Your Six Needs

Why do we keep doing things we know aren't good for us?

In this episode of Your Third Third, Steve looks at six underlying human needs that quietly drive more of our behavior than we realize: Significance, Certainty, Adventure, Love, Expansion, and Return. 

Steve explores what happens when the structures that used to give us meaning, stability, connection, and growth begin to change or disappear.

This episode is about more than motivation. It’s about the hidden needs underneath our habits, reactions, and stuck patterns. Why some people create drama to feel important. Why attention gets mistaken for connection. Why retirement can feel flat even when life looks fine on paper. Why the behavior you’re trying to change may actually be solving a real problem, badly.

If you’ve ever looked back at something you said or did and thought, Why on earth did I do that? this episode gives you a more useful question to ask.

Instead of: What’s wrong with me?
Try: What need am I trying to meet right now?

That shift can change a lot.

If this episode resonates, subscribe to Your Third Third, share it with someone who’s navigating this stage of life, and check out Steve’s weekly writing on Substack., https://substack.com/@yourthirdthird

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Years ago I'm at a wedding. It's my girlfriend's sister. And at some point during the reception people start finding us, grabbing us by the arms, pulling us close, saying some version of the same thing. You two are next and every time someone said it, I kind of shuddered. Because I already knew the relationship was over. I'd I'd known for a while I'd just been too immature to conflict averse too bad at endings to do anything about it. So instead of breaking up with her, I pulled away slowly over time until she finally ended it herself, which was which was cowardice. And I knew it at the time, but here's what I understand now that I didn't understand then. It wasn't weakness, I was trying to protect something that I couldn't name. It's not a character flaw, that's a need running in the background without your permission. And today I want to talk about six of those needs. Today we're talking about six needs that are running more of your life than you probably realize, and most of the time you can't see them. And by the way, I learned this framework that explains all of this decades ago from a very large man with unnaturally white teeth on a VHS tape I bought at 3 a.m. during a bout of insomnia in the early 90s, right in between the Ginsu knives and the hand hammered walk. We'll get to him in a minute. Don't call it a comeback! Hi, I'm Steve Gertchik, and this is your third third. This show is for people who have done the work, built the thing, and now shrugging our shoulders, wondering what all of it was actually for. Today we're talking about six needs that are running our lives whether we know it or not. Not wants, not goals, not preferences, needs. The stuff underneath every choice that we make, every reaction that we have, every time you look back and think, I genuinely didn't know why I did that. If the show's useful to you, please subscribe wherever you're listening. I write every week on Substack also, and there's a TikTok situation developing. If you use TikTok, you can find me at your third third there. I'm still adjusting to using that. Anyway, the person who organized these needs into a working framework is Tony Robbins. Robbins popularized a version of this that's actually pretty useful, and a lot of it lines up with real behavioral science, from Maslow to self-determination theory. He called them the six human needs, and I'm gonna give you a shorthand for them, something you can actually hold on to, and then we're gonna spend most of our time on what they mean specifically for where you are right now as we think about our third third. So here's the shorthand. I call it scalar, like you're scaling a mountain. Scaler, significance, certainty, adventure, love, expansion, and then return. We're always climbing something. The question is do we know what it is? So keep that in your back pocket. I'll come back to it. Right now let me start with what matters about it. Here's how a lot of people think about motivation. You set a goal, you make a commitment, you use discipline, and if you fall short, the story you tell yourself is that you lacked willpower or focus or some other quality that a better morning routine would probably fix. That framework is clean. It's also mostly wrong. What behavioral science actually shows, and this goes back to Maslow and runs through decades of research since, is that motivation is largely about need fulfillment. Not what you think you should want, what you actually need, often without knowing it. We move toward what satisfies us at a deep level. We move away from what doesn't, and most of the time we're not even aware that the need is there. And here's why this gets especially interesting in the third third of life. In your first and second third, a lot of structures do the work for you. Your job delivers meaning and certainty and significance and connection, more or less packaged together. You don't have to consciously tend to those needs because institutions are meeting them on your behalf. And then that changes. The job ends or shifts, or stops being the center of gravity it once was. The social infrastructure that used to just show up now requires effort on your part. And now you're suddenly responsible for meeting needs that used to be handled by systems. Systems that we barely notice are even there. And that's what this episode's really about, not six abstract psychological categories, really the specific shape of what happens when the structure kind of comes down, and now you have to figure out what you actually need. Let's start with the two most fundamental ones, because understanding these changes how you read almost everything else. Certainty is the need to feel safe, stable. Like the ground under us is solid. This is old wiring, deep wiring. When certainty drops, the whole system kind of goes into threat mode. And it becomes very hard to think clearly about anything else. You can't build meaning when you're worried about your health or your finances or whether the relationship you're in is