Six Human Needs Audit
Reorder the needs driving your behavior toward love, growth, and contribution.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Robbins names six needs: certainty, variety or uncertainty, significance, connection and love, growth, and contribution. His audit asks people to rank the two needs their behavior has actually prioritized, not the ones they say they value. They then examine the downside of that order, choose a preferred top two for the next stage, and practice decisions that express the new sequence. The mechanism is priority: significance above love can make connection feel conditional, while contribution above love can become a way to earn acceptance. Robbins argues that love, growth, and contribution tend to support fulfillment more reliably, while acknowledging that every person has all six needs. This is a coaching framework offered by Robbins, not an established clinical taxonomy.
Origin
Robbins demonstrates his six-needs exercise by asking Steven Bartlett to rank the needs reflected in his life and then choose a new order. Extracted from The Diary of a CEO.
Core principles
- 01Behavior can meet several needs at once.
- 02The priority order of needs changes how they are pursued.
- 03The same need can be met through constructive or destructive rules.
- 04Love, growth, and contribution are presented as more reliable routes to fulfillment.
- 05Knowing a preferred order is not the same as conditioning it through practice.
How to run it
- 1
Learn the six needs
Review certainty, variety, significance, connection and love, growth, and contribution as Robbins defines them. Treat them as prompts for reflection rather than diagnostic categories.
Watch out The model should not replace a clinical assessment.
- 2
Rank lived priorities
Use recent choices to identify the two needs your behavior has prioritized. Ignore the answer that sounds most admirable.
Pro tip Ask what you protected when two needs conflicted.
- 3
Audit the trade-offs
Write both the benefits and the costs produced by the current order. Note which desired need may be pursued indirectly through another.
Pro tip Use specific decisions rather than personality labels.
- 4
Choose the next order
Select the two needs you want to prioritize for the next stage and place them in order. Explain what would change if that order governed real choices.
Pro tip Test the harder choice by imagining a conflict between the two.
- 5
Condition the priority
Create repeated actions that express the new order. Review decisions until the desired priority becomes more available under pressure.
Pro tip Start with one recurring situation where the old order is easy to observe.
In the wild
Bartlett identifies significance and uncertainty as prominent in how he had lived. He says significance cost him connection and love, then chooses love first and contribution second as the order he wants for his next stage.
→ The exercise turns abstract values into a specific priority order and a predicted reduction in stress.
Common mistakes
Ranking the ideal self
The first audit concerns needs demonstrated by behavior, not the values a person wishes they displayed.
Calling one need bad
Robbins says everyone has all six; the framework examines priority and rules for meeting them.
Changing the list only on paper
Robbins says the new priority has to be conditioned through repeated choices rather than discussion alone.
Is it for you?
Best for
People examining recurring choices, relationship patterns, or a mismatch between achievement and fulfillment.
Not ideal for
Using a coaching model as a clinical diagnosis or as the sole explanation for complex behavior.
From the transcript
“we have six human needs”
“what you think your top two needs have been”
“what's the downside of having that one so high on your list”
From the episode
Tony Robbins: No One Is Ready For What's Coming! Why The Next Decade Will Break People!