The 3 Psychological Needs You Can’t Ignore

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]During my PhD in psychology, which I didn't finish because my ADHD brain found it very boring to do a PhD, but during that time, I was focused on self-determination theory. And I kind of want to tell you a little bit more about it because it's the one theory in psychology that is so well researched.

[00:00:20]It's a rare thing in psychology actually to have something so well supported and I think it can be useful for you to learn a little bit about it. So according to self-determination theory for a person to feel I don't want to say happy I want to say fulfilled to feel really good about herself or himself to really have that sense of accomplishment and just satisfaction there are three factors that need to be present in that person's life. A sense of autonomy, a sense of competence and a sense of relatedness. Okay. What are those things? Autonomy is about that sense that you have control over what you do.

[00:01:04]But it's not just let's say behavior like for example, oh at work I get to choose how to perform my work or I get to choose what type of work to have.

[00:01:17]It's not that obvious. It's not that just superficial level. It's also about where do you put the control over your feelings and thoughts. For example, a lot of people kind of delegate all of this responsibility to others. Like for example, I'm yelling at you because you said something that upset me. So it's you who caused me to feel anger and now I'm yelling. Or you did something wrong and now I'm upset. You didn't come to see me, now I'm lonely. You didn't pick up the phone, now I feel ignored. You know it's this outsourcing the responsibility but also the control of how you feel to others. So then you are completely dependent on them. You are only happy when they do the right things. And that's a very unfortunate place to be because not only nobody ever is there just to satisfy you and to please you. Obviously they have their own life. So of course sometimes they will be too busy to show up for you.

[00:02:22]they will be too turret to to support you or they will have some other people in their lives to support not you. So if you outsource the responsibility for your feelings to others naturally you will be disappointed sometimes actually quite often unless everybody around you is your servant but that's rare and it should be rare. So getting out of this victim mindset where things happen to you, if you take a step above and decide that you happen to things and you write your own life story, this not only gives you a real chance to feel better, but it brings a sense of autonomy because you are the person who is in control. And that is one of the best feelings on earth to know that you can make yourself feel better. It's up to you to give yourself peace and then it's completely possible because if it's up to you then you can make it happen. That's really the power here that whatever is under your control you can control. Think about it. Okay. The second thing competence it's actually about the opposite of being lazy. So I know a lot of people think that if they take it easy in life, they just do the bare minimum, they go to work, but you know, they just perform enough not to get fired or in a relationship, they just do the bare minimum for the person not to leave them. This actually fires back because if you don't have the sense of competence that you're actually good at something, you actually don't feel very good about yourself. You just don't. You may try to have the toxic masculinity vibe or the female bitching vibe which is very different than actually confident woman. You can yell, you can try to show off. You can try to be the smartest, biggest person in the room for sure, but at the end of the day, if you don't feel confident and you cannot feel confident if you don't feel like you're good at something. So if you don't do difficult things to build competence to know that you're really good at something, if you don't have that, then you feel shitty about yourself. And that's why we have a lot of loud people around us who are actually full of insecurities. So I don't want this to be triggering, but at the same time, if I am to help you, I'm just going to tell you the things as they are. The lazier you are, the shittier you feel about yourself. Third thing, relatedness. This is at first very easy. Oh, I just have to relate to the people around me, which probably means to have a good social environment.

[00:05:09]It means more than that. It's one thing to be surrounded by people, but it's a different thing to relate to them and to be connected with them. So for example, have you heard that if you are in if you're suffering from depression, it's very difficult to get up and do something for yourself. But you can still get up and do something for others. And in that moment when you help something else, it could be a person, it could be an animal, it could be a tree, like it could be your gardening for example. In that moment when your existence supports the existence of another living creature, you actually feel better because it gives you a sense of [snorts] purpose. Like you're here for a reason. You help something else get better or even just exist. And in that sense, you are connected or you realize that you're connected with the living life around you. And I know this sounds very philosophical, but I'll bring it back to psychology. The thing with relatedness is that in order to relate to something, you have to pay attention to it. You have to care for it. And then through that, you build quality of relationship. You build a true connection. And this is when you actually start feeling good about yourself because it gives you a sense of belonging to something. I know that some of you will be listening to this now and be like, "Oh, that's very nice way of looking at the world, but it's probably not true because look at all those politicians, for example. They seem to be quite chill and they don't really belong to anything." Well, I think they do. Unfortunately, they're not alone.

[00:06:59]They have their group, [ __ ] up or not, they do belong to something. They have similar others.

[00:07:06]They communicate very often. They do things together and they relate to one another as [ __ ] up as this is. So try to gain a sense of autonomy not only through your actions but also through your emotions and feelings and thoughts because if you are in charge of something then the best thing is that you're in charge of changing it as well.

[00:07:32]You can make it as good as you want it to be.

[00:07:36]Don't be lazy because the more competence you build, the really better you feel about yourself.

[00:07:43]And try to build genuine connections because then you relate to the world around you and actually feel part of it and that gives you a sense of purpose.

[00:07:55]Thanks for watching. See you next time.