Articole Robinson

8/2/2019 Articole Robinson

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The Three Core Needs: Satisfy Them, and Youre Happy

November 15, 2010 ByJoe Robinson

If humans were cars, we would have been recalled a long time ago for a key fix in

the ignition equipment. A serious defect keeps our desire machinery defaulting to

a belief that other people, goodies, or status can make us happy or worthythe

exact opposite of what can do the job. This leads to a lot of stall-outs as we chase

external payoffs that cant possibly satisfy us.

So what do we really need? Thats the $64 zillion dollar question. If we knew the

answer, wed know exactly how to get what would satisfy us. How big would that

be? For most of human history, the answer to that question has been a gray area

that sales folks have happily filled in for us, creating needs where there werent

any for designer togas or shoes with blinking lights in them. Luckily, we live in a

time when some very sharp minds have deciphered the correct motivational

wiring.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester have led the way,

with an aspirational framework known as self-determination theory. I find it

amazing that this remarkable tool hasnt made its way into the public

consciousness. Self-determination theory is a veritable GPS to fulfillment,

decoding our innermost longings and linking the world of science and spirit. Its

been vetted by hundreds of scientists in more than a dozen cultures.

If anything ever rated a Nobel Prize, this is it, a formulation you can use every

day to be more effective and satisfied in your work and life. No longer do you

have to rely on guesswork and marketers to know what you need to feel satisfied.

No longer do you have to have expectations that constantly disappoint. No longer

do you have to put your life on hold while you wait for some external ship to

come in. You can live more fully than you ever imagined, when you finally know

what it is youre living for.

Deci and Ryan found that at the root of human aspiration there are three core

psychological needsautonomy, competence, and relatedness (the need for
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social connection and intimacy), a trio that are starring players in my new book

on the skills of engaged experience, Dont Miss Your Life. You need to feel

autonomous, that you are freely choosing things in your life and not being

controlled. You have to feel effective and competent, doing things you initiate

and that make you stretch, not what youre pressured by others into doing. And

you have to have close relationships with others to satisfy your social mandate.

Think about all the flailing we have to go through to find what fills us up. Now

theres a roadmap. Satisfy your three core needs, and youre happy. You can have

all the external success in the world, but youll remain unfulfilled if even one of

the core needs is unaddressed. The catch is that you can only satisfy these needs

through intrinsic motivation, the reverse of the external reflex. You seek no

payoff, only the inherent interest of the activity itselffor learning, fun, growth.

Do it just to do it, and you get a whopping internal reward, in the form of the

lasting version of happiness, gratification.

This is the unconditional path that the sages have tried to clue us in onfrom

Aristotles idea of living well through lifelong learning, a reward in and of itself;

to the Buddhist right intention and the Taoist notion of acting in line with your

authentic nature. You cant not be in full alignment with your true self and values

with the core needs as your homing device.

When people are oriented to goals of doing what they choose, growing as a

person or goals for having good relationships, they experience higher levels of the

basic psychological needs, says Tim Kasser, of Knox College, a leading

researcher in the psychology of motivation.

Thats not the training we get, of course. Were taught to go for the payoff.

Everything has to get us somewhere socially, financially, emotionally. Were like

trained capuchins, waiting for our bananas after each task. I used to be so

externally run, I was a walking production report, ticking off a litany of projects

to anyone who said, hello. I realized that external rewards arent wasnt a payoff

at all but an endless come-on that only delivered the need for more payoffs.


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Deci showed in one experiment how external rewards sabotage us. Subjects were

asked to solve a puzzle in an exercise in which some got paid, others didnt. The

ones who received no money kept playing with the puzzle after the teacher left

the room at a strategic moment while the financially motivated had no interest

playing unless they got paid for it. Stop the pay, stop the play, Deci summed it

up later. His work and those of many others have documented that we learn more,

remember it longer, are more interested in what were doing, and are more

satisfied when we act for intrinsic goals.