going to hold. But here's the thing that trips people up. If you get too much certainty, you get bored. And not regular bored, something more hollow than that. A kind of restlessness that doesn't have an obvious cause. That's adventure, the need for novelty, change. Something that doesn't have a guaranteed outcome. And it's in permanent tension with certainty, which is which is why it can be sitting in a completely stable, objectively fine life, and still feel like something's missing. Many people interpret that feeling as a problem, like they're ungrateful or not built for peace. I don't think that's some character flaw. They're trying to meet two real needs at the same time, and that takes rhythm, not some permanent resolution. Periods of stability, periods of change, and then back again. In the third third, that rhythm often breaks down. For a lot of people, work was providing the adventure for years, decades, new projects, new challenges, something uncertain to navigate. And then work ends or changes, and you have all the certainty in the world, and the adventure just stops. And then you either fade into the stability or you start making erratic choices, trying to manufacture the feeling back. And what you actually need is to build that rhythm intentionally for the first time, rather than having an institution build it for you. Next is significance. Significance is the need to matter, to feel important, seen, respected, to have your presence register, and this is where things get interesting, because significance itself isn't the problem. The need is real and legitimate. But the strategies for meeting it vary enormously. See, you can meet significance through achievement or contribution. That's one of my favorites. Mastery of some new skill. Through becoming genuinely good at something, through doing work that helps. Those are healthy strategies. They tend to produce meaning as a side effect. Or you can meet it through conflict, through being right at any cost, through drama, through making yourself the problem everyone else has to manage. Same need, very different outcomes for the people around you. There's a family member that I love, sharp guy, interesting life he's had, genuinely good company in a lot of ways, but there's a pattern that I've noticed over the years. When someone else is telling a story at the dinner table, he'll often interrupt, not not rudely exactly, more excitedly, like he hears something in what you're saying that reminds him of something about himself, and that thing can't wait. So in he barges with his story, his experience, his version. And the person who is talking kind of trails off and the attention shifts, and he's in the spotlight again. I don't think he does it to be selfish. I honestly don't think he even knows that he's doing it. What I've come to understand is that he's meeting a need, a real one. The need to matter, to be interesting, to have his presence register in the room, significance. Thing is, the strategy is really working against him because over time people stop bringing their full stories to the table. They give him the short version or they wait for a moment when he's not there. The very thing that he's reaching for, genuine connection and attention from people he loves, gets a little harder to find each time. That's not a character judgment, by the way. That's what happens when a real need runs on an old strategy that stopped working. And the fix isn't to tell someone like that to stop interrupting. That just asks them to feel insignificant. Nobody wants that. The fix is to find a context where their need for significance gets met in a way that doesn't require taking the floor from someone else, where they're contributing, not competing. And that's a solvable problem, but you have to see that need first. The next is love and connection. This one gets described as the most important need, and at a biological level that probably tracks. Loneliness, as I've talked about before, is genuinely bad for you. Not in a soft, you know, self-help way, but in a measurable health outcome kind of way. But there's a distinction here that I think is worth considering. Most people want connection. A lot of people settle for attention. Attention is easier. You can get attention by being loud, by being dramatic, by sharing something provocative, by being the person who always has a story that tops yours. You don't have to be vulnerable, you don't have to risk anything, you just have to be noticed, you know? Connection is harder. It requires actually being seen. Maybe being vulnerable. The parts you're still working out, the parts that don't reflect well on you. It requires the risk that someone will see all of that, not be particularly interested. You know, we live in a world that's gotten extremely good at handing out attention and calling it connection. You know, you can have thousands of people following your life on social media and still eat dinner alone most nights. That becomes a real problem in our third third because a lot of the structures that used to deliver a connection automatically have changed or disappeared. Work friendships which felt deep because they were consistent often don't survive the end of the job. Parenting networks dissolve, the social infrastructure takes effort to maintain in a way it didn't before. None of that means connection is unavailable. It means now something you have to build intentionally rather than something that arrives as a byproduct of your schedule. The next two are expansion and return. And these last two are where I think the third third gets genuinely interesting because these are the needs most strongly associated with what actually feels like a meaningful life as opposed to just a uh just a functioning one. Expansion is the need to grow, to learn something new, develop a new capability, face yourself honestly, and come out the other side. A little different. When this need goes unmet, people describe it as depression, emptiness, a loss of purpose. What they're often really describing is what happens when growth stops. And they didn't realize that they needed to go find more of it. And then that pressure disappears, and growth becomes optional over time. And optional for most people means it stops happening. Return is different, and I think it's