#96 The 6 Core Human Needs

Rachel Denning (00:00.718)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. Guys, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for making the time and effort to listen, to dedicate time and attention to your life, to improving yourself and your life and investing in you and in your family and in your extraordinary family life. So you...

That's awesome. It genuinely awesome and well done. Very few people do it. You realize that, they did it, they did a study and they found that only 1 .7 % of people that they pulled, I think it was success magazine did the poll. 1 .7 % of people were actively involved in personal development, in improving their lives. 1 .7 %

Holy guacamole. There's not a lot. Not a lot of people are actively involved in improving their lives, but it's so easy to improve our lives, but it's also so easy not to improve our lives. I guess that's the challenge, right? It's easy to do, easy not to do, but there's so many things we can do, even small things that we can do that make improvements to our lives, but we have to do them diligently and consistently and things done consistently just

create a massive transformation. So think about it, just getting up and doing a morning routine that brings you power and energy and excitement and gets your mind and heart and body geared up and energized for the day. Think about that. Let's, let's say, I know I've done a whole podcast, multiple podcasts talked about the morning ritual. I have a whole course on how to totally transform your life before breakfast, but people still don't do it. But what's interesting is like,

you wouldn't dare go into a business presentation without preparing for it, right? And getting, getting prepared and ready. You wouldn't dare show up to a recital without preparing for it. You wouldn't go to a performance or a play. You wouldn't go to a, a big game, a competitive sports game without preparing yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, getting ready. And yet all the time you and I get up and go right into our day. People just go right into their day without preparing for it.

Rachel Denning (02:28.014)
This is crazy. How do we expect to have successful, powerful days where we have to, my friends, we have to be influential. We have to show up with energy and power. You gotta be there for your kids, for your siblings, for the people you work with, the people you lead and guide. You gotta show up for them. Every day is, well, every day is game day, right? Every day is performance.

And not that we're putting on a show of performance, but like, it's time to perform, it's time to be at our best. People need you. And yet we just get up and go right into our day, alarm goes off, we snooze it, we get up, and we just go right into other people's agendas, and we don't prepare ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, to be ready to deliver. So can I give you that invitation?

Make sure your mornings are rock solid. Okay. That was a little side note, just a bonus gem right there. I was in one of my coaching sessions today with one of my awesome clients and we're just talking about big picture in life. And I want to, I want to bring this to you because it came up so clearly and so powerfully in our, in our conversation today. Do you ever feel like things are good, right? But it's just kind of empty. You ever feel that? Feel like.

You're not really fulfilled and you don't know why you're like wait Why is this not fulfilling for me? Are you kind of you find yourself your thoughts drifting? On to other things you find yourself Wishing, you know, if I could do this or I could do that maybe daydreaming about different things You could be working on different things you could be doing maybe a little unsettled or unhappy with the way things are You ever find yourself doing that. I imagine the answer is

yes for, for most of us. And what happens is, and what came up in the conversation, we're like, yes, I got to share this with you is something I learned years ago. I think, don't hold me to this. I think it was created by Tony Robbins or maybe he just kind of made it popular. but it's called the six human needs. And so I want to share the six human needs. And what's interesting about this is every one of us needs these and.

Rachel Denning (04:54.637)
Now I'm going to expound on it more. The way it was presented, like we're going to have these needs. Are you finding the film? I'm going to expound on it to say we have these needs in every aspect of our lives. So as I introduced the six, the six human needs, I want you to think about them in the context of yourself, your own personal wellbeing of your marriage, of your parenting, of your family life, of your career. Like, and it's just, it fits in all of them and is needed in all of them. Like,

This is, this is profound. We need these six things in our lives. And if we don't have them, then we're going to end up a little bit unsettled, unclear, unfocused or under focused, undedicated or under dedicated, right? We're going to lack determination and drive. We're going to lack results. We're just going to kind of be, we're not going to be all on, right? We're not going to be firing on all cylinders and really.