Since work is an external affair for the most partthough autonomy support also

works on the job (as Deci has demonstrated and Daniel Pink detailed in his stellar

book on motivation, Drive), your core needs find their best expression in the

world off the clock. You cant get more autonomous than choosing what you

want to do in your free time. You have the best chance of fulfilling your core

needs at play, as long as your goals are intrinsic. Otherwise, social opportunities,

softball games, creative outlets and vacations get shelved by the external reflex

(wheres this going to get me? How about to your life?).

The core needs tell us were waiting in vain when we expect other people, things,

and status to make us happy, and that we are the ones who must make our lives

fulfilled through self-determined choices. Your core isnt satisfied by thinking or

spectating, but by directly participating in lifes meaningful experiences.

The need for autonomy comes from a desire to feel that you are the author of your

own script. When you feel your activities are self-chosen, theres a sense of self-

determination and freedom, which brings gratification. Youve moved forward.

The need to feel effective is essential to self-worth, but you can only satisfy your

competence need by doing things you initiateit has to be coupled with

autonomy. You can be effective on an assembly line, but you wont satisfy your

competence need, because the activity is not autonomous. Learning a new skill is

one of the best ways to activate competence. In one study, first-time whitewater

canoeists felt a surge of competence as they handled new risks. The third core

need, relatedness, is a well-documented route to increased positive mood, better

health, and longer lives. You cant satisfy your need for relatedness by

networking, since it wont produce the satisfaction that comes from close


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personal relationships. Your core needs are very smart. They know when theyre

not getting the real intrinsic deal.

The findings of Deci, Ryan and their many colleagues have yanked us out of the

Dark Ages of our unknown needs. Their data lights the way forward for you to

become who you are, as Alan Watts once put it. The key to the meaningful and

fulfilling life you want is acting from intrinsic goals that reflect your inner

compasslearning, fun, challenge, growth, community, excellence. Its tricky,

since external metrics are so instinctual, but you can do it, and Ive laid out a plan

to get you there inDont Miss Your Life.

Act for the sake of it, and you are at the center of full engagement in the mostrewarding life possible, one that gratifies your deepest longings. There are no

barriers to your attention and involvement, no agendas to get in the way of the

good stuff. You have arrived at the place where the chief ingredients of optimal

living meetexperience, intrinsic motivation, and the riveting moment of now.

Joe Robinson

Author of "Don't Miss Your Life," work-life balance/stress management trainer

October 13, 2010 03:09 PM

Don't Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Problem With Being Cool

People will do just about anything for it. Say things they will regret the next

morning. Wear things they will regret in about 10 days. And keep out potential

friends and passions they will regret by age 40. No, it's not money. I'm talking

about cool, as in "being cool," the nag that lets an outside arbiter decide your

tastes and desires.

True, there have always been fashionistas and the vogue of the moment--the

hottest togas, powdered wigs, flappers, etc.--but our age of appearances has to be

at the top of the dedicated followers of fashion chart. It's aided and abetted, of
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course, by tens of millions of marketing dollars playing on our weakness for

social comparisons and need for acceptance. That makes it easy to get swept up in

whether this shirt or that one can pass along the appropriate cachet, or whether

this person or that activity might be hazardous to status. With kids we expect it,

but the burden of cool is lasting longer and longer past the expiration date--deep

into the loose-fit jeans era.

I happen to love Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool, cool jazz and cool drinks. The

problem is that we can't afford to be cool. I don't mean that financially, though the

cost factor is significant to support a cool habit. There's a big price to be paid for

excess image concerns at the behavioral level. We pay every time we leave a

living opportunity on the table, because we or they might not have the right--

check the box: look, age, clothes, companion, car. Cool kills the full expression of

life. It puts your core needs in the deep freeze by making you play to the wrong

audience. It's not the nods and glances of others, particularly total strangers, that

determine your status. You do. You are the audience.

