NEW WEEK, NEW CHALLENGE! After last week’s miserable state – THE WEEK OF SUFFER – We’re going to compensate with having an a great one this time! Or with the help of the 6 human needs template analyse our days, our life, and see how we can tweak and design things for improvement. Part of last week’s dreadfulness was a state of passivity, I just let life happened and my usual go to things that adds value wasn’t there to share me up (music, entertainment, food & beverages). Honestly, I don’t know when, or if ever, I’ve felt so empty and indifferent to life.
But so this Friday I woke up at 4,30 with a hunger for life again – excitement for the day ahead and how I would go about designing next week’s challenge. And then it hit me, if I feel like this – a sense of curiosity, hunger and uncertainty for the day ahead – ALIVE – then I’m ‘winning’ the game of life. Feelings I had been lacking the entire last week. I realized life doesn’t happen to you – You make life happen. It’s about intention and action – a mindset. Both on a micro and macro perspective. You live in the present, not 2 weeks ago or 2 weeks’ ahead. Today. But just as quickly, that thought expanded;
This is just on one level, uncertainty, which you know you really thrive of Alex. Remember Tony Robbins 6 Human needs you used to look at?
And then I did. I Briefly mention this in the evaluation of last week’s challenge, but that wasn’t enough. The natural follow up is of course to dedicate this entire week to understanding and applying this framework on my life. With the end goal to see if I can have a perfect day!
How much uncertainty awaits you in the morning?
Tony Robbins 6 Human Needs
- Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
- Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
- Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
- Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
- Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
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Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others
So the Objectives for this week is:
Evaluate my days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, through this template. Dividing it up to “workday” and “Free time”. Then on Thursday or Friday – I’m going to try and Schedule out a “Perfect Day” and do a live evaluation Reflectional and Review about it.
But this of course means we need to understand this framework on deeper level, so here follows an extract from Tony Robbins Workbook from his audio program Personal Power – It may be old, but it sure as heck holds up.
All humans have different desires, but they are driven by the exact same needs. So many people in life have achieved their goals only to think, “Is this all there is?” It’s because they never analyzed their true needs or how to meet them. They’ve only pursued the goals that the culture has conditioned them to pursue. An understanding of the Six Human Needs can allow you not only to turn on your driving force and discover all you’re capable of, but also to be truly fulfilled on a consistent basis.
The Six Human Needs
In a moment we will walk through the Six Human Needs that drive all your behavior, but first let’s realize that whatever need we have, we develop ~vehicles,” or strategies, some of which am empowering to our lives, others of which may be fulfilling for the moment but in the long term are quite destructive. For example, to be significant, some people tear others down, some people collect the most toys, some contribute in unique and meaningful ways. The vehicles you select will determine not only your fulfillment in the moment, but also your long-term fulfillment and whether you will truly grow and contribute in a significant way. A good means of measuring this is to think about your life’s experiences and sort them into one of four classes. Let’s take a close look at these four classes.
A Class 1 experience is something that 1. feels good 2. is good for you 3. is good for others 4. serves the greater good
When we find these four criteria in an experience, we usually call it a ~~peak life experience.”
A Class 2 experience is something that 1. does not feel good 2. but is good for you 3. is good for others 4. serves the greater good
These are experiences we often want to avoid in life but ultimately give us the most joy because they cause us to grow as human beings, and as we master them we become much more fulfilled.
A great secret to being fulfilled is learning how to convert Class 2 experiences into Class 1 experiences, i.e., learning how to take things that don’t feel good but are good for you, good for others, and serve the greater good, and make the process of doing them feel good as well.
This is when the tools you’ll be learning in this program on conditioning are worth their weight in gold. When you learn to love to do those things that improve your life and improve the lives of others, you develop a level of pride, strength, and confidence very few human beings ever experience.
A Class 3 experience is something that 1. feels good 2. is not good for you 3. is not good for others 4. does not serve the greater good
These are those non-productive experiences that we all too often allow ourselves to indulge in. Drinking excess alcohol, for example, could fit into this category. Class 3 experiences provide for the immediate pleasure which, in the long term, destroys people’s quality of life and gives them ultimate pain.
A Class 4 experience is something that 1. does not feel good 2. is not good for you 3. is not good for others 4. does not serve the greater good
Why would someone continually indulge in a Class 4 experience? Smoking cigarettes the first time, for example, was not a pleasurable feeling. But people often will indulge in Class 4 experiences simply because of peer pressure or because of conditioning and old belief systems. You must free yourself of Class 4 experiences to be fulfilled.
THE SIX HUMAN NEEDS YOU MUST MEET CONSISTENTLY TO BE FULFILLED ARE THE FOLLOWING:
- certainty/comfort
- uncertainty/variety
- Significance
- connection/love
- Growth
- contribution
All people have the same problems because they all have the same six human needs and these needs are paradoxical; i.e, they seem to be in conflict with one another. Serious problems can arise when we choose destructive “vehicles” to try to satisfy these needs. Yet we can choose to establish new patterns of fulfilling these needs that will move us rapidly toward life mastery.
