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
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