Drive to Transcend
This drive emerges once the lower, or fear-motivated, drives have sufficiently receded from awareness and some sense of satisfaction
has been achieved. This allows the search for a higher purpose in life to begin. This is based on a need to make a difference that goes well beyond simple personal achievement and is not directly intended to elevate the individual to a higher status.
The Drive to Achieve (Social instinct)
This drive strongly motivates individuals to seek an avenue of excellence, wherein they can contribute to the larger community in a
way that is noticed, appreciated and gives them status. Internally, this helps to develop a sense of personal value and worth. This will be relatively absent if this drive is ignored or only partly met.
The Drive to Affiliate (Relationship instinct)
This drive shapes individual behaviour to conform with the norms and standards of a primary family or social group, to ensure acceptance and inclusion as a member. Failure to address this leads to exclusion, and the experience of an outcast and/or a life in exile.
The Drive to Survive (Self-preservation instinct)
This drive addresses basic survival needs. It relates to the need for essential food, clean water, and shelter and expands into the need to be healthy in mind and body, the need for financial health, and the need to feel safe and secure in one’s environment.
The first three drives relating to survive, affiliate and achieve are essentially focused on more fundamental needs and fears that require attention to some extent before attending to the drive to transcend which is a focus on the ‘greater good’ beyond the self. An over-focusing on one of these drives can result in fixated behaviour patterns anchored in fundamental fears.