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You have listened to me for a year now talking about Choice Theory but I know I’ve never really explained what Choice Theory is. Choice Theory is actually an explanation of all human behavior developed by Dr. William Glasser.

There are basically five components of this theory—the basic human needs, the quality world, the perceived world, the comparing place and total behavior. I’ll give a brief overview of each one, starting with the five basic human needs.

The Basic Human Needs
We are born with five basic human needs—survival, love & belonging, power, freedom and fun. We are all born with these needs but we experience them to varying degrees. One person might have a high love & belonging need, while another person is high in freedom. We are born with these needs and are biologically driven to get them met in the best way available to us.

The Quality World
This is a place that exists inside all of us where we store pictures of things that have satisfied one or more of our basic needs in the past or things we think may satisfy them in the future. These things do not have to meet society’s definition of quality. Alcohol is in the quality world of an alcoholic, steeling cars in the quality world of a car thief, and domestic violence is in the quality world of a batterer. The only two requirements for entry into the quality world are that it meets one or more of our needs and it feels good.