When was the last time you asked why? Not to challenge someone, not to prove a point, but to truly understand?
We used to do it constantly. As kids, we questioned everything — the sky, the stars, the rules, the reasons. Curiosity was our default setting. Somewhere along the way, we stopped. We got busy. We got comfortable. We traded wonder for certainty.
We should learn from children almost as much as they do from us. Dive into their questions like – Why do you work so much? Why do grown-ups stop playing? What’s up with you rushing all the time?
And here’s the thing — they’re not wrong. Those tiny humans somehow see the cracks in our grown-up logic.
We tell them to dream big, yet shrink our own ambitions. We teach them patience, but rush through our days. We encourage them to play, while sometimes our own joy is mostly “a distraction.”
Asking genuine questions is pure, unfiltered curiosity, the kind that turns the world into a playground. Does it not make sense that we should all be living like this?
Curiosity and novelty are catalysts for discovery, growth, and wonder. Somewhere along the way, most people trade them for routine, predictability, and the illusion of certainty.
We’re meant to live life, explore beyond the familiar. Otherwise life just becomes a bunch of Tuesdays. But that spark? It’s still in there, waiting to be reignited. Because if we’re not asking questions, chasing new adventures, and stepping into the unknown… what are we doing?
The death of “Why”
Society gave us the script – wake up, grind through emails, chase the next deadline, get notified about something every two minutes and we just… follow. No more “Why?!” just “whatever gets me through the day.”
A typical day of a modern age person. “You snooze your alarm twice, rush through breakfast, inbox overflowing, back-to-back Zoom calls, eyes hurting from screen time, scrolling through news you won’t remember, collapsing into bed wondering where the day went… Again.”
And before you know it, you’re staring down 50, 60 or hell, 80, wondering where all these years vanished. Time does’t speed up! Minutes, hours, days and years don’t pass by more quickly.
The Matrix of Conditioning
What we want to do is step out of our comfort zone, and start evolving, changing the way we do things on a daily basis. I read a great article by Dan Koe the other day, The social Matrix. He talks about how we have been “programmed” since we were born.
It’s time to change ourselves. Our mind. Conditioned since childhood to trade wonder for safety, questions for rules. It starts early. Most of us learned that love and approval come when we fit in, not when we explore. So we silence the “Why,” just to be accepted.
School doesn’t help. The system is not designed to awaken creativity, it’s designed to produce predictability. Follow the schedule, memorize the facts, pass the test. Don’t question the system, become part of it.
Then we grow up and follow the masses. Media, education, and culture all reinforce one another. The people who teach were taught by the same system. The experts we’re told to trust, are often repeating what they were told.
The healthcare system has made incredible advances, especially when it comes to acute care like broken bones, trauma, emergency interventions. In those moments, it’s unmatched.
But when it comes to chronic conditions, long-term healing, and root-cause solutions, the system often falls short. It manages symptoms more than it restores health.
Each layer of life — school, work, relationships, even self-image subtly rewards conformity and punishes curiosity. The system doesn’t need you to think. It needs you to perform & obey.
The lies they tell us
And most do. Until it’s too late. By 25, that fully developed prefrontal cortex locks in your life script, preferring routine over rebellion. Your brain starts echoing the elders’ weary whispers: “You’ll see when you get to my age, how fast life goes by.”
But that’s the lie they’re selling from their own perception. Like that friend who keeps on telling you how to change your life and do things differently, even though you never asked their opinion.
Even worse, when people start projecting their own fears and doubts onto you, snapping out at you, when life gets too heavy for them. Yelling from raw wounds they’re blind to, their inner child screaming for the hug they never got.
That unhelpful critique? It’s 90% their unresolved shadows spilling out, maybe 10% pointing out your weaknesses.
But here’s the quietest lie of them all. Not the ones they shout, but the ones you start whispering to yourself. The ones that sound like your voice, but aren’t. The ones that settle in the back of your mind like they’ve always been there.
Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, you start believing them and you feel it too.
Unless you start asking again. Unless you wake up and reclaim the wonder you once had.
Unless you start asking Why.
Perception of time & memory
As Chris Williamson puts it in Modern Wisdom Podcast #999, time doesn’t speed up or slow down by the clock, it bends around how deeply we experience each moment. Our memories shape our sense of time.
When we stop living with intention, once we stop chasing new, meaningful experiences our brains stop marking memories as distinct. Days blur. Weeks disappear. Time slips through the cracks. And suddenly, years feel like they’ve vanished. We can’t remember what we never truly lived.
That’s why time feels like it accelerates. Without strong memory markers, there’s nothing to anchor us in the timeline of our own lives.
