Why Are You Doing What You Are Doing?

I believe in living a purposeful life.  

I am not talking about knowing or discovering your life’s purpose and then living that out. Although that would certainly be living a purposeful life.

I am talking about living your life on purpose.  Living your life doing things because you enjoy doing them.

Doing the dishes, washing the clothes, cleaning the house because you enjoy taking care of your family. Staying committed to your partner because you love having a close relationship. Choosing to work at a job you love because you spend most of your time there.

Asking yourself why you are doing what you are doing leads you to living purposefully? 

Much of the time we don’t even realize why we are doing what we are doing. We do the dishes and we are angry because it feels like a never ending task that has to be done over and over.

But if we start to look at why we are doing what we are doing we realize there is usually a deeper reason.

We may realize that it is not just about a clean dish (that will get moldy and gross if we leave it there for too long). We realize that we love to have our kitchen clean before we cook a nourishing dinner for our families whom we love.  We realize we are doing it because we enjoy taking care of our family. And this makes for a much better dish washing experience.  We are washing dishes on purpose rather than just because.

When we ask why, we begin enjoying our lives more, spending more time IN our life rather than wishing we were doing something different.  

The next time your are doing something, anything, ask yourself why you are doing it? If your why is positive, go on and be in it, enjoy it.  If your why is negative and you cannot come up with a positive reason, keep asking why until you really discover the reason because if it is truly negative, you may want to re-think what you are doing.