All human beings have the need for:
- Certainty/Comfort
For most people, certainty equals survival. We all need a sense of certainty that we can avoid pain and gain pleasure. Some people try to achieve certainty by trying to control everything around them. This is usually a Class 3 experience; i.e., it may feel good for the moment but it’s not good for them, it’s not good for those around them, and it doesn’t serve the greater good. On the other hand, using your internal courage or faith to achieve certainty would be a Class 1 vehicle. When you’re feeling courageous, when you’re really using your faith, you feel good, what you’re doing is good for you, and in a courageous and faith-filled state you tend also to do those things that serve the greater good. Here’s the paradox, though. When a person becomes totally certain, when things are completely predictable, when you satiate this need, you become b-o-r-e-d. And so while we want certainty, we simultaneously want a certain amount of.
- Uncertainty/Variety
Everyone needs variety, a surprise, a challenge to feel fully alive and to experience fulfillment. With too much certainty, we’re bored. Likewise, with too much variety, we become extremely fearful and concerned. We need a degree of certainty in our lives to appreciate the variety. There’s a delicate balance between these two needs that must be struck for us to feel truly fulfilled. Some people choose to get variety, to feel a change in their states or the way they feel, by doing drugs or alcohol. Some people do it by watching movies. Others use stimulating conversation and opportunities to learn.
- Significance
We all have a need for significance, a sense that we am unique in some way, that we have a special purpose or meaning for our lives. Again, we can try to meet this need through destructive vehicles—making ourselves unique by, for example, manufacturing a belief that we’re better than everyone else. Some people become unique by developing extreme problems that set them apart from others. Medical science now shows that some people have developed the subconscious ability to make themselves ill in order to gain the caring attention of others. This would clearly be a Class 4 experience. Some people develop uniqueness by earning more money, having more toys, going to school and achieving more degrees. Or by dressing in a unique way, having a certain sense of style. Or we can choose to live a life of extraordinary service. This is clearly a Class 1 experience, although it may feel like Class 2 at times. Just remember, we all need to feel unique. But, paradoxically, in order to feel unique we have to separate ourselves. If we feel totally unique, we feel different and separate, and this violates our need for…
- Connection and Love
This includes feeling connected with yourself as well as others with whom you can share your love. To meet this need, you can join a group or a club that has a positive purpose. Some individuals join a gang for negative purposes but they still achieve the feeling of connection. By aligning with your Creator, and feeling like you’re being guided, you can feel immediate connection. Again, sometimes individuals become ill in order to feel connected and loved. Some people will steal, do drugs, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, to be part of a group and to feel a sense of connection. Others will perform at extraordinary levels in order to be accepted, loved, or connected to a high performance team. A simple thing to remember is, as with all other human needs, if you give consistently that which you wish to receive, you tend to get it back from others.
- Growth
Growth equals life. On this planet, everything that is alive is either growing or dying. Growth is one of the two primary needs in life. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how many people acknowledge you, what you’ve achieved in life. Unless you feel like you’re growing, you will be unhappy and unfulfilled. But in addition, you must also experience the euphoria of meaningful…
- Contribution
We all have a deep need to go beyond ourselves and to live a life that serves the greater good. It is in the moments that we do this that we experience true joy and fulfillment. Contributions are not only made to others but contributing to ourselves is a meaningful action as well, for we cannot give to others that which we do not have. A balance of contribution to oneself and to others, especially unselfish contribution, is the ultimate secret to the joy that so many people wish to have in their lives.
If there’s anything you do that others find difficult but that you love to do (and that you could do for hours), I can promise you it’s because you get a tremendous amount of certainty, variety, significance or uniqueness, connection, growth and/or contribution from this. When we perceive that an action will meet many of our needs, we are driven to take that action. Likewise, if there’s something you avoid doing or are constantly putting off, it’s because your current strategy of approaching it causes you to feel a lack of certainty that it will have pleasure (maybe you actually have a sense of certainty that it will be painful) or you don’t believe it meets many of your other needs.
Anything human beings do can meet all six needs if they simply change their perception (what they notice, appreciate, or believe) or their strategy (how they approach getting the job done).
If you’ll find just a few vehicles to meet all six of your needs, you’ll find yourself full of drive and you’ll know what to do to achieve your goals. And it all starts with awareness—you must become aware of why you’re doing what you’re doing now so that you can find a new pattern for fulfillment!
YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
- What’s something you love to do? Something you feel compelled to do? Something that’s effortless and totally fulfilling? Something you could do 24 hours a day? Describe it in the space below, then complete the Human Needs Analysis Chart #1 to see why you feel that way about it.
- What’s something you hate to do? Something that you should do? Something that you never get done because you hate it so much? Describe it in the space below, then use the Human Needs Analysis Chart #2 to see why you feel that way about it.
- Choose something you don’t like to do, something that doesn’t feel good, but that you know is good for you and others, and serves the greater good. Turn this Class 2 experience into a Class 1 experience by asking yourself, What could I choose to believe about this that will make it fulfill each of my six human need at the highest possible level? Write down your answers in this journal as they come to you. Then go out an(l apply them immediately!
I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS MATERIAL, I JUST WANT TO SHARE WHAT CAN HELP OTHERS. I MAKE NO MONEY OUT OF THIS. LISTEN TO TONY’S PODCAST HERE FOR A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION: https://youtu.be/fEwpisUYWG0
Find more information at Tony Robins website: https://www.tonyrobbins.com
Good Luck, and have a great Week!
/Alexander
