By Dina Aldabbagh

Every action has a motive and a consequence. The consequence, other than its physical manifestation, is really what it teaches your subconscious about yourself. When you go to sleep at 9 pm, your motive may be that you have an early morning the next day, but the consequence would be that you’re teaching your subconscious that taking care of your body is important to you, so when you have to wake up early, you go to sleep early so that you can give yourself the proper rest your body needs to function with energy the next day. What is your motive for doing something teaching your subconscious about yourself? 

Is it teaching you that you are someone who depends on other people for validation? Is it teaching you that you are someone who prioritizes taking care of your body? Or maybe that you are someone who sees riches as experiences over material things? Perhaps your action is teaching you that you are someone who follows through on their commitments no matter what? Our intention behind every single action perpetuates the kind of person we’ll be in the future by the way it teaches our subconscious about ourselves. If my motive for texting someone “Happy Birthday” is to prove to them that I’m better than they are because they didn’t text me the same for my birthday, then I’m teaching myself that I’m someone who’s vindictive. But, if my motive behind performing that same action under those same circumstances is so that I can do my part to strengthen or salvage a perhaps weakened relationship, then I teach myself that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t assume the worst in people, but instead acts in good faith, and overlooks an offense to be able to mend my relationships. You see the difference? 

“It may have not been your intent, but it was your effect” — this is true. We all must take accountability for the consequences of our actions even if it was not our intent. Sometimes, you say or do something with all the right intentions, and it simply does not land well with the other party, or results in an outcome you had no intention for. This happens. And yes, we must take accountability and express our regret to the person if they have been wronged, however, do not let this truth confuse you to believe that intention does not matter. Actions do not just exist in the vacuum of the way they manifest physically, but rather they have a ripple effect that triggers other consequences in our lives. Yes, it is that deep. Your motive for doing things in life is just as important as, if not more than, the actual action you’re doing. 

Firstly, in order to be able to properly judge our intentions, we must have a set of principles to measure the intention against. You must first decide the kind of person you want to be and what the principles are that you want to live by. By doing this, you can use these principles as a point of reference to judge whether your motive aligns you more with the person you want to be, or takes you further from being that person. What are your core principles? Kindness? Integrity? Strength? Justice? If you want to be the kind of person who values honesty, then you want your motives for why you’re doing what you’re doing to be rooted in honesty. Therefore, you would want to live by practicing honesty in all things to the best the situation allows. So, say you have a coworker who’s in a down mood and you think needs a pick-me-up, and you want to make them feel better by complimenting them. You then think to tell them, “By the way, I love your outfit!” even though… you really don’t. You just wanted to make them feel better. The actual action of telling them you liked their outfit may have been successful, but you know that compliment was rooted in a lie; now your sense of self — who you actually are and who you want to be — are in dissonance. Instead, you can take a moment to think about something you do truly like about them, and share that, rather than an easy lie. 

Further, the moral principles we value in ourselves are the moral principles we value in others. As someone who values authenticity, I wouldn’t want someone to give me a compliment just because they’re trying to be nice. Nor would I want someone who hates me to pretend that they’re my best friend. Although, yes, I’d prefer for someone who hates me to be cordial and respectful nonetheless so we could coexist in peace, I’d still prefer for someone who hates me to actually make it clear that they don’t want my friend over them pretending to like me to my face and then go behind my back and speak ill of me. Or, at the least, harbor that disdain in their heart for me and let it manifest in other ways. So, while I may not like the person who doesn’t like me, I can respect the fact that they’re not pretending to like me. But for the person who really doesn’t like me in their heart, yet goes out of their way to be my friend, I can’t respect them at all. We all have people we like and don’t like, and there’s a difference between being neutral and just separating yourself from someone so as not to imply a closer relationship than you feel with them — yet still respecting them and treating them with human decency — and altogether going to one extreme or the other of being outright mean to them unprovoked or putting on a facade that you like them. This is all to say that having principles does not equate to extreme behaviors. You can still be around someone you don’t like, while not pretending to be their good friend. Thus, your sense of self can be aligned with the kind of person who values authenticity. 

