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The “hierarchy of needs” was first conceptualized by psychologist Abraham Maslow and became a major influence for world renowned strategic family therapist Cloe Madanes and Tony Robbins. Together, they created Human Needs Psychology.
Human needs psychology is based on the theory that every single person on the planet has 6 needs, and they are needs that must be met. The first 4 needs are the needs of our personality and we will unconsciously meet them no matter what. They are our survival. The last two are the needs of our spirit, and they are the needs that lead to our fulfillment.
In my experience both professionally and personally, I have not encountered a psychological theory more accurate. Understanding your six human needs will change your life. Understanding the needs of your partner or anyone in your life for that matter, will transform your relationship to them. *Make sure to listen to the audio for a much more detailed description of the needs as well as how they manifest differently person to person.
The 6 Human Needs
The First 4 are the needs of the personality. They are:
Certainty:
The need to feel safe, comfortable, and secure. The need for survival. When we have certainty, we feel confident in ourselves and in the outcome.
Positive vehicles: working hard to achieve goals, increasing self worth, self care rituals and habits, caring for others such as children.
Neutral: Taking the same route to work everyday, frequenting the same restaurants, eating the same food, most routines and schedules.
Negative: Control; trying to control outcomes, people, and circumstances because of fear of the unknown or fear of that which is not in your control - which is almost everything, never stepping outside of your comfort zone, staying stuck in a rut, allowing your fear of the unknown to stop you from living your life to the fullest, being addicted to your routines.
Uncertainty:
The need for surprise, variety, mystery and novelty.
Positive vehicles: going outside your comfort zone, trying new things, being open to new experiences, adventurousness, planning fun dates with significant other, being able to cope with the uncertainty of life with a fair degree of confidence and calm.
Neutral: Changing up your daily routes to work, trying a new restaurant, ordering a new dish, etc.
Negative: Creating and/or gravitating towards drama, addictive behavior, risky reckless behavior, infidelity, making decisions based on this need that hurts others.
Significance:
The need to feel important, worthy, unique. The need to achieve.
Positive vehicles: working hard, doing your best, reaching your potential, giving to your loved ones, being the best at something, being relied on, doing, acting, and behaving in such a way that makes you feel proud of yourself, healthy self-esteem, being confident.
Neutral: Though fashion - what you wear, how you wear your hair, etc. Your signature “look” so to speak.
Negative: over identifying with your problems, being the worst at something, getting attention/significance for being a “problem”, making feeling important more important than giving love, aka never being vulnerable. Bullying, being tyrannical or controlling another, power hungry, driven by ego.
Love and Connection:
The need to feel and give love. The need to feel connected to ourselves and others.
Positive vehicles: Giving love to your family, partner, children, connecting with community, giving and connecting to strangers, volunteer work, working on projects that help others, a career that fosters giving and community, giving to animals, taking care of a pet, taking care of someone in need.
Neutral:
Negative: Using your children as the only source of love, over connecting with yourself through self pity, or destructive behavior such as isolating, overeating, or over indulging in sadness.
The last 2 needs are the needs of our soul, or spirit.
Growth:
We need to grow in order to feel like we are progressing. This need is the need for progress, maturation, change, evolution, transcendence. All growth is positive, the only thing that tarnishes it are beliefs that tell you that you are not enough if you are not rapidly growing all the time. *you do not have to grow in order to be worthy or significant. You need to grow so that you can feel like your life has meaning.
Vehicles: Learning/education, maturing after emotional catastrophe, facing your fears, working on yourself to be a better person than you were yesterday, expanding your beliefs and mind.
Contribution:
The need to give and contribute outside of ourselves. The need to give back, make a difference in some way. All contribution is positive and it is the antidote to depression and other negative emotion. We are designed to step out of ourselves and give back. *Again, you do not need to contribute in order to feel worthy, you need to contribute so you can feel like your life has meaning.
Vehicles: Giving to your family, friends, community, volunteering, working for a cause, helping anyone, helping animals, giving to your relationship and significant other.
Your needs hierarchy:
All 6 needs are vitally important, but their order of importance will impact the quality of your life. The order, or hierarchy will change and has changed over the span of your life as every stage of life is different. What's important is to get super honest about what your need structure is today, and then decide if you need to start valuing another need more, or less.
The paradox of certainty and uncertainty in a relationship:
Every relationship needs certainty. You and your partner both need to feel totally secure in your partnership or else you will run into problems. The paradox, however, is that if that certainty is not balanced with some surprise or variety, the passion will start to die in your relationship.
