Hello, beautiful humans and welcome to the mental Wellness.
Wake up, show a weekly podcast where growth minded creative
people, come to learn, best practices from both spirituality
and psychology that create lasting well-being.
I am your host mental Wellness, expert improvised acting teacher
therapist and Coach, Don McMillan.
Let's get to it. It.
What I want to talk about today is a William Glasser but why who
is William Glasser and why are we talking about him today?
So William Glasser is the founder Creator, beginner of
choice Theory which is a therapeutic Paradigm.
And what about his theory? I want to bring up our, his five
basic needs, a lot of people know about Abraham Maslow's
hierarchy of needs and it's great and it's fabulous and
there's a reason why a lot of people know about it.
The reason why I want to talk about Glasser is I find.
It is a really simple framework to keep track of.
So according to Glasser, we all have these five basic drives
safety and survival Zone 1. We'll just call that survival.
Belonging power, freedom, and fun.
So the five needs our safety, belonging power, freedom, and
fun. So, let's unpack those a little
bit. So safety and survival.
Go hand-in-hand, your brain will your body mind will will prefer
intent towards anything that it has coded as safe and anything
that has happened in the past that it has survived will be
coded as safer than anything unfamiliar.
So that fear of the unknown thing, that a lot of us
experience is because of his basic survival need our organism
is driven towards just plain old, not dying.
So, anything that it says, I saw that before it didn't kill me.
I know how to survive that. This other thing over here, I
don't know what that is, so I'm going to avoid it.
So our basic survival need is a prime driver.
We very rationally or our body-mind realizes that you
don't do anything else on the planet if you are not alive.
So, our first most basic need is that safety and survival.
Related to but not entirely dependent on is that belonging
need love and belonging if you think about how our ancestors
survived out in the elements, it was by banding together.
So we have that love and belonging need in part because
it's a key to our survival. If you are by yourself, you're
unlikely to thrive, you're unlikely to survive and so
finding ways to affiliate with other All to make connections to
other people to find a try of a community, a group becomes a
very basic need finding affiliate affiliation between
love and belonging between parents and children is
important. Otherwise, why would an adult
sacrifice all the things that they sacrifice in order to care
for their offspring to adulthood Or Independence.
So that's love and belonging. And then power power is not
about exerting power over when we have a drive to exert power
over other people, that's a Corruption of the basic need
power. In this case has the power to
do, it might be called efficacy, it is ability.
It is being able to make a difference in your environment
to accomplish things, to do things to have some sort of
effect. On the world around you that's
going to be power. So power, not power over, but
power to do and then we get into freedom.
And again, that's not necessarily license.
Although a lot of people interpret it that way.
Freedom is about. Autonomy about choice, being
able to have Choice over what you do with your body mind and
what happens to your body mind. So when we Talk about Freedom.
That's what we're looking at. Not being oppressed by others or
the environment not being controlled by others or the
environment. So we have a basic drive towards
freedom. And fun.
This is the one when I share it with my groups.
They're often like, wait, that's a basic need.
Oh yeah. All mammals play.
The problem with adults with humans is that we stop.
We stop playing. We start doing.
Stop doing things for the sheer, Joy of doing them.
We start doing things because they're enjoyable to do in and
of themselves. We start arranging our lives
around a transaction, I will do this thing in order to get that
thing. And we also confuse fun and
enjoyment with pleasure. And we've talked about this
before enjoyment, transcends and includes pleasure, fun,
transcends and includes pleasure.
So chocolate cake is pleasurable but it's not the same thing as
fun. You can create fun around eating
a chocolate cake because the fun transcends, it includes the
pleasure but pleasure by itself is sort of a lower order or
basic base level of this human. Men drive towards fun.
And as we all know, Pleasures, that are overindulged within
with overindulged, become a source of pain, right?
Maybe one glass of wine is pleasurable. 15 glasses of wine
gets you in the emergency room. So fun things that we do because
we enjoy them and this can get us into looking at the work of
me, hijacked at me high, it was who was the one who explored
flow, those flow States. That's where you lose track of
time. Where the thing that you're
doing is disease, engaging enough for you to be totally
immersed in it challenging enough to keep you at it, but
not so challenging that you're overwhelmed with frustration.
Ation for some people video games can be a flow state.
Where the thing that you're doing is fun enough.
It's challenging enough to keep you fully engaged in the present
moment so that other distractions fall into the
background but not so much so that that it's frustrating you
and your like or so flow is in that fun family.
Pleasure is in the fun family. Enjoyment is in the fun family.
so, the takeaways that I really wanted to land on Our about
intentionally creating fun in your life and I'm going to raise
my hand and say that I'm not always as good at this as I
might, like, despite the fact that I have all of these things
built in for fun, right? I have all of the Improv that I
do, all of the directing that I do, the singing that I do.
Those activities are chosen for their fun ability for their fun
potential. But and also sometimes Time's
the way that I approach them is not fun, it's transactional,
it's focused driven, its results driven.
I'm going to focus on this thing in order to get this other
thing. It's not, it's not.
I'm doing this for play. This is play like it can become
work. Yeah.
So fun is a vital nutrient. It's not a nice to have, it's
not a squeeze it in when you get around to it.
It's a vital nutrient. And I would suggest that we need
all five of those needs every day and if you can't manage it
every day, right? Like not every day is going to
get and, you know, ring all the bells but what if we decided to
arrange our weeks so that each of those basic needs gets
addressed consciously? Intentionally.
