The Human Givens are the needs and resources that we are all born with. They include our essential physical and emotional needs, plus all the innate resources that have evolved in humans to help us fulfil these needs. Using our innate resources properly to get our needs met allows us to thrive rather than just survive.
In addition to our basic physical need for food, water, warmth and shelter, we have some essential emotional needs, including the need for:
- security: a safe territory, an environment where we can live without excessive fear
- volition: a sense of autonomy and control over what happens to us and around us
- attention: both receiving it and also giving it to others
- emotional connection to other people through friendship, kinship, love, intimacy
- connection to the wider community: we are a group animal and need to be part of something larger than ourselves
- a sense of status: being accepted and valued within the groups (work, social, family) that we belong to
- privacy: time and space enough to reflect on and consolidate our experiences
- a sense of our own competence and achievements: gained through endeavour and learning
- a sense of wider meaning in life: through stretching ourselves, helping others, or connection to a belief or philosophy
To help meet these needs, our innate human resources include:
- a conscious rational, logical mind (left brain)
- an emotional, creative mind (right brain)
- our imagination: through which we can focus our attention away from our emotions and can problem solve more creatively and objectively
- our memory: which enables us to learn and add to our innate knowledge
- our ability to build rapport, understand, empathise and connect with others
- self awareness: our observing self is the part of us that can step back and be more objective
- a dreaming brain: that metaphorically defuses emotional arousal from the day before and clears our minds for the day ahead
- understanding through metaphor and stories
- resilience: our fundamental instinct to survive adversity so as to thrive as both an individual and a species
- curiosity: another fundamental survive-and-thrive instinct without which the human species would not have progressed
Any one of us can find ourselves emotionally distressed if our essential needs are not being met and/or the innate resources we possess have been damaged or are being misused. Emotional distress can manifest itself in many different ways, including physical illnesses, stress, tiredness, depression, addictive and compulsive behaviours, eating disorders, anxieties and phobias. Sometimes it is just that we feel we could be performing better in our lives or feeling happier and more energetic.