being at our best. We're not going to be operating in our full potential or capacity. We're not going to be manifesting our greatness. If these six things aren't met, are you ready? Number one is certainty. All of us need certainty. And that can be kind of defined as the assurance that we can avoid pain and we can gain pleasure and we can have safety and security, right? We all,

We all need to feel that we have some semblance of safety, security, assurance, some kind of certainty in our life. We all need certainty, right? We've got to know that like something we do is going to like be certain and solid. I know that if I do this thing, that's going to happen. We got to have a safe place to be. And again, now take this through all the aspects of our life. We need certainty with ourselves. And in other episodes, I've talked about this.

where you gotta be able to make and keep commitments. You gotta be able to fall through it or you lose trust with yourself. And if you don't trust yourself, you lose certainty with yourself. And that is one of the worst situations we can be in is to not have certainty with ourselves, to not believe that I'm gonna fall through on what I say I'm gonna do. Wow, but you need certainty in your marriage. That trust, you can count on, right? You can count on your spouse, in your family, in your work, in your mission, your purpose.

Rachel Denning (07:17.997)
Right? You see how this goes through every part of life. It's really powerful. So we need this. Got to have that, that sense of security and safety. And if you're missing it, if you're missing it with yourself or your spouse or your family or your work, start thinking through. And this is my challenge, my invitation for you. I w this one is going to have a lot of homework. I'm going to, I'm going to challenge you to literally think through, write about, strategize on each area here, each of these six needs. And if you're a parent,

Do this for your children. And if you're an influencer, which you all are actually, think about the people you have influence on, people in your circle of influence. If you have employees or people you're leading in your congregation or on a team or whatever it is, like think through this. How can you make sure that you and the people you're responsible for each have these six human needs being met? So first homework is go through each area of your life and say,

Do I have certainty this write down the things that you are certain about and areas that it does give you certainty in? Like if I think about my wife Do I have certainty with her? Yes, what are those things to have certainty with my children? Yes, what are those things? Do I have certainty with my work with the place I live my home my living conditions with my faith with my efforts with

the world with the economy with, with all those things, right? We got to have some certainty there and, and there are some things we can do about it. And then there's some things we can't do, right? There's, there are many things we cannot control, but we can settle ourselves with some kind of certainty, even in things we can't control. So certainty is the first one. You can do something about it. So think through that thoroughly and carefully. You pause this you guys, or take notes and then go back through it, whatever, but like go through each area.

So the next one is the exact opposite. We've got to have some uncertainty. We need that. We need some variety. We actually human beings as much as we resist this, ironically, we need the unknown. We need change. We need new stimuli. We need adventure. I especially need adventure and change in the unknown. I thrive on that. I love it so much. And

Rachel Denning (09:40.974)
I would say most people don't have enough of this in their lives. They don't have enough spontaneity and uncertainty and variety. We've been really careful to set up our lives so there's very little change, very little adventure, very little interruption, right? We like our things, like our things, and we want everything to be predictable in the same way. Because...

Often because we fear the unknown and we fear change and we fear new stimuli because it's uncomfortable. It's unknown. We fear adventure because things might go wrong, right? And adventures to quote the Hobbit adventures make us late for dinner, right? They throw things off and you know, adventure changes you, it challenges you. So ironically, a lot of people set up their lives to eliminate uncertainty from their lives.

And so they of course feel a void. And as you watch this and you'll, you'll now that I mentioned it, you'll notice people and know of people and maybe you've seen it in yourself. When this is missing, you actually can become quite underdeveloped in, in it's, it's really interesting to watch how this one plays out and we lose our edge. And again, with all of these, we can get irritable.

We can grow insecure. We can lack confidence. We can become very fearful or anxious. Again, even with certainty or uncertainty, either of those can lead to behavior stuff, to feeling frustrated and bothered all the time, just being unpleasant to be around or, I mean, worry where you're just, you're not really present. It leads to buffering all the time. You're...

