiny. If I'm going, let's say, for uncertainty, I'm move in this direction. Does that make sense? If I'm trying to be significant, I'm going to do one thing. If I'm trying to feel love, that's another thing. Whatever's the top of your list has been controlling your life. Two people can have the same needs, even, but we have different rules for meeting them. And all rules is a set of beliefs about what has to happen for me to be successful, or to me to be loved, or to me to be whatever. You're going to discover not only do I have needs, but to meet those needs, I've developed kind of like, imagine the target is the need I'm after, and I have like this bow and arrow. The arrow is going to be my action, and I'm going to zone in on that. How I'm going to get there through the sight, and the sight is my values. So if I want freedom as a value, I'm wanting freedom because it's going to meet some of those needs, I think. Or I want security as a value. And if we shift the order of any of this, it changes completely how your brain experiences life.