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Translator: Leonardo Silva
Reviewer: Queenie Lee
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Is it possible to understand everyone
at a deep and meaningful level,
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to get what really matters to people,
no matter how different they are from you?
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That proposition sounds a little absurd.
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After all, human psychology
is really complex.
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Some people are abused as children,
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others are loved and supported.
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The brain of an 18-year-old girl
who sleeps with her cell phone
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is different than an 80-year-old man
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who can't remember
the names of his children.
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There's no one way to understand everyone,
no broad operating principle.
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That's the conventional wisdom,
it makes perfect sense,
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and yet, it's a myth.
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A few years ago, I was watching TV,
scenes from Afghanistan.
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A group of teenage boys was standing
in the back of a dusty pickup,
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waving rifles,
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and one boy wrapped in a white cloth,
with dazzling blue-green eyes,
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was staring directly into the camera.
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He looked intent, menacing,
and that was the point of the piece:
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we should be afraid because young men
were passionate about killing Americans.
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Let me tell you about another boy:
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my nephew, Rory.
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At the time I saw this piece,
Rory was a freshman in college,
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at Harvard.
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But Rory is not full of himself.
In a word, he's sweet.
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He's not a hugger, but he'll always hug me
because he knows that I am.
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He bakes brownies with his young cousins.
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He wants to be a doctor one day.
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I'm proud of Rory,
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and I can't imagine a kid more different
than that one from Afghanistan,
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except, at a fundamental level,
these two boys are exactly the same.
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They've chosen their respective paths,
join the Taliban, go to Harvard,
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for the same internal reasons:
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they both would like respect.
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Everyone knows
that when you go to Harvard,
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people look up to you
for the rest of your life,
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and when you join the Taliban,
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little kids look on in awe
as you drive by in that dusty vehicle.
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They also want community belonging.
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Rory's got close friends,
the men of Harvard,
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but no closer, I'd bet,
than the men of the Taliban.
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And lastly and probably
most important to both,
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they want to make
a difference in their worlds,
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they want to help those they love.
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What's amazing and horrifying
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is that one will learn to be a doctor
and the other will learn to kill.
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It's true that human behavior
is amazingly varied and complex,
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but at the level of motivation,
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at the level of what drives us
to do all those different things,
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we're actually identical.
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There's a formula for understanding
why we do what we do,
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and once you get it, you get it.
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There are 30 basic human motivations.
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Let me give you a quick primer.
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There's the obvious, the physical.
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We want to survive:
we need air, food and water.
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There's a second category,
of relational needs,
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that help us understand how to balance
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our self-interest
and that of the community.
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We all want to receive care,
understanding, love,
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but at the same time,
we want to give our love,
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to help others in our lives.
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Then there's a third category of needs
you'd call aspirational, or spiritual.
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We want to grow, we all crave
adventure and beauty.
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I'm not going to go
through the whole list
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because everything on the list
you're already familiar with.
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But don't then mistake this
for that old high school sociology lesson,
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where the teacher says,
"Human beings have needs;
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if they're not fulfilled,
unhappiness and war."
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That's all true, but I'm not here
to make that macro sociological point.
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I'm here to help you understand
the micro, the human individual,
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in any given moment,
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what drives your mother,
your spouse, your boss.
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Human behavior, no matter
how seemingly bizarre or mundane,
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is designed internally to fulfill one
or some of the common needs.
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If you want to understand
what really matters to a person
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at the level of deep motivation,
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ask: which of the common needs
have they been pursuing?
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Here's a story from my personal life.
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My wife Shelly sometimes
gets upset with me
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for not cleaning the dishes
to her exacting standard.
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I can see her there, as I'm cleaning,
over my left shoulder,
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pretending to read the mail,
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watching me.
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Now, I could easily conclude,
"That's a little weird.
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She might be OCD."
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(Laughter)
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But these brilliant observations
don't get me very far.
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If I want to understand my wife, and I do,
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I ask a basic question:
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what needs are driving her?
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Shelly's a busy woman.
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She teaches high school full-time,
she drives our kids everywhere,
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she calls my mom to say hi
and "I love you."
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Excuse me. I got a little
emotional with that.
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(Laughter)
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She calls my mom to say hi
and "I love you."
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Clean dishes, neatly stacked and put away,
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fulfill in her the common needs
for order and rest.
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Finally some peace of mind.
