The mind has one purpose. That purpose is to make you interact with your environment in a way that fulfills and protects your needs. The human need system is called THE AXIA; it includes six categories of need, in an open energy system.
These human needs are Survival, Achievement, and Experiential—both internal and external. AXIA is a practical human-needs framework you can use to understand motivation, balance energy, and support well-being for yourself and others.
Things we do for the product they yield, the end result, the productivity goals we reach with a given action.
The need for food, water, breathing, temperature control, safety, and procreation.
The things we do for the process of doing them, not for the product those actions yield.
All human needs break down into two categories. Internal needs are for yourself, and External needs are for other people. Since we are interdependent, other people’s needs are part of our own needs.
The success of our lives and the health of our being are determined by how well and how completely we get our needs met. If needs are met with limited energy, then everything hinges on efficiency and balance.
We must distribute our limited energy across our survival, achievement, and experiential categories—while ensuring we also give enough to other people. Above all else, we should strive to waste as little energy as possible and stretch our fuel so the greatest number of needs are satisfied.
The degree to which a need is fulfilled or depleted is called axity, and it’s a crucial driver of how we feel and behave toward ourselves. Axity is what we typically think of as “self-esteem” or “self-worth,” and it’s built when energy flows toward our needs. We have two main types: internal axity (you fulfill your own needs) and external axity (you fulfill the needs of other people).
Having a lot of internal axity might mean you’re neglecting others; having a lot of external axity might mean you’re neglecting yourself. Because unmet needs create pathology and relationship dysfunction, it’s important to stay balanced in how much energy you give internally and externally.
Anytime energy moves from one place to another, some gravity is made. This is as true for the mind as it is for every energy system in the universe. But unlike the gravity that holds your feet to Earth, the mind makes psychological gravity—and it has a strong effect on how we feel and behave.
Gravity in the mind takes two forms, depending on the nature of the work it’s performing. Constructive work that fulfills our needs makes light gravity, and destructive work that harms our needs makes dark gravity.
Light gravity attracts pro-self energy, which bolsters our self-concept, helps us feel more positive about meeting our needs, and drives us to fulfill and protect ourselves. Dark gravity acts in the opposite direction, attracting anti-self energy, which erodes our self-concept, makes us feel more negative about meeting our needs, and drives us to neglect and damage ourselves.
So the next time you wonder why some people make healthy choices, while others are trapped in a cycle of self-destruction, consider the role that energy, work, and physics play. Far from acting on free will alone, the human mind follows the same course of gravitational attraction as the rest of the universe.
If humans behave based on logic, values, and a desire for good things, then why do we sometimes act so destructively? Why do we feel good about ourselves one day, and bad about ourselves the next? Why are we so driven toward self-sacrifice and service to others? To solve these mysteries and more, we must understand that the mind is a machine, operating under the laws of physics.
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What if we could understand the mind with the same clarity and precision we use to study physics? Unlocking the Mind explores how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can be mapped and managed like physical phenomena—offering a path to well-being grounded in science.
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