In our personal journey we all seek the reason why we act in a certain way, to be more aware of ourselves. We want to know why we’re here, what’s our purpose, we want to find ourselves by understanding why we’re here.

Growing up, we try to find a balance by distributing our time between work, family and our passions, with the goal of building that life style as similar as possible to the one we imagined in our dreams. Do we act for personal interest? Do we behave in a certain way only to please other people? There are several answers to these questions, depending on our will to listen to our desires. This doesn’t mean that in one second we have to be capable of making all the right questions and solve our life’s puzzle, but starting to ask the right ones is important because:

• It’s the perfect tool that leads us towards self awareness and to understand our psychological dynamics, that otherwise would stay in the shadows.
• Thanks to the questions we understand better our subconscious and with time, our mind will be more keen to find new solutions.
• We can start our internal resources.
• It leads us to emotional independence. With other methods we risk to always have the need to chase some help to understand our mechanisms and make the changes we need. Thanks to the right questions we can become the coach of ourselves and be more independent.
• A powerful question has the power to activate the thinking area of our minds and make the solutions come easier to us.

If we concentrate and use the right amount of concentration, we’ll soon figure out the reasons behind the way we act. I’m not talking about looking for material goods, but virtues and values like faith, hope and love. All these are the centre and the starting point of our actions. Here’s 10 reasons that can help us to find the reasons behind them:

1. Need

The need is the fundamental reason: food, water, sleep and a shelter are the four basic one, we can’t live without them. There are luxuries and necessities in life, the things we can’t survive without: these are the most important ones. Our instinct tells us to work hard in order to have at least those four things, today we give them for granted with all the luxuries we’re so lucky to have, but it’s always good to have that in mind.

2. Duty

This category is definitely big, the duty can be understood as the will of doing something useful in order to help who needs us or who’s less lucky than we are, or the wish to do more so others can remember us. It’s also the feeling we have after we did a good job or something good in general. We work to help our families, we’re able to send our kids to a good school, we’re able to provide for our older relatives and so on. We’re proud of what we do because we also aim for something more than just surviving.

3. Vices

This reason is a temporary pleasure, something purely selfish that only slows us down by making us believe that it’s in our best interest. Falling for it is normal, tho, the important thing is to remember that in order to learn from our mistakes for the future.

4. Love

This is the purest of reasons behind our actions: it’s about kindness and the will to make someone else happy. An act of selfless love is the best thing we can do, and even if we don’t see it right away, it will come back to us. The best intentions, the best actions we can do are the ones based on the love we have for others.

5. Passion

Love is important, but also to follow our passion and our dreams. Find the things that make you feel good, that lighten up your soul, that make you smile. Sometimes we don’t follow our passions because we feel guilty, but it’s important to develop out dreams and skills!

6. To-do List

Everyone has a to-do list, we have to cross every single thing and complete it maybe because we’re competitive and we don’t accept to leave something unfinished, or maybe because it’s the only way we’re able to complete a task.

7. Destiny

Every single one of us has inherited some kind of family tradition, something that makes us feel like we’re destined to do something in particular. Our goal is to raise the bar that some relative reached in the past. Maybe we think that a certain job is our destiny because our father and the father of our father did it in the past, but this is a question only ourselves can answer.

8. Attention

Let’s admit it, a little part of every one of us has that desire of being at the center of the attention. Maybe we don’t like it at first, but it makes us feel important, it makes us feel good. Sometimes we do something to have our 15 minutes of celebrity, and that is perfectly normal.

9. For us

Our best actions are the ones we make for others. But ambition and the desire to improve ourselves is as important. When this happens, we improve also our mind and our soul, we’re happier, and when we’re happy we can create a domino effect on others.

10. For you

This list is made with suggestions, the last one I feel like giving you is this: think with your head, do your own things, never let other people tell you what to do or who to be. This is your life and the only person who has power on it is you.

Have you ever thought about why you do something?