Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence. Inna Zakharova
“You do everything right, go ahead, do it again.” If it comes to security, then joy will be in the form of calm, lightness, relaxation. When you are in your fortress, there are people around who will support you, you know and possess information, there is enough money in your account – you are calm.
Security + value = calmness
2. Pleasure
When we meet with values relating to the need for love (intimacy, communication, compliments, attractive appearance), we will also feel joy, but in this case it will be in the form of pleasure, enjoyment. When you look at a picture that you like, you feel pleasure, when you communicate with a person who you like, you feel enjoyment.
Acceptance, attention + value = pleasure
3. Satisfaction
When meeting with values that relate to the need for respect (strength, justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility), we feel joy in the form of satisfaction. When you see your cool results that required commitment, you feel deep satisfaction from the work done.
Respect +value = satisfaction
Let’s look at the table and find out what a person with the leading need for security wants to be eager for and what he wants to get rid of.
Security
According to the list in the table, you can notice a values conflict, for example, stability and diversity, or care and freedom. Any diversity implies changes, except in situations when you, having diversity, choose the same. Care, however, implies a connection, and therefore, dependence on another person, and in this case, there can be no talk of complete freedom. There are special relationships with value rules. They are very necessary in order to understand how others should and will act, but I don’t want to act according to the rules myself, as this means a lack of choice and diversity, which are also values. When there are no rules, it’s also bad – chaos (anti-value) arises, you don’t know from whom and what to expect. It turns out that such people need rules and clear instructions, but they themselves violate them.
It turns out that a person with a leading need for security is often very controversial and indecisive, constantly doubting.
The list of values of a person with a leading need for love, acceptance, attention is given in the table below. There are practically no contradictions inside this table. With the exception of sincerity and image, often the image involves a certain embellished look. It turns out that a person with a leading need for love highly values sincerity, but does not want to show himself real.
Love
The third basic psychological need is respect. The values of a person with a leading need for respect are practically the opposite of the values of the need for love.
Respect
There are also practically no conflicts in this list, with the exception of a couple of justice and injustice. As justice is always subjective and is determined basically by systemic rules, it happens that, in an effort to restore justice, people with a leading need for respect are often not fair according to other people.
Let’s remember that all three needs are important for each of us, and look at all three tables with values. You may notice multiple conflicts. For example, autonomy satisfies the need for respect, but denies communication, which is very valuable for satisfying the need for love. And the availability of options, which is so important for satisfying the need for security, means evasion and unwillingness to make decisions that do not satisfy the need for respect. Only a good understanding of yourself, clear internal priorities and conscious goals allow you to resolve these internal conflicts and find the necessary balance among your needs. There are possible value conflicts in the table below. Columns indicate needs, and rows indicate conflicts.
It turns out that we are all constantly in a state of internal conflict. To resolve this conflict, we need emotional competence. Only emotions can show us the truth about ourselves if we learn to hear and understand them.
How to Define your Values?
Anything can be valuable to you if you have an emotional response to this (phenomenon, object, creature). If you have “skipped a beat” inside, then you have some relation to this phenomenon, action or event. You somehow distinguished it from others. So a connection has developed between you and something, “this” concerns you more than anything else.
For example, you come to some event and the first thing that impresses the most you is the beauty around: “God, how beautiful it is here”. We conclude that you are touched by the appearance of things, style, you pay attention to beauty, which means that it is in your system of values. And most likely, if you ask yourself the question “What do I feel?”, the answer will be “I feel pleasure, I am so pleased, comfortable, I feel good here.” Accordingly – what is your need being satisfied now? For love, because everything is so beautiful.
And if at the same event you say: “God, how comfortable it is, how fresh, what are comfortable sofas” – this is more about comfort, about security. However there may be variations. If you are sitting on a comfortable sofa and cannot relax, then most likely there are some other factors, values and anti-values that affect your condition. But if a comfortable sofa is enough for you to relax and do what you want, most likely this indicates that you have a body psycho type and it connects to the need for respect.
Ways of defining values:
1. In order to understand your values and anti-values, you just need to observe yourself in everyday life, note what you are emotionally reacting to, what response you have to different situations.
What am I paying attention to?
What do I like?
What is unpleasant for me?
What don’t I want?
If something feels unpleasant, you don’t want it that means you have met with an anti-value, and something opposite to it will be a value.
The criteria that we rely on when choosing purchases also tell us a lot about our values. A person with a leading need for security will choose a mobile phone out of the criteria: the model should be modern, but not too modern; it must be expensive, but at a discount; it must have a certain status, but not stand out much (so as nobody will ask questions for what money it was bought, what taxes you pay, etc.). At the same time, it is important to be at a higher level when you put the phone on the table and feel support among people from whom you want to receive support. Pay attention to the conflicting values. Many functions, features, bells and whistles, time saving, additional features, bonuses – it’s all about security.
The phone that a person with a leading need for love chooses should be, first of all, special, nice, pleasant to touch, he must express his owner, be like him. “God, he’s lilac! I like it.” Model, cost, modern functions, status are nothing in comparison to the pleasure of the aesthetic part of the subject. The prestigious, expensive model that is bought here and now is about a person with a leading need for respect.