Why You Don’t Know Why You Do Anything

Dear friends,

What is actually the reason behind why you make your decisions?

The truth is, you probably don’t know.

Sure, maybe you have a vague idea of why you did something, or maybe you can even give a detailed explanation of it, but do you really understand?

Like really?

Society forces us to put words to something we don’t fully comprehend.

We rationalize something that is irrational so that we can uphold our self worth and our image of the world.

Most of all, we have developed this rational mechanism to hold up the illusory image to others that we know what we are doing so that we can elevate our status.

I bet when you hear me say that your immediate reaction is to disagree. You get defensive because you cannot wrap your head around there being a possibility of a reality where you don’t understand the entity that you are most intimate with— yourself.

You argue that you know why you do things; and if you don’t, I am sure you are familiar with the:

“I understand why I do what I do— it is because of x so I can get z.”

Really?

I know you believe yourself, but you shouldn’t.

Last week I took both the macroeconomics and the microeconomics AP tests and, when I finished them early, I stared up at the ceiling thinking about how I was taking a test on a science that is supposed to provide answers for why humans act in the way that they do based entirely on the disproven concept of human rationality.

WTF.

Why was I taking the test then?

Some people don’t bother to ask these questions, some people find it boring, irrelevant. Some people find no appeal in the reasons behind the thing, and they just care about the thing. That is entirely okay. In fact, sometimes I wish that my brain wasn’t all consumed in thinking about the reasons behind certain behaviors or facts of life. Sometimes, I just want to be present in certain experiences without thinking about why.

This leads me to thinking about why I am always thinking why.

Why am I so insatiably curious?

Socrates told us that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

He believed that, while thinking about why life is the way it is takes you out of living it in that moment, living a life that you have not thought about the reasons behind is just as futile a pursuit.

According to this logic, living a fulfilling life does require you to examine it a little bit. In order to live a life of meaning you must first figure out why it is meaningful.

On a day to day basis, the examination of your thoughts is limited. As humans we have evolved to become more efficient. Our brains and our bodies carry out implicit tasks on a moment to moment basis, without us even noticing. Our heart beats, our neurons fire, our digestive systems are at work. The thing that we think of as “the individual” or “the conscious mind” has no say in any of those things. If it did, we would be completely overwhelmed.

It is unrealistic to think that you can be completely 100% present or live a totally examined life, no matter what that online spirituality guru lead you to think.

I gave you those examples of implicit behavior above so you would be more inclined to hear my next argument, or at least, you won’t feel as overwhelmed when I tell you what I believe the right amount of examination is.

To get back to how I started, the balanced quantity of examination is when you examine the things that you can control— your decisions, your explicit behavior.

This is no easy task, and, to come back to Socrates, the better you think you know yourself and the more you expect one answer, the more difficult this task will be for you.

“The Only True Wisdom Is in Knowing You Know Nothing”

Now I am no expert on asking myself the right questions or examining my behavior. I plan on becoming one, that’s for sure, but for now all I have is a shit ton of experience doing it.

What I have found in my own personal examination is that my decisions are almost never simple enough to explain in words, especially the big ones.

When I have to decide between things, I immediately feel a certain way.

I’ll give you an example. To keep it simple, let me provide my decision between Harvard and Northeastern. (I was waitlisted at Harvard and still haven’t heard back so this is a hypothetical constantly playing in my head).

Immediately when I hear the names of the universities and I am focused on my body, I feel a sensation in my gut associated with each of them. The feeling for Northeastern is light, hopeful, and feels like freedom. The feeling I get for Harvard feels a little tighter, almost contracting everything.

These are often the feelings I get when deciding between two things. A more open, expansive response and a tighter, contractionary response.

What I have come to realize is that, I make my best decisions when I follow that expansionary feeling.

I have also realized that I am often unhappiest in the situations that result from me following a rational decision making process and going against that gut feeling.

I get that all of this could be made up. I know that this sounds somewhat crazy, and, trust me, I am just as skeptical of it as you are. However, I think that we have lost the sense of what it means to know something.

While there is no hard proof that me listening to this ineffable feeling will get me objectively “better” results in life in the way that us modern humans think about hard proof, I think there is plenty of proof in a way that is even more effective— I have listened to the feeling and felt happier.

When making decisions we so often are caught up in what everyone else views as the right or the wrong thing and we define the right and the wrong in the same way as everyone else and arrive at the conclusion of what is right and what is wrong in the same way, using other people’s work.

For me, I am trying to get myself to the point where something can be true to me just because it has worked for me over and over and over. If something works for you, a lack of evidence can’t stop you from doing that thing.

This leads me to a question I had not even thought of when I started writing all of this down:
I wonder if our idea that we make decisions rationally has lead us to believe that we are wrong for trusting our intuition, so we train ourselves to make rational decisions meaning economics and the theory of rationality was a self fulfilling prophecy.

Do we try to rationalize our decisions and shut down our intuition because of us or because that is what society has conditioned us to do?

Would you rather make decisions that lead to regrettable outcomes with a solid explanation or make decisions that lead to extraordinary outcomes with no explanation?

That is the question I leave you with today.

The Grateful Podcast:

I have a podcast where I interview people much smarter and more qualified than me talking about how you can live a more purposeful life full of gratitude and ambition. 
I release episodes every Monday where I go over a lesson I’ve recently learned.

Every Wednesday and Saturday I release an episode with a very cool guest. 

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or find the video version on YouTube.

This week’s episodes:

Monday: THIS NEWSLETTER AS A SOLO EPISODE

I will dive into my thought process writing this newsletter and more personal examples of feeding obsession through scarcity.

Wednesday: Beejal Bilimoria for Episode 68

Saturday: Daniel Smith for Episode 69

Coaching:

If you’re ready to take action and need guidance, I’d love to help.

I have limited space available so if you’re interested, book a free 15-minute call with me to discuss your dreams and how to start making them happen. 

You can shoot me an email at [email protected] where we can get scheduled.

Make this week rock. Thank you so much for reading this; I’ll see you next week.

With love,

Jack Wagoner