So either, okay, either lacking certainty or uncertainty can lead to just buffering. You turn to addictions, you turn to bad habits, you turn to entertainment, to assuage the...

Rachel Denning (11:48.525)
the pit that's there and try to fill that void but it doesn't fill it. It doesn't fill it. Like it's just there. So man these things are so powerful. So look at your life. How can you add some variety? How can you add a little uncertainty? Yes, I'm asking you to add uncertainty. Do things like go on a trip and don't plan anything. Right? Go just go on a date and don't have a single just

drive somewhere, start driving along and like, hey, there's a place to eat, pull over and eat. And it can't be like one of your little safe little places. Like it's somewhere you've never eaten before. And you're like, geez, I don't know about that. Like I'm just throwing out some ideas here. Try something new and different. Sign up for a race or competition you've never done before. Like add some variety to your lives, my friends, and some unknowns and be willing to just try something without.

having every single thing planned out. Try it. It's exhilarating. And those of you who know me, you know how much I love this. man, I love this stuff. My dream is like, you blindfold me, plug my ears, and drop me off in some unknown location around the world, and then say, go, survive. Like, no money, no nothing. And no language, and I'm like, yes, this is awesome!

Right? Stick me in a place where I've never been before. I don't know anything or anyone. And like, what an adventure. That just sounds so exciting to me. I love that stuff. Okay, next. Then the third of the six human needs is significance. We all need to feel unique. We need to feel that we add value. And we are valued that we're important and that we're special that we're needed and

have a sense of kind of independence. We all need to feel that. Now this can get overgrown where we're just constantly needy, right? It's where we all need significance, but it goes, it can go too far where we're like needy for significance, like, and it gets overgrown with the ego or our insecurities or like attaching our own self worth to some big thing. And, and we just want

Rachel Denning (14:11.821)
so much significance and praise and honor and all this stuff. But what's interesting is we're often seeking those things. We want, we want the praise, the honors, their certificates, the degrees, the titles, you know, the car, the house, blah, blah, blah, on and on and on because we just want to feel significant. Even criminals do horrendous things, heinous things because they want to feel significant. They want to be recognized.

They want to be known. They want to be heard. They want to be seen. And often people who go seeking significance in crazy ways, they didn't get it at home. And so, man, those of you parents, we've got to make sure that our children feel healthy significance in their lives so they don't go seeking it elsewhere from.

people who are a bad influence or from doing crazy stuff. A lot of misbehaviors, maybe some of your own children, maybe you have done things you know you shouldn't do but you do it because you have this need for significance.

And so in our own lives, this really fits into like having a mission and a purpose, very living, very purposefully and passionately having this great work to be involved in something that's really meaningful and makes a difference. Like you're gonna, we're all gonna ask ourselves, you know, throughout our lives and at the end of our lives, did I do something that mattered? Did I matter? Did I matter? Did I make a difference? And that's where this fits in.

And if we're going along, and this is one of the reasons it comes up with coaching, is like if you're in a career where even you can be making great money, and you could be rocking in your career, but if it lacks significance, like you don't feel like you're really making a difference or doing anything that really matters, you're gonna fill the void. And so you might be trying to...

Rachel Denning (16:17.517)
satisfy the need for significance with a title or position or amount of money or something or the, you know, the fancy clothes or car house or whatever, right? We're trying to, we get it caught up in the pageantry or climbing the corporate ladder. Cause we think that'll give us significance, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't fill that void. This, this need, this human need we have is going to be filled when we are offering real value, something that really makes a difference that's special, that's unique.

that we get involved in because we feel passionate about. Now it doesn't have to be your career. It can just be something you do on the side, but all of us need to be doing something that is significant, that does matter and fills that need for us. So again, this applies to all areas of life, right? Marriage, yourself, your own life, your work, how you spend your days and your time. And if, here this one is robbing us.

where if we're just spending our time entertaining ourselves, our free time is spent in entertainment, Netflix, and whatever else we're doing, scrolling, and all those things, it's not gonna fill this. We need to be doing something that's special. And so if it's in all areas of your life, look through that. Next one is connection and love. So this is the fourth one. Connection and love.

