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Abstract
In Glasser's Choice Theory®, the individual's total behavior is often represented using the Choice Theory Total Behavior Car as a metaphor for the four dimensions of total behavior. Focusing, a humanistic technique, is a powerful adjunctive tool for helping individuals tune into the rear wheels of his or her total behavior car (feelings and physiology) so he or she can travel more effectively toward his or her quality world destination.
According to Glasser (1998), the brain functions as a control system by continually monitoring our feelings to determine how well we are doing with our life-long desire to get our needs (love and belonging, power, freedom, fun, and survival) met. Experiencing distressful feelings such as impatience, annoyance, anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, depression, etc., is a signal that one or more of our needs is not being met. Before learning Choice Theory, clients may not know what their basic needs are, but they will use their frustration as motivation for getting their needs met and try to satisfy them in more effective ways.
Interestingly, we do not set out after birth to consciously meet our basic needs. Instead, we each begin early in life to collect pictures of persons, activities, and places that are satisfying to us and place them in our personal mental picture albums. Glasser describes this collection of satisfying images as the quality world- a file of wants which is unique to each of us and represents our personal paradise on earth- how we would like our lives if we could have them exactly as we want them to be.
Wubbolding (2011) states that "specificity is the foundation of the quality world. Needs are general; wants are specific and unique to each individual (p. 42)." He later adds that: "the quality world, containing specific wants related to more generic needs. ..constitutes the world we would like to live in, one that requires clarification, self-evaluation, prioritization, and discussion with a trusted friend, colleague, family member, or therapist" (p. 44). The quality world then, represents the destination we have in mind when we get into our total behavior car and set out on the journey of life. It is a very personal and unique journey aimed at satisfying the five basic universal...