The 6 Basic Human Needs

Today on Transformational Tuesdays we’re talking about basic human needs. These are our core needs that we need to have awareness around for when we’re doing our transformation work.

These basic needs come from Tony Robbins, and they are: Certainty, Variety, Significance, Connection & Love, Growth & Development, and Contribution & Acts of Service.

These needs are so important because they allow us to know that we are taken care of in the world. If you think about it, when we are in the womb we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to think about anything. We are just taken care of as we grow. Even afterwards, when we are developing as children, if we don’t get these needs met, they kind of get stuck in our bones and our DNA.

Today let’s take a look at each of the needs in an overview:

Certainty

This covers the aspect of safety and stability and comfort. If we don’t get this as a child, we may seek it out as an adult. We don’t realize it, but this starts showing up as patterns in our behavior.

Variety

Variety or change means that we are not meant to stay stagnant and stay in the same place. We are meant to grow and move!

Everything we do in this world has a contraction and then an expansion. But we get a little freaked out when things start contracting, because it often doesn’t feel good. So we get stuck because we don’t want to go through that perceived fear.

The best thing to do is lean into it and accept that variety is needed for us to continue on our path!

Significance

Significance is our sense of worthiness: how we feel about ourselves. People in our lives and especially our family (parents, grandparents, and so on) all have good intentions in that they want to love and take care of us so that we can feel worthy and significant. But they are also human beings, and sometimes they miss the mark. So there may be things in our lives that happen that add up to us not feeling worthy.

You know, they say money is the root of all evil. I feel like lack of self esteem is the root of all evil, because when we don’t have a sense of self or self esteem, our behavior does all kinds of crazy shit to try to overcome it.

The thing is: it’s okay! We just need to be aware that we find that significance and worth from the inside out, not from external forces.

Connection & Love

Love is the key for everything. In fact, my mantra for my life work is that the divine purpose of every interaction is love and connection. That’s why we interact with people!

That’s where we try to heal those parts of us that need healing, and bring those parts love and connection.

Love is really important, and if we don’t get some of that in our childhood, things happened, or we misread things, it’s really easy for us to not feel loved and not feel connected.

And that’s okay — that’s why we support each other and we help each other.

Growth & Development

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. We are all meant, as human beings and part of nature, to grow.

When you look outside at the trees, they will lose their leaves in wintertime, but regain them in the springtime. There’s contraction and expansion.

We are also meant to move forward and grow. But we don’t grow in a straight line: we, too, grow and contract. So if you’re having growing pains, or you’re feeling uncomfortable, or you’re feeling discomfort, or you’re not feeling stable — just know that you’re probably in a growth cycle. And I don’t know about you, but that’s not an easy place to be in. A lot of times I, myself, hate the contraction part of the growth cycle, but the truth is that we can’t get to the next step without it.

Contribution & Acts of Service

A lot of the times we are in ourselves, which is good. We need to take care of ourselves.

But when we are in our hurt part of ourselves too much, and we spend too much energy on that, we can flip that around and focus that energy outward instead. How could we help others?

When we help others, we help ourselves, too.

Awareness is Key

Over the next few days, put your awareness glasses on. Which of these needs are coming up for you? What’s feeling uncomfortable? Know that this is all perfectly normal and natural. It’s part of what we need as human beings, working on ourselves from the inside out.