Dr John Demartini helps you understand what your internal dialogue reveals about you. Find out exactly what imperative language is, and the valuable feedback your language gives you to live an authentic life.

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[Inaudible].

Hi, I'm Dr. John Demartini and I'm a human behavioral specialist.

And I've been in the study of human behavior and personal development for the

last 47 years.

I have the blessing to be traveling the world and teaching and educating people

in many, many countries around the world.

And often I hear people ask me about what they call

imperatives and you probably heard in your head whispering in your head,

an internal dialogue, something to the effect of,

'I should have done this.' 'I ought to be doing this.' 'I'm supposed to do

that.' 'Darn.

I got to do this.' 'I have to do this.' 'I must do this.' 'I really need to do

this.' These are called imperatives.

And imperatives are internal dialogues we have with ourself,

not from ourself,

but from the authorities we've given power to talking to us inside our head.

And I'd like to elaborate on that and show you how they come about and what they

mean and what they are and how to handle them basically.

So just get your piece of paper out, maybe get ready to write.

Cause I think that this will be quite informative here.

So I want you to imagine that you,

live in your life with a set of priorities, a set of values in your life.

Things that are higher in your value to lower in your value. And we could term,

or higher in priority and lower in priority,

where things are most important to less important.

So there's a hierarchy of values,

which I'll call the value structure that you live with. And it's unique.

It's fingerprint specific. Nobody has the same set of values, et cetera.

But around you in life,

you're going to have people with a different set of values,

and some are gonna be supportive and some are going to be challenging.

Some are going to be similar in their values and some will be quite different.

The ones that are similar, you'll probably call a friend.

The people that are quite different,

you might call an enemy or maybe easy people to get along with

and people that are more difficult to get along with.

Cause you don't always see eye to eye.

When we see similarities and we see things that are common,

it's easy to get along with them, when you see differences,

it's maybe more challenging.

So these are supportive and these are challenging people.

The people that we tend to support our values,

that make us feel like we're getting our highest values met,

we tend to put on pedestals.

And the people that challenge us, we tend to put in pits.

We look up to them or down on those people.

And I think you can look in your life and easily see this. In other words,

we open up to these individuals and become gullible and vulnerable to them.

And we become in a sense,

closed down on these individuals and become skeptical and cynical to them.

So we open up and we closed down.

The moment we open up and put people on a pedestal and infatuated with somebody

or admire somebody,

we tend to minimize ourselves relative to them.

And we can sometimes even go into a shame mode and actually go into

kind of a juvenile dependency on them. Because if we put somebody on a pedestal,

we don't want to lose them.

We're too humble to admit what we see in them is inside us.

And we put them on a pedestal and minimize us.

You could be walking in a mall and you could see somebody that you think is more

intelligent or more successful or more wealthy,

or has a better stable relationship in your mind.

Or somebody that's got more social savvy or has more people on Facebook,

or maybe they're more fit, or maybe they're more inspired than you are.

The moment you put them on a pedestal and minimize you and compare yourself to

them,

what you'll do is you'll inject their values into your life.

You'll inject their values into your life. Now Freud, in his writings,

in the tripartite aspect of the psyche, he said,

when you're living by your highest value,

you wake up your reasoning center and this, he called the ego.

And when you're attempting to live by lower values,

which you require external motivation, you wake up what is called the id.

But the second you actually meet somebody,

you put on a pedestal and you inject the values into your life,

you create what is called a super ego.

A super ego is the moralizing critical factor that you hear inside your head,

which are called imperatives. So let me just elaborate on that.

Imperatives are should, ought to, supposed to, got to, have to,

must and mainly need to. Those are the basic imperatives.

Imperative is basically something that's like a moral construct that you're to

follow,

a duty that you're supposed to live by according to some authority that you've

injected the values of. Now,

if you are infatuated with somebody and you envy somebody and trying to imitate

them and try to live in their values and try to sacrifice what's important to

you in doing it and inject their values,

you're automatically going to hear yourself because you can't sustain that,

with these languages. Let me give you an example.

You probably have had a moment when you've been highly infatuated with somebody,

and you noticed during the first days or weeks,

or maybe months of being with them,

you did stuff that wasn't highest on your value, that wasn't normal for you.

You started doing things that are strange,

that are not normal for you in order to fit in for fear of loss of them.

Cause when you infatuate with somebody,

you have the fear of loss of them and you have the fear of not being appreciated

by them. So you go and sacrifice a lot of what you normally do to be with them.

And by the way, you don't do that without remembering every sacrifice.

And eventually that builds up a resentment in order to break the infatuation,

to get your life back. But in the meantime,

while you're infatuated and you're thinking 'I should be living like this,

I ought to be doing this', and you inject their values in your life,

you'll hear inside your head, this statement.

So whenever you hear yourself going, 'I really should be doing this,

I ought to be doing it', that's not you talking.

That's the authority that you've infatuated talking

internal conflict between what you really want,

your own highest value and what you think you should be doing.

And people live with this and they're fearing not fitting in,

and they fear of breaking this need for conformity,

and they're afraid to stand out as an individual living according to their own

values. And they hear this internal dialogue.