Being cool is supposed to make us irresistibly confident in our up-to-the-minute

blase-ness, but it actually feeds insecurity with the false belief that popularity or a

certain image is needed for validation. The research shows that real self-worth

comes from internal goals that satisfy values and needs that are actually your

own, such as autonomy and growth, the polar opposite of the external approval

circuit. It seems a waste of a lot of hard-fought shopping and cultivated distance.

Knox College's Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan, from the University of Rochester,

have documented that external goals like appearance and possessions are

associated with lower self-esteem, higher anxiety and lower well-being. Jennifer

Crocker of the University of Michigan reports that, when self-esteem is based on

external measures like appearance and approval, there is more stress, anger, and

substance abuse. Whatever strokes we think we get from the coolest duds or

hotspots, they're gone by the next morning, and we have to get more. External

verifications don't convince, because the approval isn't coming from you. It would

appear, then, that being cool is uncool for your happiness.


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Let's face it, the premise of cool is a stretch: You're cool if you're copying

somebody else and devoid of specialness if you are yourself. That's not going to

make you feel too authentic, an overriding human need. Cool stifles authenticity,

turning off the aliveness and genuineness that lead to close relationships and the

best times of your life. Enthusiasm and eagerness propel you into the new

activities your brain neurons demand and infuse you with the positive manner that

brings people into your orbit. Cool turns those engines off. Holding back your

enthusiasm has to be one of the worst side-effects of cool behavior. How lame is

limiting your keenness for life?

Spontaneity is a spur-of-the-moment geyser of authenticity. Cool shuts if off for

studied posing. Unselfconscious focus on the moment opens the door to optimal

experiences. Cool closes that door with judgment. Whenever judgment is in the

driver's seat, you're not. You're not alive to your experience when you're judging

or worried about being judged.

I didn't find any image issues among dozens of life enthusiasts I interviewed for

my new book, "Don't Miss Your Life." There's no need for coolness when you

have a passion, as all these people do, from dancing to kayaking. There's no need

for artifice when you're free to express your true aspirations as deliriously as you

want.

I love to look around at the first session of a salsa class and take in the Noah's

Ark of looks, ages, and types. It's a lesson in how wrong our snap judgments

about others can be. A few classes later, folks who appeared to be from other

planets are comrades in the dance of life. No longer are they holding back their

enthusiasm or their real selves. Learning a new skill strips away the knowing

facade of coolness and cynicism and replaces it with something more human,

vulnerability, the great equalizer and facilitator of friendship and adventure.

When you don't have to reach out, you remain in the shell where image dwells,

which prevents the new experiences and social opportunities your brain wants

from coming your way.

The dictates of cool are held in place by the fear of negative evaluation. What if

you didn't need other people's approval for what you're doing or wearing? You


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don't, if you're not looking for it. That's where a key skill of life intelligence--an

essential skill-set detailed in the book--comes into play: ignoring social

comparisons. You can deploy it with a strong internal locus of control, as it's

called in the psychological trade. It's a belief that what you do and what happens

to you depends on your own choices. You don't need others to verify your

decisions. The better you get at trusting your own gut, the more you'll be able to

follow what it is you really want.

Look to your values and interests for that, making sure to separate them out from

the values and interests that others want you to have. It can be tricky to find your

authentic needs and goals amid the barrage of marketing messages about what

we're supposed to want. In the confusion we pass up experiences and people in

line with our real selves that we don't recognize, because they don't fit with the

image we think we are about. Images are great when they're photographs, an

albatross when they substitute for who you are in your bones.

The real deal is under the image, where internal locus lives. It stands to reason

that, when you are acting in alignment with your true self, you're going to be a

heckuva a lot more satisfied than if you're taking marching orders from Nike or

Prada. Research shows that people who are able to ignore social comparisons are

happier than those who dwell on them, which is what excessive cool-

consciousness wreaks. Popularity can't make you happy, but a cross-body pass to

a butterfly on the salsa floor definitely can.

Articole Robinson

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