A number of years ago, I wrote a page about the Six Human Needs. <link here>

Certainty.

Variety.

Significance.

Connection and love.

Growth.

Contribution.

I wrote about them as profound, universal needs underlying much of human behaviour. The idea was that understanding these needs, and recognizing how we try to meet them, could help us understand ourselves and make better choices.

I recently came across that old post again.

And something happened that I rather enjoy these days.

I wondered if I still believed it.

Not whether the model is useful.

Not whether Tony Robbins, who popularized it, was right or wrong.

Something more basic.

Are they actually needs?

I realized I had never really questioned the word.

What makes something a need?

I need oxygen.

That’s fairly easy to test.

Take it away and this blog ends rather abruptly.

Water?

Same thing.

Food?

Eventually, yes.

But significance?

Certainty?

Variety?

Contribution?

What happens if I don’t receive enough significance today?

Do I become deficient in something?

Or do I have an experience of feeling insignificant?

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

And that distinction has me curious.

Because if something is genuinely a psychological need, shouldn’t its absence produce something reasonably consistent?

Yet two people can encounter almost identical circumstances and experience them very differently.

Imagine nobody acknowledges my contribution at a meeting.

I might feel ignored.

Someone else might be furious.

Another person might not give it a second thought.

Same event.

Same apparent absence of significance.

Three different worlds.

So where exactly is the experience coming from?

I don’t ask that rhetorically.

I’m genuinely curious.

Certainty might be my favourite

Apparently, human beings need certainty.

Which is unfortunate because life seems remarkably unwilling to provide much of it.

Will my health remain good?

Will this relationship last?

Did I make the right decision?

Will my children be okay?

Will the economy improve?

What happens when I die?

I don’t know.

Neither do you.

We can make educated guesses. We can plan. We can insure things. We can wear seatbelts, save money and check the weather forecast before leaving the house.

All sensible.

But certainty?

Good luck.

And yet somehow, generation after generation, human beings have managed to get out of bed without knowing how the day will end.

Maybe we don’t need certainty.

Maybe sometimes we need certainty that we need certainty.

There’s a rabbit hole worth avoiding before breakfast.

What if the uncomfortable feeling we sometimes experience in the face of uncertainty isn’t evidence that something essential is missing?

What if that’s simply what uncertain thinking feels like in that moment?

I don’t know.

But it’s a different question.

Connection gets more interesting

This one deserves some care.

Human beings are social creatures. Relationships matter. Belonging matters. There is plenty of evidence linking social relationships to health and well-being.

I’m not interested in dismissing that.

But I am curious about the experience of connection.

Someone can be sitting at a dinner table surrounded by family and feel utterly alone.

Another person can spend an afternoon by themselves and feel deeply connected to life.

So being with people and experiencing connection aren’t quite the same thing.

Which again makes me wonder what we’re actually describing when we use the word need.

Perhaps we’re observing common patterns in human behaviour.

Perhaps those patterns are incredibly useful.

But a description of a pattern isn’t necessarily an explanation for where our experience comes from.

That’s where I think my understanding has changed.

Because something interesting happens when I call it a need

Suppose I believe:

I need significance.

Now life has a job.

Other people have a job.

My work has a job.

My friends have a job.

My Facebook post has a job.

My wife may suddenly have a job she doesn’t remember applying for.

Everyone needs to provide enough evidence that I matter.

And when they don’t?

Well, now I have an explanation for why I feel the way I do.

My need isn’t being met.

That explanation can make perfect sense.

It certainly made sense to me when I wrote the original article.

Today, I’m not so sure.

Because I’ve become increasingly interested in how easily we attribute our internal experience to something happening, or not happening, outside us.

Someone doesn’t acknowledge me.

Thought gives that meaning.

Consciousness brings that meaning to life.

And suddenly I don’t merely think I’m being overlooked.

I experience a world in which I am insignificant.

It feels real because, in that moment, it is my reality.

That’s what fascinates me now.

The model isn’t the problem

I want to be careful here.

This isn’t an article about why the Six Human Needs are wrong.

Maybe they’re exactly right.

Maybe there are six.

Maybe there are twelve.

Maybe Maslow had a better list.

Maybe someone is working on seventeen right now.

Humans love a good list.

Give us a pyramid and we’re practically giddy.

Models can be useful.

They help us notice patterns.

They give us language.

They can point toward things we hadn’t previously seen.

The trouble may begin when we forget they’re models.

A description becomes an explanation.

An explanation becomes a truth.

And eventually we stop looking.

This doesn’t only happen with the Six Human Needs.

We do it with personality types.

Attachment styles.

Love languages.

Mental health labels.

Trauma explanations.

Leadership models.

And yes, we can even do it with the Three Principles.

Anything that originally helped us see can eventually become something through which we must see.

The pointer becomes another belief.

I’ve done that too.

Probably more than once.

Stay tuned.

Maybe this is what changing your mind looks like

I could go back and rewrite my original article.

I won’t.

I like that it’s still there.

That’s what I saw then.

I wasn’t pretending.

I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone.

I wrote what looked true to me at the time.

And this is what looks interesting to me now.

Maybe five years from now I’ll read this article and shake my head.

I rather hope so.

Because increasingly, I don’t see changing my mind as evidence that I was wrong before.

Sometimes it simply means I kept looking.

There is something freeing about holding our explanations a little more lightly.

Not throwing them away.

Not replacing them immediately.

Just leaving enough room for:

Maybe.

I wonder.

What haven’t I seen?

Those have become some of my favourite places to stand.

So, are there Six Human Needs?

I don’t know.

How’s that for a conclusion?

Maybe there are.

Maybe there are twenty.

Maybe we’ve become very good at noticing patterns in human behaviour, giving those patterns names, and eventually forgetting that we were the ones who named them.

What interests me now isn’t finding the correct list.

It’s noticing what happens when I believe something outside me must happen before I can be okay.

Because the moment I call something a need, I’ve given it considerable power.

Years ago, the Six Human Needs helped me make sense of people.

Today, I’m more curious about what people look like before we explain them.

Including me.

Maybe that’s one of the unexpected gifts of going back through almost 200 blog posts.

I’m not finding a trail of answers.

I’m finding a trail of things I once thought I knew.

And apparently, I’m still curious enough to pick them up, turn them over and have another look.

I’ll let you know if I figure it all out.

But after 200 posts, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Much Love,