And this is defined as a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something. More of like someone. We've got to feel really close and connected. And ironically in this, this day and age of connection, so to speak, people even calling this the age of connection where we're connected online to so many people. And yet ironically,

So few people have deep meaningful connections. It's so interesting. And we can be connected like crazy online. I meet people like this. They are net workers like nobody's business and they're all online, chitty -chatting with hundreds of people, even thousands. How are they spending their lives and days online connected, right? And yet in their quiet moments, and I've been there in those quiet moments, they're just sobbing.

Rachel Denning (18:40.077)
tears and remorse and pain and loneliness because they don't have any deep meaningful connections. It's all kind of superficial and shallow. And what's interesting is we're all so guarded and like our conversations are shallow and our connections are shallow. And we're so trained and conditioned to talk about the weather and sports and politics or actually we avoid politics now. We avoid religion now.

and we avoid money and we avoid sex and like all these conversations like the taboo conversations, right? We don't really talk about what we really think and feel and we don't talk about what we're struggling with heaven forbid, right? And somebody might think we have struggles or weaknesses, right? There's that longing to be significant yet wearing the mask and the facade to cover it up. And so we lack the connection and like it's this spiral, right? We get into trouble. So we need deep connection and love.

And so even in a great marriage, even with great kids or even at work or in your congregations or on your teams or your organizations you're with, just ask yourself, are you really deeply connected with, you don't have to be connected to everybody, of course, but do you have some connections? Do you feel love? And I was teaching this the other day when I was mentoring and coaching, it's like.

Your hand is on your love dial. My hand's on my love dial. I get to choose. You get to choose how much love you have in your life. Your hand is on the dial. And you can turn it up or you can turn it down. You get to choose. It is not dependent on other people. How much love you feel and how much love you give is up to you. Turn that baby up. Be loving. Let your heart grow.

Let your life be filled with love and then invest in your relationships. Invest in your relationships like they're the greatest thing you have and guess what? They will be the greatest thing you have. isn't that exciting and profound? Love that. Invest in your relationships like they're the greatest thing you have and they will be the greatest thing you have. And practice, this is a skill set too my friends.

Rachel Denning (21:01.901)
Practice connecting having meaningful conversations doing meaningful things you want to connect with someone do something special I'll create a bond go have an adventure man. I connect with people when I have an adventure So like we're doing this Guatemala humanitarian expedition, right and in May we got a couple spots left So man, if you've been thinking about coming come with us

And all these trips, Kilimanjaro in October, right? Like go on an adventure with somebody, go on an adventure with a group. And like our trip to Thailand, all these trips, right? You connect with people in a way that's so unique and so special, especially in our trips, we have these meaningful, powerful conversations. And we open up and really talk to each other and like dig deep into the issues and things we're facing and working on and we should be working on, wanna work on.

So we connect and connect with adventure. So practice this practice having more meaningful conversations with your spouse, with your children, with your friends, with the people you meet, just practice having deeper, more meaningful conversations and doing more meaningful things. Like the epitome of, of keeping superficial and shallow is chit chatting about silly things like whatever that don't really matter. You don't care about and.

going on dates or hanging out with friends and doing the same shallow things. let's go watch a movie. let's go do this and just chitty chat. And they just keep doing the same things and the same conversations and we lack connection. And so we can be literally surrounded by people and feel so alone and disconnected. So we've got to have that. All right. Then the last two are kind of a separate category. They're, they're kind of a spiritual.

need, right? And they're the last two are growth and contribution. So growth first, we have to feel like we're growing, this is a spiritual need. And this is the whole upward reach, right? We reach upward, I'm always talking about we have this upward reach in us. It's from that poem, you guys heard me quoted a lot. Chief of all thy wondrous works, supreme of all thy plan, thou has placed an upward reach into the heart of man. We just have this God planted this.

