Read Choice Theory for Free Online

still unknown. They agree that thousands fewer than the hundred thousand genes are needed to produce a baby with a normal anatomy and physiology. This leaves a huge number of genes whose function is yet to be discovered. I believe that some of these unknown genes provide a basis for our psychology—how we behave and what we choose to do with our lives.
    Therefore, besides survival, which depends a lot on our physiology, I believe we are genetically programmed to try to satisfy four psychological needs: love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. All our behavior is always our best choice, at the time we make the choice, to satisfy one or more of these needs. All living organisms, plant and animal, have survival, including the ability to reproduce, programmed into their genes. Higher-order animals share some of our other needs. For example, dogs can love and can even be jealous, but they do not love with the intensity, complexity, and variety of human beings.
    More than those of any other higher-order animals, our genes motivate us far beyond survival. Our need for love and belonging drives us not only to care for others to the point of caring for others we do not know, but also to seek satisfying relationships with special people, such as mates, family members, and friends all our lives. Other genes drive us to strive for power, freedom, and fun. Some large-brained animals, such as whales, porpoises, and primates, seem to have similar needs, but not enough is known to compare their needs with ours. My guess is that there are many similarities. Even though we do not know what these needs are and may never know them to the extent I explain in this chapter, we start to struggle to satisfy them as soon as we draw our first breath. We continue this struggle all our lives.
    Our ability to start to satisfy our needs before we know what we are doing or why we are doing it is one of nature’s strokes of genius. Evolution has provided humans and higher-order animals with genes that grant us the ability
to feel.
On the basis of this ability, the first thing we know and more than anything we will ever know is
how we feel.
Because we have the most diverse and complex needs of all living creatures, we have the widest range of feelings. But no matter how complex our feelings are, whether we feel good or bad, we also remember what we were doing when we felt very good or very bad. On the basis of these memories, we struggle to feel as good as we can and, as much as we are able, try to avoid feeling bad. Therefore, the tangible motivation for all our behaviors is to feel as good as possible as often as possible.
    But as we grow from infancy to childhood and then to adulthood, we discover that feeling good becomes more and more difficult because our relationships with people grow much more complex. To the toddler on the airplane, things were simple: If it hurts, scream and try to get mother to solve the problem. To the twelve-year-old, things were more complicated: Bear the pain and don’t try to get mother to do what she can’t do; if I scream, I may endanger my relationship with her. So as much as we want to feel good and avoid pain, our relationships with the people we learn we need have a significant effect on what we choose to do.
    To achieve a good relationship, most of us are willing to suffer pain, even a lot of pain, because the relationship is more important to us than the suffering. To gain, keep, and improve relationships, we are willing to engage in long-term unpleasant activities because we believe that in the end, we will feel better and get closer to the people we need. Even without the promise of a better relationship, most of us are willing to delay pleasure or suffer pain in the hope that we will feel better or suffer less later.
    But even when we are unhappy, our genes do not limit our ability to feel good to a pleasurable relationship. To expand on what I began at the end of the last chapter, there are things we can do