Why Do You Do What You Do – An Ancient Indian Answer

Have you ever thought about it, my friend?

Why do you do what you do?

Why are you doing “this” and not something else?

You could be anywhere right now, maybe somewhere you used to be in general, but you are here. You are reading this post.

If you understand the things I am going to share in the post, you will see a typical pattern of actions and situations. And perhaps, fate and luck will start making sense to you after you finish.

Liked the idea?

Let’s dive in!!!

Before I start, here is the story of one of the wisest men ever born in human history.

Somewhere around 500 BC, A queen gave birth to a child in a place called Lumbini in Ancient India. The priests told the King that the child would either become a great king or become an enlightened man.

Years passed, and situations got changed. The child became the prince: dark color and deep, tempting eyes. The prince married a beautiful princess named Yashodhara. Everything was going well until he saw something his father had kept hidden from him for years. The “truth.”

And he became a monk. He uncovered the secrets of life and beyond death. He saw something where all the searches end, and he made a choice!!!

The choice to go back to the world and tell the path he walked on to find the ultimate truth. Just like all the great and wise people, his word became pearls of wisdom for everyone and helped millions of people to come out of their agony and misery.

He once said something which perhaps, was one of the most important things we learned again and again from great people. Beyond religions, the one common thing every single person can relate to and live with.

The magic secret which was always with us but nobody told us about it.

And the secret was this: “You become what you think about.”

Did You Hear this in your mind:

You Become What You Think About

One of the most exceptional motivational speakers and authors of the twentieth century, Earl Nightengale, once published an audiobook: “The Strangest Secret in the World.”

The audiobook alone changed hundreds of thousands of lives and contributed to the making of hundreds of millionaires.

In the audiobook, he explains how this secret came again and again to us humans. From the east to the west, from the south to the north, all the great people understood this secret and many used it for their own benefit.

The answer to this question, why I do, what I do, somewhere lies here.

Your actions mostly are not the actions but the reaction to the circumstances and situations and your own previous acts. It is like a chain reaction happening in the mind where every action contributes to the formation of the next one.

You woke up at 8 because you slept at some time and something happened “to you” when you were in a deep sleep. That lead to something you did at 11 and then to another, and to another.

The great wise Buddha also said something more important; it’s not just this what you do also plays a vital role in it.

What you did to others first happened in your mind. Maybe within a very short time, within a fraction of a second, maybe without even you realizing it. But everything which manifested first manifested in your mind. And this leads us to what we now understand as “Karma”.

Everything you did to others will turn to you someday. Good or Bad, It will come to you someday. Sooner or later, it will return. It is just a law, just like the law of gravitation. All things attract each other.

Because you never harm or do good for “one thing” or “someone”. Everything in our world is connected to each other. You broke the glass and something else also got affected. You broke the promise, and something else also shifted.

We are so connected that every action affects each and every one of us. To the people who are thousands of miles away. To the birds who can not understand our languages. To the trees who cannot listen or see.

You may ask, well! If this is the case, why we can’t see it?

It’s true. We can’t see it because there are millions of parameters, but if you allow your mind to think openly, you will see that it is certainly true.

If you try to remind your childhood closely, you will see how a sequence of decisions you or someone else took guided you here.

There were subtle, minor things you might have never noticed that were necessary to make the situations as they were and as they are today.

One-by-one, step-by-step. The things the first man (or our ancestor species) did made us better at thinking and learning. The action the next generation took made another generation do things that they might have never tried before. And the generation kept moving. We reached this situation where our minds are opening to new possibilities.

We are now ready and open to understanding the “possibilities” and opportunities. And the growth is now exponential.

The action someone took thousands of years ago, you took years ago, and the situations around you which were the result of someone’s action made it possible for you to reach here.

Right here, reading the words, I have written here.

Guess what! We all are connected to each other, as I said! No action of yours is wasted or flies in the air.

As long as you remember this, you know why taking action and keeping results in mind is really important. This is why we do what we do!!!

(first draft, unedited and with hundreds of grammatical mistakes)