the most underrated need on this list. Return is about giving back what you've accumulated. Mentorship, teaching, creating something that other people can actually use. Here's what I'm noticing, and this isn't a motivational observation, it's something I've watched happen repeatedly as I'm interviewing people in their third third. Meaning doesn't arrive during accumulation, the second third. It arrives during distribution. You can achieve the thing, own the thing, be recognized for the thing, and still feel this the word is hollow about it. But the moment you teach someone else what you know, or you create something that helps, or you step into the role of the person who's been where someone else is trying to go, something shifts. And it's not sentimental, it's a need getting met. And for a lot of people in the third-third, return is the need they've been deferring for decades, telling themselves they'll get to it. You know, once things settle down. This is the settle down. This is the part where it becomes available, or at least more available than it was before. I want to talk about the dark side, you know, the shadow. I've been learning a lot about shadow work. I want you to hold on to this because it reframes a lot, has for me. Every behavior you have is meeting a need. Every single one, including the ones you don't like, including the ones you've been trying to change for years. Control meets certainty. Makes you feel safe even when it exhausts everyone around you. Chaos meets adventure. It makes you feel alive even when it destabilizes everything you've built. Conflict meets significance. Makes you feel important even when it burns your relationships. Approval seeking meets connection. It feels like belonging even when it's really empty calories. Overwork meets expansion. It feels like growth, even when it's mainly just activity. Sacrifice meets return. It feels like contribution. Even when it's really resentment, wearing a convincing disguise. I think this is why change is genuinely hard. Not because people lack willpower, because the behavior is doing something real, it's meeting a real need. And if you try to remove it without replacing what it was providing, the need still doesn't go away. It wants to be met. Usually goes looking for another strategy, and this time it's worse. So when you're stuck in a pattern you don't like, the productive question isn't why can't I stop doing this over and over? It's what need is this meeting? And is there a better way to meet it? Those are different questions. Helpful questions, I think. Because the first one leads to shame, you know? Making yourself small, curling up into a ball. The second one leads to somewhere useful. Alright, so here's how to actually use this. Next time you feel stuck or reactive, or find yourself doing something you know you'll regret, try pausing long enough to ask, what need am I meeting right now? Or trying to meet right now? Not what's wrong with me. What need? Is it certainty? Am I trying to feel safe or in control? Is it significance? Am I trying to matter in a room where I feel invisible? Is it connection? Am I reaching for attention because real connection feels too risky right now? Or I feel incompetent. Quick example someone invites you to a party. You don't really want to go, you're tired, it's going to be small talk conversation. You'd rather stay home and watch something with subtitles and no discernible plot. Nothing wrong with that call, but let's run it through the framework for a second. If what you're protecting is certainty, the party feels unpredictable, and you'd rather stay in a controlled environment. But maybe you go for 30 minutes and give yourself permission to leave. Small dose of novelty, no obligation to stay. If what you're protecting is expansion, maybe the party is genuinely the wrong call. And the book you want to read, or the documentary is actually the better use of that evening. That's a legitimate choice, not avoidance. If once underneath it is significance, maybe the real problem is that you've been feeling invisible lately, and this particular party isn't going to fix that. Maybe what you actually need is one real conversation with one person who sees you, and not a room full of small talk. Pick one person, have some large talk. The point isn't the party, the point is that you made a conscious choice instead of a driven one. You made the choice. The need didn't make it for you. That's the whole game really. Not eliminating your needs, you can't start to sound preachy. But you can't really eliminate a need or override them with discipline. You have to work with them consciously. Because they're gonna run anyway. You're always climbing something significance, certainty, adventure, love, expansion, return scalar. I like that handle for it for myself. Climbing the mountain. Six needs, one question, are you meeting them on purpose or just reacting to them? You know, I think what makes this third third so interesting is that it might be the first time in our lives when we finally have enough perspective to really see these patterns and enough freedom to do something about them. So I'll leave you with this. Which one of these six needs is running more of your life than you'd like to right now? And what's one thing you could do differently this week to meet it in a way that actually serves you? Sit with that. See what comes up. Pick one behavior you've been trying to change, something reactive, something you keep doing even though you know better. And ask yourself what need is this meeting? Work through the list. Significance, certainty, adventure, connection, expansion, return. One of them fits. Once you have identified the need, ask Is there a better strategy for meeting it? You don't have to implement anything. Seeing the need clearly is a better. Big part of the work has been for me. If you do this exercise, I'd genuinely like to hear what you found. Email me at steve at your third third.com. You can subscribe to my Substack. I write every week. I'm still trying to podcast every week. If you like it, give me a rating wherever you download your podcasts and help spread the word. Trying to build a community of other people who want to go into the third third with mindfulness and intention. Talk to you next time. Bye for now.