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And there's one more huge need
motivating her dishwash spine:
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when I leave stuff on the dishes,
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like that big piece of vermicelli
hanging off the back,
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that's so super obvious to her,
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after she's said, "Larry,
do a good job this time;
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this time, please, do a good job,"
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she concludes I don't care about her.
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If you want to understand
everyone, including Shelly,
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the outside world matters to us
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only because we're trying
to fulfill needs internally.
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She doesn't really care
about clean dishes.
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At depth, she, like everyone else,
wants respect, to be loved.
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Human behavior is complex,
but human motivation is actually simple.
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We seek these common needs,
and nothing else.
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Now, I didn't myself discover
that common needs drive human behavior.
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The idea was proposed around 50 years ago
by the psychologist Carl Rogers
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and then further developed
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by the extraordinary peacemaker
Marshall Rosenberg.
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I came across their concepts
around 15 years ago,
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and they made good sense to me.
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So, I began to implement them
in my personal life,
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to decode family and friends.
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And I was understanding people.
I was intrigued, but I was also skeptical.
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I asked Marshall Rosenberg,
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"Why 30 needs, and not 755?"
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And he said, "Oh, it could be 30 or 755.
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The need to survive, for example,
could be further broken down
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into the needs to not walk off a cliff,
or to not be eaten by predators.
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Thirty is just a useful level
of aggregation."
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I thought, "OK, that's a good answer,
but what about this Marshall?
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What are needs,
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from a neurological perspective?
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What's happening in the brain?
How do they actually motivate us?"
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And here, Marshall said,
"Oh, that's simple.
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Needs are life force,
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human life force."
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And I thought, "Whoa.
That's not science at all."
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And so, I spent the next two years
meeting with neuropsychologists
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and speaking with evolutionary biologists
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and reading cognitive journals
with footnotes,
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and I eventually concluded this
needs stuff is grounded in solid science.
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And because research shows
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that if you mention the word
"neuroscience" or "brain" in a big talk,
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it's a thousand times
more likely to go viral,
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(Laughter)
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let me say, this is neuroscience.
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(Laughter)
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Brain science.
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Neuro and brain.
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Neuro-brain.
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(Laughter)
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Now, I'm not a scientist.
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I'm a lawyer, a mediator, and a writer.
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But being a layperson has allowed me
to unravel this science,
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to translate it away from chemicals
like oxytocin and dopamine
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and into what I believe
is a useful narrative.
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And so, here's what I believe is going on
in the human brain, with needs.
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The human unconscious evaluates the world,
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telling us whether
it's dangerous or friendly.
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That's its job.
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Once it reaches its conclusion,
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it's got to motivate the whole system,
including the conscious mind,
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to do something about it.
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How?
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If it concludes
that the world's dangerous,
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we naturally feel fear or anxiety,
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and we try to get less of what caused it.
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If it concludes the world is friendly,
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we naturally feel happy or excited
and we try to get more.
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But, and this is the key,
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how does the unconscious determine
what's dangerous and what's friendly?
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It's not just left
up to each of us individually.
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Rather, the criteria upon which
we evaluate the world
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is born into you and born into me
and born into all of us.
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Those are the human needs.
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Those specific criteria
were honed through evolution,
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because they allow us to survive,
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to relate to other people,
and ultimately, to make more people.
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"Am I being respected?"
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"Am I making a contribution in the world?"
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"Does she think I'm cute?"
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If so,
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pleasure, get more of that!
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If not, pain, change the world.
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It took me several years
to unravel the science
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in a way that made narrative sense to me.
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And yet, in that time,
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I actually stopped caring so much
about what was happening in the brain.
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I was using this and understanding people
in a way that I didn't think was possible.
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I was seeing their hearts, it worked,
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and really, that's what counts.
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I'd like to tie this
together with a story.
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As I said, I'm a mediator.
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When people are at war, they come to me
and I help them work it out.
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Not too long ago,
I was visited by a couple
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that had already been divorced.
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The ex-wife, Sophia,
said a precious object had gone missing.
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What was it?
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Sophia had never met her father,
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and her mother died
when she was a little girl.
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She was raised by her grandmother,
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and in her grandmother's house
hung this large painting,
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painted by Sophia's grandmother,
of Sophia's mother.
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Sophia used to look at this painting
when she was a little girl
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and imagine herself
holding her mom's hand
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and kissing her mom's cheek.
