“I need to work on my project tonight” translated to “I need to work on my project tonight because then I will look good to my colleagues and friends” “I need to make more money” translated to “I need to make more money because what will people think of me if I’m poor?” “I need to call my mom this week” translated to “I need to call my mom this week because if I don’t she will think that I don’t care about her” translates to “I need to call my mom this week because I want to feel/look like a good son”. To spare a long read, here is where it all led:

I thought that I need to do something fun so that I could tell people what I did with my time in Mexico! How ridiculous is that! So then I followed this thought process and thought of every other time I have said that I need to do something. When I explored my thought process to try to understand why I was saying that “I needed to” do something fun, I discovered that it was due to what other people expected of me. To me, this uncovered a huge problem to my general mentality. To the untrained eye, this seems very trivial.

For example, during a vacation to Mexico, I noticed myself saying that “I needed to do something fun while I was here”. For the last few months I have been trying to be aware of how and when I used each word. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that I have been using the words “need to” even in situations where I should be “wanting” to do something.

However, most of us are so stuck in the “need to” world that we choose what we major in University is based on factors such as “I need to make money”, “I need to be able to find a good job after graduation”, “I need to be useful”. The problem is that this persists until the graduation of High School, where we are given the choice of studies for University. No one asks children “what do you WANT to do?” And it is fair, children generally do not know what they want at a very early age. From the time we started school, we have been operating on “need to” basis. We have been conditioned throughout the years to act based on needs, more commonly, someone else’s needs.

I want to finish my homework