Take Charge of your life - Glasser's choice Theory : Explained

Would you like to know what I learned reading Dr.william Glasser's choice theory ?

This book was first published on 20 January 1998, and is the culmination of his theories and practice in psychology.

Choice theory is the foundation and underlying psychology which describes our behavior.

It was first Introduced by Doctor William glassier in 1960

It says that all our behavior is chosen to satisfy one or more of the five basic needs of love, power, freedom, fun, survival.

And the strongest of these needs is love, self-up worth and power because good relationships and positive sense of self is necessary to satisfy all the needs and is essential for happier and meaningful life.

If we cannot meet our needs that is then seen as the source of a lot of human problems and health issues.

why learn choice theory ?

The choice theory teaches us how we can meet our needs more effectively, replace bad behavior and move closer to a life that we wished to live.

It can help people redirect their lives and make more effective choices and give them the psychological strength to handle the stress.

Regardless of what may have happened to us or what we have done and how our needs have been in the past, we could always redirect our lives and make more need-satisfying choices in this day and in the future.

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Alright, so now I am going to explain the choice theory to you –

Choice theory says that everything that happens in the outside world that does not include our feelings, thoughts, and physiology is only to considered as information.

The world around us can only give us information. It cannot control what we intend to do, it only gives us information and we decide what we do with that information.

So what happens with the information we receive?

It goes through three stages :

{refer flowchart above }

Stage 1: stage of sense - if our senses cannot pick up the information we are not going to believe it so there are five arrows - one for every sense, sense of sight smell, feeling hearing, taste, so if our senses cannot pick it up it goes to the next stage.

The Total Knowledge filter (TKF) - is where we decide that whether or not we can understand the information that has come to us.

for example, since I am conveying my message in English you understand me, but If I were to change my language and start writing in Chinese, then we can say that the information you received will stop at this filter.

Since I am talking in English, information received should pass through the filter and goes to the next stage

Value Stage - so what happens here is that we give it a value of what we think of the information either we give it a positive a negative or a neutral value.

If we give a positive value then it is going to be stored in something called as quality world or (QWV)

So what is quality world value you would ask?

That is perfect question because that is the exact thing I will be talking now

The quality world can be best described as an internal photo album and is consisting of photos of your perfect lives, the life that you always wanted to live

What photos get saved in the quality world album?

Well photos that satisfy the five basic needs that I mentioned previously are the ones that will stick

Need for love, power, freedom, fun, and survival.

If the received information matches any of these mentioned needs we will then save that information In the quality world of our perfect photo album.

The thing is that we always compare our perfect world with our real life and if the difference is too much, the tiny life scale you see in the figure will be out of balance.

That leads to an urge, to behave in a certain way, our internal creative system will give us suggestions of what we should do with our situation, so it gets to a toolbox, then we see of what tools we have to deal with the situation, so the tools we have are - thoughts actions, feelings and physiology.

If our actions and thoughts change then, the feelings and physiology must follow accordingly

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-The classic example:
Nearly everybody wants to be in a romantic relationship, and in a moment I will explain why it practically exists in every human's quality world

Well, the answer is simple comrades , because it satisfies all of the needs.
It can satisfy the need for love
It can satisfy the need for self-worth and power because we generally feel better when somebody loves us genuinely

It can satisfy the need for freedom because we were able to choose that partner on our own

It can also satisfy the need for fun because we can extend the relationship bond by doing fun activities

It can satisfy the need for our survival because they are two people working together who can share income and probably have children together.

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Now lets say you are single and you see this entire world of people having partners, you are influenced , you perceive the information of having a partner as positive value, the perception filter clears it and now you have that fact settled in quality world , this would lead to an urge and our internal system triggers an action

what do you think would happen ?

You start to constantly express yourself, going to parties and networking will be your topmost priority and the cycle repeats.

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My conclusions :

So if you want to use choice theory in your own life, you got to watch the world for a choice theory filter because then the theory will come alive as you watch people do the things they want to do and you will understand why they are doing it , in order to satisfy their own basic needs and in time you can start looking at yourself.

When you will do that you will observe choice theory in many obvious situations, I bet :-)

Finally, keep in mind that the essence of the choice theory is to prove how our behavior is chosen in order to satisfy our needs, therefore, it is called as the choice theory.

-Note - There is no such thing as useless behavior.

Every behavior has a positive intent, no matter how bad the consequences of the behavior are, there is always a positive intent

Never forget that you are in full control !!

Thank you for reading, steemians, I hope I was able to explain the choice theory to you, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Images :
image 1 : https://www.canva.com
image 2 : https://www.canva.com
image 3 : I drew it myself in the quest to explain it well , I know I am bad at drawing :-(
image 4 : https://www.biggerplate.com/mapimages/xl/KeGaTubq_Quality-World-mind-map
image 5: i am an artist , hehehehe
image 6 : https://pixabay.com/en/engagement-couple-romance-bike-1718244/
image 7: https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/7/005/07d/0c9/3647c2e