The Why Cycle: Getting to the Root of your triggers

I’ve had some challenges trying to write this particular post. Not a writer’s block issue, it had more to do with finding the right words to communicate this topic and exercise. I believe this is mainly because ‘The Why Cycle’ can bounce between the emotions of liberation and debilitation and there is not exactly a clear-cut way to properly explain this process without sharing quite a bit of my journey, so humor me as I attempt to explain what this is and how to do it through sharing the first experience that I had with it. 

I apologize in advance for the snark-shark in this post and additionally for how burly it is too, but I promise, none of this is just hot air filling space.

When we ask ourselves this simple question; Why? It’s as if something in us is activated. Now, if you are someone who is curious by your blueprint and can remain a little detached, this can be an incredible way to dig deep into your psyche, whether emotionally driven or by habit. I think most people at some point in their lives have had to check themselves on both, and generally, our emotions and our habits are deeply tied together. Our species is fallible after all and we practice compartmentalization on the daily, but very few have mastered a healthy version of it.

If you are not someone who is naturally curious and has a hard time detaching, any of the exercises I mentioned in my last post, The Tipping Point, will help you with the process I’m about to discuss.

The easiest way to explain what I mean by “The Why Cycle” is to think back to the last time you were around a young child. Kids are naturally curious if provided the space to be that way, and if you allow them that space, they’ll run with it.

Some of you might know where I’m going with this.

Imagine A kid comes up to you and asks you what something is for; you tell them. They then ask, why is that thing, for that; so, you explain what it does. They then ask you why it works that way. Now, unless you’re trying to explain a rocket and you’re not a rocket scientist, engineer, or what have you, usually this cycle of them asking why and you explaining can go on for a LONG time, lol.

Come on; let’s just all admit that we were that kid.

The Why Cycle is very similar. The execution is more organized and ideally it’s turned inward with intention and without judgement. It’s that last part about judgement that can make this exercise so difficult and can lead to you feeling debilitated.

The first time I did this, I didn’t even know that this was what I was doing.

I was sitting in class, listening to the instructions about what we were doing that day and just asking myself; why am I here?

This moment was one of my tipping points. What I’m about to share with you was painful as hell, but I don’t regret going through any of it. Not gonna lie, I wish I had figured this all out a lot sooner though and I will not pretend like I still don’t get a little pissed off when thinking about it, I definitely do. 

A few days prior to this class; I quit my job. It was my first job in the tech industry; the supervisor was extremely abusive, and I was on a team at that job where the vibe was not copasetic in the slightest, so I walked out and never looked back to the tech industry for work. If one of the largest worldwide employers and leaders in the thisindustry lets their management scream at employees like I was; I wanted none of it. Being in the workforce since I was a teenager has taught me that job dynamics like this will rob you of your quality of life, no matter how fancy the title or company. I was also in this weird gray area of trying to test out of two classes I unexpectedly failed in what should have been the last quarter of my undergrad while also entering my first quarter in grad school, literally all at the same time.

The school was kind enough to give me that first quarter of grad school to get it done because I couldn’t pay to just retake the classes and it would have pushed grad school back an entire year to do so, however; I’m being too kind to this institution if I don’t acknowledge that this university also played a significant role in this particular crisis in my life. That’s a whole separate blog ya’ll, not a blog post, I mean a full blog.

Anyways, at the time of making the extremely ignorant decision to pursue that set-up for failure; I thought I had no choice. Keep this idea of choice in the back of your mind, I’ll come back to it later. Hindsight being what it is, it was the perfect storm for me to literally lose my shit, and that’s exactly what happened. I was running on fumes long before I failed those two classes, years even. It’s accurate to say that I fully understand what someone means when they say they’re having a nervous breakdown or experiencing burnout (they’re the same thing btw, one just sounds better).

The moment of pure clarity that this set-up no longer resonated came from asking the simple question; why? It seemed to bring something to the surface that I hadn’t really experienced in my adult life up to that point; for the first time I was questioning my motivation for being where I was, how I got myself there, and why I was staying there. It’s not that I hadn’t asked myself this question before, just not in any deep and meaningful way. It was never introspective or with actual intention. At some point, in the hustle to simply “make it” out of the poverty cycle, I went on autopilot and I forgot it was still my job to steer where the car of life goes. 