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Sophia's grandmother, the painter,
died a few weeks before the mediation,
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and in her final hours,
she signed the picture.
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Sophia described this with tears
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and finally looked to her
ex-husband and she said,
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"Frank took the picture.
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Frank, when are you going to stop
trying to punish me for the affair?"
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I looked to the guy,
and his face was cold as stone,
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and I thought, "Whoa."
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People come to see me
because I can help solve their problems,
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but I'm kind of a one-trick pony.
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The thing is I have this excellent trick,
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I can help them understand
each other's hidden motivations,
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and I knew something that Sophia didn't.
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Frank wasn't trying to punish her.
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People often think
revenge is a human motive,
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but hurting another person
is not a human need.
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Now, how do I know?
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Well, here's a trick I developed
a few years ago that I find very useful.
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If you ever think that somebody
is motivated by something
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that doesn't personally give you pleasure,
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you actually haven't found
their motivation; go deeper.
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I don't get pleasure
from hurting other people.
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If it's not in me, it's not a common need,
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and if it's not a common need,
it's not a human motivation.
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Go deeper. Revenge is pursued
to fulfill another need.
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But what?
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It varies, but very often,
it's a need for understanding.
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If I hurt you,
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you will understand,
at the level of personal pain,
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at the level of intense
personal suffering,
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what you did to me.
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You'll finally get it.
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This wasn't the case for Frank.
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My theory that he had taken the picture
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in order to be understood
for the pain of the affair was wrong.
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I often guess wrong.
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But as I was guessing and without blame
convinced him to share something else,
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his eyes welled with tears
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and he looked over
at his ex-wife Sophia and he said,
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"Soph,
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she had become my grandmother too!
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She was all that I had!
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You were all that I had."
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Frank was an orphan too, just like Sophia.
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He took the painting to fulfill
a common human need of connection.
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Hurting Sophia was never the point.
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Sophia moved next to Frank on the couch
and she wrapped her arms around him,
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and they sobbed together for ten minutes.
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And I cried too. I had ten minutes.
What was I going to do?
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(Laughter)
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Frank ultimately returned
the painting to Sophia,
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and she dug up a trove of old photos
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of Frank with her grandmother,
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so that he could remember his family.
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Understand what happened here.
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We didn't make the common and easy mistake
thinking that revenge is a motive.
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Instead, we went to the source
of all human motivation,
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to the common needs.
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When Sophia understood that Frank
had simply needed connection,
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human connection, and in particular,
to her grandmother,
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she got it, she could feel it,
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and then the magic, and then solutions.
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Now, many people,
including some in this audience,
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are wary of understanding others,
and especially during conflict.
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The thought goes like this,
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"If I understand the reasons
you did what you did,
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I'm basically saying you were justified."
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Understanding seems like condoning,
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and for this reason, people often say,
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"Don't go inside the mind
of a terrorist, don't get them.
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To get a terrorist
is to legitimate terrorism.
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It's to be an apologist."
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And for this reason,
it was suggested to me
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that I dropped from my talk the piece
about the Taliban teenager,
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because then people might think
I condone terrorism.
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Let me make something perfectly clear.
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Understanding reasons
is different than condoning.
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I've learned through
thousands of mediations
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understanding is a power
to shape the world
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far greater than any sword or gun.
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Understanding is exactly how you create
the world that you want.
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I began this talk asking,
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"Is it possible to understand everyone
at a deep and meaningful level,
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even those that are different from you?"
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And the answer is yes.
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When your teenage daughter
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asks you for that hair straightener,
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and just one week after
you bought her that hair crimper,
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and she's standing
at the top of the stairs
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with this crazy crimped hair,
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screaming, "You just don't understand!",
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this is how you understand:
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What is she needing?
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She wants to be accepted, liked.
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The desire to be accepted, to be liked,
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is in you, is in me,
is in everyone in this audience.
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And so you can understand
exactly what she feels,
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and that alone will transform
your relationship.
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And then come the solutions,
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even if it's only, "I see you,
my beautiful little girl. I get you."
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There's a formula for understanding
why we do what we do,
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and once you get it, you get it.
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Human behavior is complex,
but human motivation is simple.
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We seek the common needs,
and nothing else.
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We seek the common needs,
and nothing else.
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The common needs are human motivation.
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Learn this language of the unconscious,
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this language of the heart,
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and you'll improve
every relationship in your life.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
