From the course: How to Train Your Brain For Happiness

Your need to feel needed

From the course: How to Train Your Brain For Happiness

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Your need to feel needed

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- Sebastian Junger, in his popular book "Tribe," talks about the fundamental need to be needed. This is exactly what brain science research shows in that when you are in an organization and your ideas are either being compromised or you feel stifled or silenced or the fact you may have this great idea but you're not being recognized, validated, or acknowledged for that innovative idea, this now does something to your brain. If you recall, we talked about how social isolation, social rejection causes real pain in the brain. Whenever an individual in an organization no longer feels that he or she is feeling valued or his or her sense of contribution is not being recognized, this is real in the brain. This causes stress. It causes anxiety. It causes the brain to go into panic. Any organism, no matter if it's an amoeba or a complex human being, will try to do anything to minimize pain. So if an individual is being rejected or feels that he or she is not being valued or recognized for his or her contribution for their ideas or their work, what this now does to the brain, it causes the individual to no longer ask the question, "How should I work "for this company?" The question he or she now will ask is, "Why should I work for this company if I no longer "feel recognized or my sense of contribution "is being denied?" This now has a direct impact on your organization. The more you cultivate this pillar of contribution, this is another strategy investing in your happiness but also investing in your bottom line. The more your employees, no matter where they are in the company, feel that deep, primal sense of being needed, this is contribution with the tribe. It helps your bottom line, it helps your business, and overall it helps the growth, resilience, creativity, and innovation of your mission and vision.

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