And in a way that honors Us and other people.
We have a loneliness epidemic. I think a lot of us are not
getting our 11. Belonging needs met in a way
that feels good. Is there something you can do
today? This week?
No matter how small that might be, that would lean into
improving your love and belonging needs.
Is there for power, is there something that you're kind of
good at that? You can do more of.
So you get that sense of accomplishment that comes from
using your personal power. Can you use your freedom to make
choices and support of your own well-being?
Can we be more intentional about that?
The other point I want to bring home which is important to know
if you're on a path of growth. And it's about the veto power.
Of your survival and your belonging needs.
When we are stuck, a lot of times is because something has
been coded in our body. Mind.
Usually, before the age of eight, as being a threat to our
safety, our safety survival, or a love and belonging.
So for example, this came up for me recently, I'm taking a
course. And I think I warned you in the
past, there will often be a sentence in this podcast that
will begin with. I'm taking a course and looking
at some unhelpful beliefs, right?
That's, that's like peeling, an onion.
Getting at your core beliefs that are not serving you, you
get one there, you find new ones, you find nuances.
We're always in the process of unfolding and that's just that's
just built into the system and it's nothing to be judgmental
about. It's just how we are.
However, made were always in the process of unfolding of
blossoming of growing and sometimes that work.
Looks like continuing to unearth unhelpful versions of beliefs
and seeing what we can do to unpack them.
So I'm taking this course and I was looking at a belief and I
came across something where I felt like I had to choose
between the thing that I want and belonging.
Belonging and survival will veto.
The other needs. It will veto, it kind of goes
back to that Maslow, like hierarchy of needs.
If you have a, if your body-mind, thanks, you have a
choice between fun and belonging and we'll choose a belonging. if
your body and mind thinks you have to choose between, Freedom
and survival, it will choose survival.
If your body mind thinks you have to choose between
exercising, your freedom and staying alive.
It's going to choose survival, is going to choose Staying
Alive. so, Sometimes, when we are stuck.
We have learned from our family of origin from our culture of
origin from our churches. Our schools insert to the group
that we were socialized into as little itty-bitty people.
That in order to belong to this group, there are these behaviors
and beliefs that are okay. And there are these behaviors
and beliefs that will get you ejected from this group.
And unless and until we uncover those beliefs and we explore
them to see if they are serving us, they will veto other things
that we might choose to do or create in the fun freedom and
power category. It's really quite powerful those
survival and belonging needs are so powerful that they will veto
what you the conscious. The cognitive brain is like, I
really want to get fit, right? I really want to get fit, but if
you, for example, but if you're the socializing group that you
were brought into, is that belonging is around food and
Everybody, Eats huge plates of food.
That's how you belong in this community.
If you're not eating huge plates of food, it's going to trigger
that. Oh no, I'm not going to belong
to my community, that's not. Okay, and it's going to show up
as air quotes. Self-sabotage, that belonging
need is going to veto your desire to exercise your freedom
to choose a greater level of fitness.
So the invitation here, you have all those five basic needs and I
just invited you to consciously intentionally and purposefully
find ways of exploring getting those five basic needs met every
day if possible or at least every week leaning into that.
And to the degree that some of those areas may be
underdeveloped or not working as well.
Perhaps the culprit is as something in your body mind has
coded. That thing that desire.
As putting your belonging at risk or your very survival at
risk and those drives will veto the other three.
So self-sabotage does not exist. Self-sabotage.
Just means there's a part of you that wants something different
than another part of you and one of them is winning and what I'm
suggesting today is that the part of you that is in survival
or belonging Camp is going to. The parts of you are going to
down, vote. They're going to vote down and
overrule the other parts of you. So your work then is to uncover
that belief, I have to choose between being fit and belonging.
Is that true? Is that real?
Does that make sense? Is that serving me?
What if I can have both Fitness and belonging what might that
look like? See, begin to interrogate those
beliefs and unwind from them so that your safety survival love
and belonging needs are working together with your power,
freedom and fun needs. what if we can get all five of those
needs met in glorious, beautiful Technicolor ways in a ways that
honor us and the people around us And create lives that we are
in love with but if that's possible.
Food For Thought. Let that simmer around in your
Noggin for a bit. Yeah, reach out to me on the
socials if you have thoughts on that or something pops for you.
If you have a contribution to that conversation, I'd love to
hear it. My socials for the most part are
at the dawn McMillan MCM, I LAN So, there you go.
Just a little food for thought for you.
Thank you for listening. I know, I say that in any number
of ways, but I deeply and profoundly mean it that you
would want to give up your precious time, give of your
precious time to hang out with me.
Around this little campfire. It's truly humbling and honoring
to thank you. You know what else?
You're amazing. You are whole, you are perfect.
You are complete. Just the way you are.
Right here, right now. you are allowed to change and you're
allowed not to and, You are worthy and deserving of all good
things. Until next time, I beautiful
human. I am so honored that you share
time with me. If you've listened this far,
then something here was a value to you.
Would you please be a friend of the podcast and share it with at
least one other person? The podcast is available on most
platforms including YouTube and I need your help to get the word
out. So please like, subscribe, and
share, and a five star review on iTunes, would be glad chefs
kiss. Thank you so much.
See you next time.