Imagine a plant. More specifically, a tulip.
Imagine planting a tulip bulb in the ground and covering it with loose, dark soil. Imagine its stages of life as the roots spread throughout the ground, the stem grows, and the flower blooms.
It’s beautiful and natural. You didn’t tell the tulip to grow; it just did.
Photo courtesy of Keroyama
But imagine if you planted that bulb in the desert. Covered it in hot, dry sand and yelled at it when it wouldn’t bloom.
A tulip has it within itself to become a tulip, it just needs the right soil conditions.
Kelly Waters-Radcliffe is a psychologist based out of Calgary, A.B. He has worked in a variety of fields over the past 20 years but has found a commonality among the people he has worked with: “People’s responses always make sense.”
With help from co-workers and readings, Waters-Radcliffe developed the idea to look at life through the metaphor of a plant. A plant grows when it has the right nutritious soil, and it’s the same for people.
We have nutritious soil when our needs are met. Waters-Radcliffe puts our needs into three categories — the “ABC’s,” as he calls it.
This consists of autonomy, belonging, and competency.
“When those needs are there, we do well. When they’re not, you see people disconnect. They disconnect from the environments that are least nutritious, and they try to plug into something else,” says Waters-Radcliffe. “Is it always helpful? No. But we’re always trying to move in that direction. We’re always trying to increase the nutrition of our living.”
Autonomy
The first need of autonomy is the most essential, says Waters-Radcliffe.
Autonomy is to have one’s own reasons for doing something and to have a sense of investment.
“It’s only this: having your reasons for participating,” he says. “So going to school, for instance, you’re totally in a system. Teachers give you a syllabus, there’s deadlines, there’s obligations, there’s fees, there’s rules, there’s consequences. There’s bureaucracy. But when you want something from that, you walk those hallways in a different way. When you have your reasons for attending school, there is autonomy.”
This can be said for all areas of life. There is room for autonomy in the things we do, and we need it to continue feeling fulfilled and motivated
“If you just create better conditions around autonomy, then people lean into their lives… Because when we have it, we do better. And when we do better, we’re more engaged. When we’re engaged, we add to the soil nutrition.”
Belonging
The next need is belonging. Although it’s not as important as autonomy, Waters-Radcliffe says it is still a necessary part for fulfilling our needs.
“Look at what people are willing to do to find a sense of affiliation or sense of company,” he says. “We’re so creative in finding ways to connect.”
However, belonging isn’t just about being accepted in a group. It is about feeling like you fit and feeling like you are a part of something larger.
“It’s good to find a parking spot,” says Waters-Radcliffe. “There’s a place for you. That’s sort of belonging, but it’s not totally what I’m talking about… It’s that your presence is significant, that you matter, and you make a difference there.”
He adds that there are many ways to find belonging in life, whether it’s online, in nature, through art, or in a spiritual community. You can find belonging anywhere, but you need to find a belonging that gives you purpose.
Competency
The last need is competency.
This is to feel confident in one’s skills in different areas of life and have a sense of effect or influence. Competency is to have personal power.
“It feels good to be good at stuff. It feels good to intend to do something and then to do that thing… but it isn’t as meaningful as it gets,” says Waters-Radcliffe.
It’s more than that, he shares, it’s to have a desired effect.
Think of a child in a highchair. As a child they don’t have control, they don’t have choices, and they don’t have influence; and in that highchair, they are also restrained. But when their food is placed in front of them, they have control of one thing.
They can eat it. They can play with it. They can throw it on the ground.
“That powerless being controls a meatball, and a father it turns out,” laughs Waters-Radcliffe recollecting the days when his daughter was an infant. “After not being able to control anything, suddenly they can control two things, and not just control them, but have a desired effect on them.”
Desired effect is good. A child in a highchair cannot control much but they can control their food, and they can have a desired effect with that control.
“We want to keep learning, we want to add to ourselves,” says Waters-Radcliffe. “It feels good to emerge as someone who can be a master.”
Photo credit: Sixteen Miles Out
Growth
When all three of these needs are met, we feel motivated in our lives. With nutritious soil filled by autonomy, belonging, and competency, we can grow. When we stop growing, we need to adjust.
“If the problem is that we’re having less and less nutrition, the remedy is to expand the territory of living again,” says Waters-Radcliffe. “To start creating new opportunities for nutritious experience.”
We are not depressed because we are depressed. We are not anxious because we are anxious. Anxiety and depression are responses to our needs not being met. They are alarm systems, and when those alarms go off, we need to respond.
Determine where you find autonomy, belonging, and competency in your life, and create more.
“If you plant a tulip bulb in the ground, and the soil conditions are right, you don’t have to tell the tulip how to grow… You don’t have to motivate it, you don’t have to threaten it… It has it within itself to become a tulip.”
Waters-Radcliffe also credits many others for the ideas and theories that have helped him form his own ideas on the ABC’s of needs. He attributes Nick Todd and Alan Wade of Response Based Practice, Martin Broken Leg and Larry Brendtro of Circle of Courage, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci of Self-Determination Theory, and Marshall Rosenberg of Nonviolent Communication.