How We Destroy Our Self Esteem | Tyrannical Inner Self-Talk

The concept of having to do things is pretty toxic and it actually ruins your life. So pretty important then that we would talk about why is it important? Why is it so destructive? Why is it something that we need to remove from our vocabulary or our way of thinking about things? Well, first of all, the concept of have to is the underlying cause of procrastination. It's this feeling of being forced to do things, like there is no choice. And when you remove choice from the situation, really now you have a kind of a slave master dynamic. You're a slave to the things in your life that you believe you have to do. So when you when the penny finally drops on this and you realize actually there's nothing that I have to do, it's actually not true. You experience emotional freedom. And the thing is, this is one of the problems we have to. It is not true. It doesn't hold up to any inquiry. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all. When you start to think about it and deeply question the things that you believe you have to do, you realize, no, there's always a choice involved. So it's not true. And you can discover that yourself in inquiry by questioning the things you believe you have to do. It's not true. But the thing about it is it destroys your self-esteem. It absolutely destroys your self-esteem. How does it do that? Well, if you're believing that there are certain things you have to do, feeling compelled, feeling obligated to do these things, it removes choice. And by removing choice, it takes away any credit that you give yourself for making healthy choices, positive choices, good choices for yourself, making right choices. So if you go around in your life thinking I have to do this, I have to do that, you're removing the reality that you've made good choices. To do anything requires a choice to do it. So have to, have to, have to basically says you haven't made any choices today. You had to do this. You had to do that. Where's the credit for yourself? Okay. So we can see that if we keep using this language again and again over a period of time, we will inevitably notice that our self-esteem is going down. We don't feel good about ourselves. We actually feel disconnected and disembodied from ourselves. So one of the best things we can start to question and do inquiry on is any have to beliefs. I have to work. I have to study. I have to get up early. I have to exercise. That is really one of the things in which we can sit with and start to question and have that as like a daily practice if it's something that's prominent in your psychology. Okay. And it will be for a while until it's challenged because one of the big problems with it is we hear it often. We hear it all the time. It's just things we say so casually now. You'll hear it from teachers. You'll hear it from parents. You'll hear it from your siblings, your partner. You can say it to yourself all the time. And the more you repeat this story, this narrative of have to, it gets reinforced and eventually we start to really believe it. Believing it to the point where we never even questioned it anymore. But emotional freedom, which is what we're interested here, which is what I'm interested in, what I'm interested in showing people how to achieve, it's going to involve just questioning everything. And questioning the belief in have to is an essential part of that. So if you're wondering what should I be working on right now? Well, one thing, if there's any of those have to concepts in your mind, in your psyche, that's a great place to begin. Start questioning that. Sit down, do some questions on it, challenge is this true or not. There's loads of tools you can use for that. There's CBT, there's RAPT, there's Byron Cady's process of inquiry. There's so many of them. There's philosophical inquiry you can do. But any of those will do. But as long as you start to question that belief and watch what happens to your motivation when you do, I guarantee you your motivation will go up. The big fear is when we stop telling ourselves that we have to do things but we won't do them. But the absolute opposite is the case. As soon as you start to realize I'm free here, and I'm going to get credit for all the positive choices I'm making, our motivation just goes way up and we start to engage way more, not way less with things. So give that a go, put that into your daily practice for a period of time. If it's something that's in your life, if you're living by have to's all the time, start to do some work on that. I promise you, you won't regret it. Thanks for watching and I'll see you again soon.