Rachel Denning (23:19.917)
need and this drive in us to grow and improve and we feel alive. We're literally hardwired in our brains for growth. When we do things that are growth oriented, we like we feel better. Our brain releases hormones into our bodies and chemicals like that feel fantastic. We're literally hardwired for this. And if we don't have it,

Right, we don't have, so growth is defined as an expansion of capacity, capability, or understanding. So if we're not learning new things, we're not becoming more capable or increasing our capacity. If we're drifting, if we're just coasting, and I'll remind you my friends like I love to do, that you cannot coast to the top. Right, if you're coasting, there's only one direction you can go, and that's down.

So we feel like we can just take it easy, put it on cruise control, you know, just drift along here. We are gonna, you will shortly and quickly feel unfulfilled. And you'll feel the void. And it'll hit and it'll hurt. And a lot of you right now might be feeling this lack of satisfaction, lack of drive, lack of motivation, just kind of.

blah and life is just kind of there and you lack excitement and inspiration and you're not hitting your goals and you're kind of getting up and just going through the motions of it and you feel kind of like you're in coma or just the walking dead. A lot of times it's because you're not growing. You're not increasing your knowledge. You're not increasing your capacities, your capabilities. We have to be green and growing literally every single day.

should find us learning something new, which is the easiest thing ever. There's so much out there. So just create a habit of reading great books. And you'll have something new every day to learn. And then practice your skills, pick those skills that are most important to you. You become a really well developed human being. And wha -bam, right? You're gonna feel fantastic. It just...

Rachel Denning (25:38.701)
You just feel alive because you're green and growing. And if you're not growing, what are you?

You're declining, you're decaying, you're stagnant, you're dying. So be focused on growth. Gotta be growing every day. And again, look at every area of your life. Look at you personally. Look at your mind, your emotions, your education, your body, your marriage, your parent, your family, your work life, your career. All those things, are they growing? Are they improving?

gotta have that and be strategic again my invitation to you go through every single one of these and just be more strategic we just aren't strategic enough we hope things work out or we think about it go yeah that's that's good I should do something about that then we don't do anything and I'm gonna call you out with love right here if you're listening this yeah it's good I need to prove that and then you don't do anything you don't write it down you don't come up with a plan you don't

get accountability and schedule it out and like make things happen, then you're just going to roll along and same old results, same old frustrations. And you'll be hoping for better results. We won't get them unless you're more strategic. And then the last one is contribution. And contribution can clearly be tied to significance and connection and growth, interestingly. Contribution is defined as a sense of service.

and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others. We are also hardwired for this and it's in our spiritual DNA and in our bodies and brains. In fact, one of the circuits of happiness, if you listen to all my episodes, you heard this. One of the brain circuits of happiness they found from brain scanning is generosity. It's the four circuits of happiness in the brain. The fourth one is generosity.

Rachel Denning (27:40.365)
We literally become happier when we're generous, when we're contributing. We're literally hardwired for this. It's so cool. I love it. And then of course on a life sense and a general sense and a spiritual sense, we just feel better when we're making a contribution. Now we can tell ourselves all kinds of stories about how we're contributing or we can actually contribute and we can make excuses of like, well, yeah, it worked.

Work hard all day. This is my contribution. I'm going to sit here and do nothing. I've earned it. Right. And that's, that's a story you can tell yourself, or you can say, you know what? No, I'm going to, I'm going to choose to really make a contribution and for reals. And, and you can do it throughout your day and you can do it in every interaction you have. You can do it while you're at the store. You can make a contribution as to someone's life. You can be kind and thoughtful and generous and helpful. You can.

trade your criticisms for compliments. And you can buy the groceries of somebody who seems to be struggling, you know, somebody that's in line behind you or in front of you. Just the fence, Hey, hey, would you mind, would you mind if I, if I got your groceries for you today? Or I was talking to a teenager the other day, it works at a drive through restaurant and somebody rolled in and just said, Hey, you know,

I want to buy the meal for the person behind me. And they said that each car ended up like, let me do it for the person behind me. And behind me, behind me, it just passed on through the line. It was super awesome. But look for ways to do that. Look for ways to surprise your spouse and give more. And you're like, I already give so much. I'm so tired. Like, get some recovery. Make sure you're feeling good. There's a good balance. It's got to be healthy. But look for ways you can serve your spouse and surprise your spouse.