So whenever you hear the internal dialogue, 'should',

'got to', 'have to', and must, and need, that's not you speaking,

that's the authority that you've subordinated to,

that you've given power to talking through you.

And you're having an internal conflict between what you really want to do and

what you think you should be doing. Now, this can also go the other way.

When somebody really challenges you, you tend to put them in the pit,

you become in a sense resentful to them and you can despise them. When you do,

you can actually exaggerate yourself instead of minimize.

And you can actually go into a pride mode and

go into a precocious, independent state. Now,

what happens is instead of you injecting the values from an authority,

you now project your values onto the people that are

challenging you. So when you first get in a relationship,

you're infatuated with them,

you'll sacrifice what's important to you to be with them.

And you'll hear yourself trying to live by their values.

And you'll hear this internal dialogue. 'I should. I should, I suppose to,

I got to, have to', et cetera, for fear of loss of the person.

But the second you resent them and you fear being around them,

you become precociously independent and exaggerate and proud,

and you start talking down to them, cause you look down on them.

And when you do, you say, 'YOU should'. Here is I,

and here is you. 'You should, ought to, supposed to,

you got to, have to,

must.' You need to do what I tell you to do because now I'm projecting my values

onto you. So anytime you hear yourself saying, 'I should',

that means that you're playing underdog and you're minimizing yourself to some

outer authority. Anytime you said, 'you should',

that means you're exaggerating yourself and you're projecting them as the

authority. One you cause what is called a super ordination.

And when you call the subordination.

And whenever you're subordinating to somebody and injecting their values,

you're going to hear the internal dialogue whispering in your head that,

'I should have done this', and you'll think you've made a mistake. In fact,

according to your own values, you don't ever make mistakes.

You make assessments and you act according those assessments.

So you don't judge yourself according to your own values,

you only judge your own actions when you compare your actions in your own values

to somebody else's that you've put on a pedestal, injected, and then you hear,

'I should have done this', 'I keep screwing up.' 'I

why can't I stay focused.' The reality is that you are focused on this highest

value in your own life. Cause every decision you make is based on it.

But the second you give authority to somebody, you confuse yourself,

cloud the clarity of what's highest on your own value,

and then you hear the imperatives in your head.

Or whenever you've got somebody challenging you and

too proud to admit what you see in them is inside you,

you tend to think you're more,

more important than them and you project your values onto them,

you try to get them to live in your values.

They're not able to because they live by their own values.

And then you think 'you should, you ought to supposed to', to them.

So anytime you hear imperative language, you know that you're judging.

If you're projecting onto somebody else and 'you should do it',

that means you're self righteous and you're in proud and you're projecting onto

them because somebody's challenging you. And you're putting them down.

Whenever you hear yourself say, 'I should do that',

that means you're minimizing yourself,

exaggerating them and you're injecting their values into you.

Both of those are futile because you can't live in their values longterm and you

can't get other people live in your values longterm.

Only when they're infatuated with you they can do it for a few weeks.

When you're infatuated with them, you can do it for a few weeks,

but eventually you want your life back and you want to get back to what's really

valuable to you.

So imperatives are feedback mechanisms to let you know that you're judging,

you've got a subjective bias perspective, here

you're seeing you're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides.

Here you have a conscious of the negatives and unconscious of the

positives.

And as long as you're judging and you're not in the center where the positives,

conscious of the positives and the negatives equally,

when you finally have an objective state where you're not proud or shamed,

you're not infatuated or resentful,

and you have a perfect reflection between you and them,

an equity position between you and them and an equanimity position between your

own pride and shame and you're perfectly balanced.

When you do the imperative language goes away and the indicative language comes

up. 'I am', 'I do',

'I have.' And you're living by what you choose and what you would love to do in

life.

But as long as you're going through and you're living in some sort of judgment,

you've got a skewed, subjective bias perspective,

putting people on pedestals or pits and not putting them in your heart and not

having reflect awareness,

the imperatives are going to let you know that you're skewed in your perspective

and they're going to be a reminder to let you know,

it's time to find the downside of this person that you've been unconscious of or

the upside of this person, level them back out.

And the moment they're perfectly leveled,

and I've been doing this now for thousands of cases over many years now,

the moment those are perfectly leveled and you're not above them or below

somebody and they're equal, the two imperative sides disappear.

And all of a sudden,

you're just living with your own clarity of your own highest value,

your own mission in life.

And you're not trying to change others to live in your values or change you to

live in somebody else's values. It's futile. Both of those are futile.

You can't live in other people's values and you can't get other people live in

your values. Anybody who's been married has figured that out sooner or later.

You got to love people who they are. And one of my programs,

I teach people how to take what they're dedicated to and find out how it serves

you and what you're dedicated to and how it serves them,

so you're not trying to change people and you start to love people who they are.

When you do the imperatives are gone. You have a clear mindedness.

You live by an indicative focus and you do what you love.

So I just wanted to share that because in case you've been hearing those in your

head or projecting those onto other people that's what they come from

and they're feedbacks to let you know how to live an authentic life.

Thank you for joining me for this presentation today.

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