Although, to be fair, I was fed the kool-aid as a child that college was the only path out of poverty and that there was no other option. In some ways, I think this programming had a direct effect on me feeling completely debilitated at not attaining this specific goal of graduating college when I did The Why Cycle exercise. It broke me like nothing ever has, and believe me, many have tried, but; THIS was my Achilles heel. It might be why it still irritates me so much. I directly suffered from the lie I was fed as a very impressionable child and I’ve suffered the consequences of that lie as an adult. They even fed the lie that you have to go to school for business to start a business. Does it hurt to do so? No. But it’s also not necessary for success either. I’m glad that the kids now can see through that crock of shit and are starting early on the path of entrepreneurship so they don’t get trapped in this spiderweb so many of us adults are in. I’m grateful every day, just for that, and I know this shift they’re leading will improve the quality of life among the collective.

Now, don’t get it twisted, the quality of my education generally speaking was mostly a crapshoot, but I can’t say I didn’t gain anything from the experience, because I did. Wasn’t worth the money I overpaid for it, but I did get something out of it, just not the part that would have made it all “worth it”. Ultimately, it was a money pit. I hesitate recommending college to anyone and am less likely to recommend it to a kid as the only option to get where they want to go; it’s not. Is my own bias playing into that hesitation? Probably, but I can own that; it would take a complete overhaul of the system for me to change my opinion though. Let’s not forget the elephant in the room too; the debt makes it a strong deterrent for recommendation on a practical level as well. 

I may never be able to pay off that debt. That’s just realism mixed with knowledge of how daily interest works when combined with bad hiring practices and low wages when you don’t have a piece of paper to prove your worth. When this was happening in my life, you needed a BA to even get a crappy low paid, but stable job; in 2021, it’s more like crappy and unstable. Point is, at this rate, pretty soon you’ll need a PhD just to flip burgers for minimum wage and you’ll still be seen as replaceable with all those letters behind your name, but I digress. 

Hey, I warned you about the snark shark,lol.

In any case, one “why?”, lead me to ask another “why?”, and then another until I suddenly found myself taking a fuck-it-all pill and walking away. It was, hands down, the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make and I certainly didn’t make the decision lightly because, well, going to school costs more than a down payment on house, and it’s usually only worth it if you finish, so in not finishing; I was fully aware of the situation that I was walking into financially and my prospects in the job market. I just no longer could justify pursuing something that I couldn’t pin down why I was doing it in the first place. It wasn’t even the grad program, that program was pretty rad in and of itself, I even got a scholarship; it was school in general. By that point in my higher education career, any love and joy I had for learning had literally been sucked out of my life. I hated it. All of it.

That one simple question caused all of this, but it didn’t stop there for me. Ideally, had I been doing this exercise on a regular basis; recognizing that I’d grown to want what’s beyond the programming I received would have been an incredibly liberating experience; it’s a sign of soul growth. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been, so my life got very dark, very quickly. It was that December, in 2015 after I dropped out, that I took the first step on the descent into The Dark Night of the Soul but I was on a high speed train heading there as far back as 2013. Now, I’m not saying that this exercise will lead you into the Dark Night process, but if you haven’t been checking in with yourself about what is still meaningful and resonates for you; it could.

This is not surface level fru-fru new age stuff i’m really talking about here. In a perfect world where everyone has access to proper mental healthcare, a crystal grid would be enough to counter the types of energies that come up doing this work. However, our world is far from perfect. This is ideally an exercise you would have a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist assisting you with, and if you have that kind of access; I would suggest working with them while pursuing this level of introspection. I didn’t have that kind of access; so as with most things regarding my own health as an adult; I figured it out on my own.

All the signs were there, as far back as 2012 that I needed to hang-up my backpack but I was trapped in this thinking that I didn’t have a choice, that I had to finish to be considered worthy of basic respect in the job market. I thought I was too close to quit. That leaving was failing all the ancestors shoulders that I was standing on. I didn’t want to fail them and disrespect the suffering that they went through just so I could grow up and have the privilege of getting the education that wasn’t within their reach.

These were all excuses though, because I was afraid to walk away, afraid to fail. The truth is, not quitting probably would have killed me. My health, mentally and physically was the worst it had been my entire adult life, not just from the stress but from the habits I developed unconsciously as a way to relieve myself from the stress I was experiencing. Going through The Why Cycle will prevent you from ever getting pushed into the corner I managed to get myself into, and making it a part of your spiritual hygiene routine will help prevent feelings of debilitation as well. Had I been doing this, I could have avoided 5 years of being in the pit, as I prefer to call it.

I know this because the same type of scenario has happened multiple times since then and whenever I do The Why Cycle exercise, I make better decisions . Period. Every time I haven’t, something blows up in my face. Every time. There’s a time to push and a time to walk away and that has perhaps been my hardest lesson to learn, in general, in every facet of my life. I don’t like to give-up on anything, but sometimes, for me, that need to keep pushing forward is nothing but a low vibrational trap. The Why Cycle helped me realize this.

