Why Do You Do What You Do?

Do others really ask you how you are doing? Not in a curious way or in an attempt to measure up with you. But in a meaningful way, with a profound interest and a certain desire to help out. Well, if not, then let me ask you the question. How is life for you so far?

I have a purpose for pointing out these questions because I know I am writing crystal clear things that, some of you, are thinking secretly. I am pointing out these questions because we were taught to have the correct answer to the questions we were asked at school. But life taught us to ask the right questions and answers will eventually emerge. Pertinent questions, for what they are, highlight things we do not see. They have a purpose. That’s what determines, for example, why some businesses outperform their markets while others fail.

So far, many of you have been regurgitating things that everybody is doing, and unknowingly you evaluate yourselves through comments that come as feedbacks on social networks or in-person remarks, and comparisons that help you position yourselves regarding your peers. Questions such as, ‘’what will my friends think of me if I do not purchase the latest iPhone?’’ or, ‘’Should I marry him even if my parents don’t like him?’’ picture how much control external factors have on your own life and decision-making. Yet, you find it hard to answer this simple question, why do you do what you do?

Look around you, and scan your environment. Never before people have been so shallow, perfecting their appearance to look rich instead of being rich. Never before we have seen a generation of young people procrastinating while consuming hours of success stories rather than creating their own. Never before it has been so easy to find excuses for whatever we fail at instead of assuming our faults and make amends. 

In this era, we are given so many choices that we hardly make good ones. Think about video suggestions on YouTube about any topic, search results for a particular search query, device options from different IT companies. It is getting harder for conscious people to make rational decisions, and quite impossible for less caring ones to make any good one. 

If you can easily picture what happens to an uneducated dog enclosed in a very large yard, then you can understand that we have the illusion of control but not the control itself. Because by reducing the dog’s private space, it can still go wild but with less possibilities. In other terms, blow your bubble up and start asking questions that neither involves others’ comments nor the desire to compare yourself to them. Remove yourself from this social trap that successful people have escaped from to get where they are. Your life, your goals, your path, that’s all that matters!

Knowing why you do what you do is rewarding because it gives you a purpose, a picture that you draw yourself but not reproduced from others’.  But this feeling is the result of pertinent questions you ask, ones that may hurt others or exclude them but reward you.

At the end of the day, a good answer to a purposeless question leads nowhere, but a good question opens doors and countless possibilities.

Why don’t you start doing what you think you can’t?