Same holds true for life in general. The need to feel certain is addictive. We are not taught to embrace the unknown, so it can take very little to feel out of control. Take stock of your life right now. Do you feel stuck, bored, or unfulfilled because of a fear to step into the unknown?
Many of us will remain complacent or tolerate a lot of BS in order to maintain our sense of security. This is the power of our universal need for certainty.
The need for uncertainty is the need to feel truly alive. In a relationship, if both people cling to certainty in the form of routines, schedules, and controlling every move and turn of the day, monotony will take over and monotony is the enemy of excitement. I go deeper into this later in the blueprint, but know that your relationship - even if you’ve been together for many years, needs a healthy shake up once and while. It needs an element of surprise and excitement that can be easily fostered by committing to doing new things together.
The certainty and significance pitfall:
Every client I have ever worked with who was unfulfilled in life, has been because both certainty and significance were at the top of the need structure. Even though each person, including myself, valued love and connection, growth and even contribution the most, our lives in those phases of upset were being dominated by an overwhelming fear of the unknown (uncertainty) and an intense feeling of not being good enough (significance).
The antidote to many of our problems, in a relationship or not, is to replace our addiction to certainty with consistent letting go, and to replace our focus on significance with contribution(giving) and true connection (love).
INVENTORY
Here are some questions to help you figure out the importance of each need in your life.
What do you spend most of your time doing?
What do you spend most of your money on?
What keeps you up at night?
What makes you feel most inspired and happy?
In a few words, describe what life is about for you.
Describe your happiest moments in life.
The above answers will give you a sense of what is truly important to you, and also what you currently spend your “energy” on. When you do your first draft of your need order, stay true to how you are actually living your life, not how you want to live your life.
Review the 6 human needs and write down all the ways you meet them. This may take a little time as up until now, many of your vehicles have been subconscious.
Put them in order, 1 being the most important. *this is where it can be hard to see the truth. For example, my top two needs are Love and contribution on a good day. However, I have to battle my addiction to certainty often, and so depending, I may have to put certainty at the top. Our need structure is always changing.
Look at your need hierarchy as well as your vehicles. Can you see what makes you content, and what makes you unhappy? Brainstorm on ways you can make your vehicles more empowering.
How would the order of your needs need to change for you to have a better life?
What is something small you could do, starting today, to honor the needs that you would like to honor more?
Let’s now look at your relationship (or past one if you’re reflecting)
I want you to put yourself in your partner/spouse’s shoes. Every need is important to all of us, but which two do you think your partner values the most?
Take his or her top two needs: How well do YOU meet these two needs of your lover? Give yourself a score from 0-10.
How well do you meet the rest of their needs? Again score yourself.
How could you meet your partners needs better? Brainstorm and write down your ideas. Chances are, he or she has made several requests - even if indirectly, for their 6 needs to be met more completely.
Rate your partner on how he /she meets your 6 human needs.
Look at the scores from both how you rated yourself, and how you rated your partner. Do you see any patterns? For example, is the love high but the uncertainty is low? Or is the certainty high but the significance and growth is low? Or?
Has an addiction to certainty from either or both of you impacted your relationship? How so?
Has a lack of healthy uncertainty impacted you?
This next part is an exercise for both you and your partner or spouse - if you feel comfortable bringing him/her into the conversation. If you don’t, it truly is ok since it takes just one person in a dynamic to create change.
Share with your partner the 6 human needs, and ask him or her to rate you on how you have been meeting their needs. *please note this must be a consensual conversation. You have to be able to hear the truth and not get defensive. This is a powerful conversation that leads to healing when approached with openness and the commitment to show up better for each other. If you are not ready to do that, do not have this conversation yet.
Looking at a written list of the 6 human needs, go through each one in order (beginning with Certainty and ending with Contribution, and take turns asking each other:
“What can I do to make you feel more certain?”
“What would help bring more variety to you in our relationship?”
“What would make you feel more significant to me?”
“What makes you feel loved?”
“What would make you feel like we are growing together?”
“How can I contribute more to you and our relationship?”
*whoever is asking the questions, be sure to really listen whole heartedly to the answers because often we meet other’s needs in the way we would like ours to be met but not in the way our partner actually needs theirs to be met.
Discuss openly how you can both meet each others needs better.
Evaluate how you can better balance certainty and uncertainty in your relationship.
For 90 days, commit to restoring balance to your relationship. Make it a game (in a fun way) of who can meet each others needs better for 90 days!
DO NOT: criticize or complain of your partner is not doing as good of a job as you would like. Instead, point out what IS working, and give constructive feedback on where it could be stronger.
Come up with shared vehicles to meet needs so you can both fulfill your own needs doing the same thing, together at times.