You may have a couple of behaviors or emotions that you naturally default to; these are the ones to pay attention to and can give you a clue that it’s time to do a deep check-in with yourself. Personally, I tend to get a bit prickly and overdo the indulgence thing with something, like eating my feelings. Which does nothing to resolve the feelings but does add extra jiggle to my booty.

Talk about putting yourself on blast, LOL. Hey, if we don’t own our own shit, it owns us, right?

default. I didn’t comprehend that these were my defaults until I started really checking-in with myself on a regular basis. Recognizing this was a wake-up call, to say the least, but it still feels like an understatement when I think about how much lighter my energy felt when I finally identified the source of the snark shark prickly bitch. At the end of the day, for me it was a self-worth issue; that was the root. 

Sometimes, I still will catch myself trying to default to these, even though I’m conscious of them. Some old energy in a new package will come along to trigger me and I have to slow myself down to recognize that I’m in a state of mind not conducive to making decisions for my long-term growth, and need to do The Why Cycle exercise.

Your default habits and emotions can be as simple as you overextending yourself to people and not setting boundaries or getting pissed off in the drive-thru line because you had to repeat your order. It can even be sitting down and pulling out your tarot deck asking the same question, in a different way, multiple times, every day, expecting the tarot to tell you what to do.

Side note, in my opinion; the tarot is an advisor, at best, and a good advisor will never TELL you what to do; they will offer suggestions and help reveal the paths that you have available to you along with the pros and cons of each. Ultimately, the decision will always fall to you to act or not act on that information; it’s your free will, it’s your choice how you utilize that free will. 

Free will is a beautiful thing ya’ll; don’t you dare leave home without it or be giving it away to anyone or anything. That my friends, is giving your power away. Side note over.

Your default emotions and behaviors do not necessarily have to be as unhealthy as mine tend to be. I just want you to keep in mind that even something that is viewed to be “healthy” or “normal” in your family or even collectively can still be unhealthy for YOU. For example; in the United States, the entire economy is built off of manipulating people by way of FOMO to buy more than they really need, but there has been, until recently anyways, a serious lack of accessible resources on financial literacy available to people who can’t fork over money for a financial advisor. 

However unhealthy impulse shopping may be, it’s still viewed as a normal behavior here and is consciously enabled. Does it make it healthy; not by a long-shot, but many of us perpetuate it anyway unconsciously because it’s been so normalized. We create hoarders in this country because we glorify having a lot of stuff with importance and respect. Some people can shop for fun and not go into excess doing so. Most people, however, shop to fill a void that has nothing to do with the stuff they’re buying.

The Why Cycle can help you not just identify that you are impulse shopping, for example, but if you continue asking yourself why, you’ll get to the root of exactly why you do it and what triggers you, that makes you default to this behavior.

Hopefully that makes sense.

I don’t share the things I know, my experiences or messages I get with the intention to frighten anyone; but I’m not going to lie to you and help you lie to yourself either. If you have been skipping over those check-ins and lying to yourself like everything is okay, all bets are off on what you experience in the aftermath of The Why Cycle exercise because it’s intention is to get to the root of the emotions, habits, and any thoughtforms you may have.

The point that I hope you gain from this post is to not put this exercise off. Check-in with yourself at least once a month, everyday is better. Pay attention to how your body reacts while you are thinking about these things too. Doing this helps you learn how your body communicates with you when you are anxious, angry, or even just a bit scared, and digging into the “why” of each of these emotions helps you get to the root of them so they lose power over the actions you take in your life. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these emotions though; they’re normal and in my opinion, healthy. They only become a problem when you start acting on those emotions unconsciously. The same can be said for many habits; it’s performing that habit on autopilot instead of with intention that can make it a problem. It’s the lack of intention that can prevent us from truly evaluating our present circumstances in life and stepping forward on the road to ascension for soul growth.

This post was kind of a beast. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

In the next post I’ll be discussing how to return to your center state. On that note too, after free writing this post for over a month; the editing process has let me know that it’s time for a little check-in of my own, lol.

Don’t forget to follow the blog and check out the message for the month on the home page before you take off. You landed here for a reason; there’s probably more information for you somewhere on this website, so feel free to poke around. I’m not doing a zodiac season guide for Cancer season but there’s plenty of videos in the archive on YouTube for you to check out if you’re looking for more insight into the energies playing out in your life right now. All readings are timeless so if the title calls to you, there’s something in there for you.

Your Peace Is Your Power

Till next time