Your Needs Matter
Jul 01, 2020As a human, you have basic psychological needs.
And if your needs aren’t met, you won’t be a happy camper ☹️
^ things like behavior change, goal achievement, and overall well-being are more difficult to obtain.
Over the next few days I’m gonna put my psychologist hat on & give you a rundown on SELF DETERMINATION THEORY (SDT)
SDT has been part of psychological research forever (like 1980’s) and explains what our basic human brain 🧠 needs in order to make lifestyle changes, stay *motivated*, and be successful.
These needs are broken down into 3 components:
AUTONOMY, RELATEDNESS, COMPETENCE
Feeling in-charge + effective + connected is essential for producing the “best” kind of motivation (more on this tomorrow)
How well your health and fitness goals also meet these needs will determine your ability to be successful with them and maintain them long-term (Teixeira et al., 2012)
What happens when our needs aren’t met?
Research shows 🤓 that we create substitutes or compensatory behaviors to make up for this.
And the results aren’t pretty.
Unmet needs…
➡️ emotional distress
➡️ excessive eating or uncontrolled eating
(Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991)
Unmet needs…
➡️ rigid behaviors
➡️ shame when ultra-high/inflexible standards can’t be achieved (Verstuyf et al., 2012)
Unmet needs…
➡️ stronger urge to eat and/or binge eating behaviors
➡️ lack of goal progress and mental health concerns (Schueler & Kuster, 2011)
Obviously these research examples are pretty extreme.
But if your ambitions stem from pressure from someone else,
your own feelings guilt,
or a lack of belief in your abilities…
then your basic needs won’t be met.
…and likely, neither will your goals.
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