Look for ways you can serve and surprise your children and make really meaningful contributions. Now don't water this down. Sometimes we think if we throw money at our kids, it'll make things better as a contribution. That's just not true. And sometimes we think if we get them to do something we want to do or we just go through the motions of something they want to do that we're contributing. And let's be honest. Be honest with yourself. Is that really making contribution? Right? So.

Rachel Denning (30:07.245)
Think through this, be strategic about this. How can you make an actual contribution? One that, man, you feel fantastic when you do it. But two, you know, is making a difference. It's part of that significance piece too and the connection love piece. But focus on helping others make contributions. You can do it with your work. You can do it with, again, church, hobbies, organizations, neighbors, friends, strangers. You can go to foreign lands.

You can do all these things, but man, this, we've got to have these. So how was that? How was that my friends? The six human needs, isn't this awesome? And now you can look at any area of your life and any place where you're feeling a void or feeling a frustration or feeling unfulfilled or just it feels blah right now. And you're like, why? And you look through this. And so with my coaching clients, we'll go through this and look at it. and, and with my one client today, he's awesome client. You realize that in his career,

He's literally missing five of these things. Five of them. The only thing he has in his career is certainty. That's just not enough.

This is not enough. And for some of you, I hope not, man, I hope not, but for some of you in your marriages, you're only gonna have one or two of these. It's not enough. You gotta be strategic. You gotta make sure they're all there. For some of you in your personal life, your relationship with yourself, the things you're doing on your own, your big life picture and vision and this whole journey you're on, maybe you only got a couple of those. It's not enough.

you will feel consistently empty and frustrated and distracted. It's not enough. So my invitation and challenge to you is go through each of these, write about them, think about them and get really strategic. Put things on the calendar. Let your accountability partner know like, like make this happen. We've got to, we've got to have these things more in our lives.

Rachel Denning (32:17.133)
And you guys share this, please. A lot of your friends, a lot of your family members, they're struggling with things literally because they're missing one of these for reals. And so share this, take a screenshot of where you're listening to this and pass along, tag me in it. Tag the podcast in it, but just like pass along and share it. We need to share these things because a lot, you know, these are six human needs that we all have. These are core human needs. And yet so many wonderful people, our brothers and sisters here on this earth.

in our common humanity, they don't even know. They don't know that they need these things and they don't realize cognitively that they're missing them. And if we share this kind of stuff, then they're like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I'm totally missing them in my life and that's why I fill this void. So share these things, pass them along. If you really wanna go for it and really wanna level up, sign up for a coaching session. Go to gregdanning .com, sign up for a personal coaching session and you can do it in the parenting or marriage or one -on -one or even.

business coaching, just sign up for it and let's take an honest look at it. Let's go through each of these and let's get strategic about it and let me ask you some good questions. In fact, when you sign up for a coaching appointment, I send over a life assessment. It's so powerful. You get to go through and answer the questions and examine your life and see where these things are missing and then get real strategic about what really makes a difference and how to do it. Some of you right now are like, yeah, I know I'm missing this and this and this. What do I do? I don't know how to do that.

And that's why those coaching sessions are so powerful and so transformational. So love you guys, you're awesome. Share this stuff, go after it, make it happen. Get these six core human needs met in every area of your life. Share them with others, help your kids develop them and have this consistency. And let's train for greatness, my friends. Reach upward.