More than anything, your motive for doing the things you do is most crucial based on the consequence it has on yourself. This then bleeds out into your interactions with other people, but first and foremost, it starts with you. At the end of the day, the only person whose motives you’ll ever be able to have a 100% truthful understanding of, is yourself — and even then, it takes a level of self awareness to search yourself for the truth. That’s why we must introspect and make sure that our motives behind doing what we’re doing align with who we want to be. For example, let’s say the action at hand is posting an instagram story — that’s a neutral action, as most actions are. Neutral, not necessarily “good” or “bad.” However, let’s say your motive behind posting a selfie to your instagram story is so that your Ex can see it and be reminded of how good you look. Yet, you claim to yourself to be someone who doesn’t do things solely for the consumption of others. You then posting that story with that motive would go against who you want to be, because you actually would be posting it for the consumption of someone else. Instead of doing it because you’re taking social media as something fun or as a way to connect with others and share your life, you’d be using social media as a way to get validation through a certain person’s consumption of the content you’re sharing. 

How do you solve this? Very, very simple: stop yourself. Become aware of who you want to be, and start searching yourself. When you’re triggered to do something, pause before acting. Think about why you’re about to do what you’re about to do. And be honest with yourself, that’s the only way this works. 

If you want to be the kind of person who is self-validating, who looks to themselves for approval rather than other people, and you’re prompted to send your outfit to your friends so that you can hear them tell you it’s a good outfit before going out into the world, don’t. Don’t do it. Stop yourself from sending that picture and asking for advice, because if you do send that picture, you’re affirming your identity that you are someone who needs other people to approve your decisions before execution. Instead, train yourself to choose an outfit and ask yourself, “Do I like this? Do I want to wear and be seen in this?” Little by little, you’ll trust yourself so much more. This is the effect of what your actions are teaching you. You’ll be so much more sure about yourself and what you’re doing. You won’t care if someone doesn’t like your outfit, because you’ll think to yourself, “Well, I like it. And I’m the one who has to wear it…and actually, I’m the only one who has to like it, because I’m not wearing this for you, I’m wearing this for me.”

Self-validation. You won’t be ruled by other people’s validation, only your own. And this happens when you can be real with yourself about your motives behind the action you’re inclined to do. This is the process of training yourself to have more trust in yourself. If you’re always asking other people for their opinion on you, you’re training your subconscious to value their opinions of you over your own opinion of yourself. Motive and the effect of what you’re teaching your subconscious about yourself are very interconnected. 

Dissonance within oneself is a thief of one’s peace. The experience is more spiritual than you may originally think. The Bible talks about motive in Isaiah 29:13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught” (NIV). Why does God care about the hearts of people and not just their actions? Surely you would think that in acting the right way, that someone is living a “good” life. The problem comes when our hearts have these little pockets of double-mindedness, because times of hardship come upon all of us, and our weaknesses are truly exploited during these times. If your heart is not set in the reason you do this good thing or that good thing, when times get tough, you won’t be able to stay acting to that standard. You want to be a person who is, through and through, the person you present yourself to be. When you have that sureness in yourself that you are who you believe yourself to be, based on your personal “why,” then you have integrity. That means it does not matter what situation you find yourself in in life, you will act with the same standard of conduct that you claim to champion. The hard times bring out our biggest weaknesses, so if the motives in your heart are not strong enough — if your “why” is not strong enough — you will crumble during the tough times. But when you are in your heart who you act like outwardly, you live in peace, knowing that anything can be taken from you, but the world will never take away your character.

God doesn’t want people to do good things just because the rules call them to, God wants people’s hearts to be truly aligned with that standard of conduct. Therefore, the standard of conduct is the inevitable outcome. But it starts with the heart. It all starts internally. If you can be honest with yourself about your motives, you can train yourself to be whoever you want to be.

If you haven’t noticed from my other blogs yet, I believe that we human beings have the power to train ourselves to be whoever we feel called to be in our hearts. You have that power. We all do. There is no struggle too big for you that you cannot slowly change your identity. You are the only person on God’s green earth who gets to say who you are. You are powerful. You have power. Own it.