But when we dive into the unfamiliar pursuits like travel, meeting new people, learning, exploring – each moment takes up more space. Novel experiences form sharper memories, and when we look back, it feels like more time has passed because we lived more of it.
I’ve felt that shift firsthand. After wakeboarding seasons filled with tricks and travel, I’d hit cold winters chained to desk-bound gigs. With the adrenaline and flow gone, days started to blend together. Months disappeared. And I struggled to find purpose in the monotony.
Awaken the child within you
One of the biggest challenges we are faced with today is being in the present moment. Our complex brain system is trying to keep us safe, so all kinds of fears and constant thoughts flood our minds, pulling us away from the now.
Yet, mastering the skill of being present isn’t just a luxury. It is essential for reclaiming our mental clarity, forging deeper connections, and transforming fleeting days into a life rich with meaning.
In a world accelerating toward distraction, the ability to anchor ourselves here and now becomes our greatest act of defiance against regret.
That’s why I built the Productivity Boost workshop. Not some fluffy seminar that will motivate your team for a week or two. But four real, hands-on sessions over one month, where we cover all essential elements of a healthy lifestyle.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”
In a society that often encourages us to become more serious, cautious, and routine oriented as we age, this perspective invites us to resist that pressure. Staying playful isn’t childish, it’s vital.
The case of Play
Psychiatrist Stuart Brown’s decades-long research, drawing from over 5,000 play histories, shows play as a vital. Play sparks creativity, resilience, and vitality, while countering the emotional toll of monotony in personal and professional spheres.
Embracing play’s core properties, like voluntary spontaneity and timeless flow, boosts innovation, strengthens teams, and crafts vivid memories that slow time’s rush, transforming drudgery into dynamic energy.
Beyond that, play sharpens focus and productivity, safeguarding mental health by reducing burnout and igniting an enduring spark for life’s demands.
It keeps our minds open, our creativity alive, and our hearts light. In choosing play over rigidity, we don’t just slow down aging, we redefine what it means to grow older.
Awakening that child within can become our greatest asset. Asking these “Why” questions can inspire change and growth in our lives. Some reverse psychology questions might be a good idea to emphasise this.
Why?
Why move, when the chair is so damn comfy? Why breathe deeper, when shallow gets the job done? Why bother with a good night sleep and refuel your body, when five espresso shots wake you up in the morning?
We dig into these questions, not just with lectures, but with simple tools that fit right into your day. Because here’s the truth I’ve learned from my days working a desk job. Movement between work sessions made me feel more alive.
We weren’t built for desk jobs, staring at screens like zombies in comfy chairs. Our bodies crave movement. Our mind wants novelty and excitement.
By taking short breaks every hour, just getting some blood flowing through the body you will become more productive! When you get in a creative rut, stand up and go for a brisk walk. It can be just three minutes up and down the office.
Or even better, go outside for five minutes & get some fresh air while you are at it. Three deep breaths in with a prolonged exhale out when you are back at your desk, and you will re-set your mind and body.
Science backs this up: a Stanford study (Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz), showed that walking boosts creative output by an average of 60% compared to sitting. The effect happens in real time during the walk and lingers briefly afterward, turning even a short stroll into a creativity hack.
Keep going, no matter what
In the words of Michael Jordan: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Thing is, life gets pretty tough sometimes and we can easily get discouraged. I know I’ve had my moments of despair and hopelessness. Started a new project before I was ready, and failed, again and again. I got injured in the stupidest ways possible.
Sometimes I actually felt like I am living by a script given to me by some higher power. As if life was just a pattern I kept on repeating. But a simple and universal fact is – whatever you’re not changing, you are choosing.
Courage
A few excerpts from a book I am reading currently by Ryan Holiday – Courage is calling.
The best time to have tackled a hard problem was a long time ago; the second best time is now. You can’t beat a problem by debating it, only by deciding what you’re going to do about it and then doing it. And if your decision happens to be wrong, or you make a mistake, then decide again, with the same kind of courage and clarity.
Some of us are afraid to be different. Most everyone is afraid to be difficult. But there is freedom in those traits. Freedom to fight, aggressively, repeatedly, for what we believe in. To insist on a higher standard. To not compromise all the time.
It takes courage to do that. Especially in a world that doesn’t want to be bothered, that wants everyone to stay in their lane, that doesn’t want anyone asking Why.
Learn, evolve, live
Asking “why”, and other questions isn’t just curiosity. It’s the spark that rewires your brain, slows time back down, and turns autopilot into adventure. It’s how you stop waking up one day and whispering, “Shit, that went fast,” and start crafting a story worth telling.
Awakening our curiosity for life, asking real questions like – Is there another way to do this? Instead of playing the victim card like “Why is this happening to me?”, we ask ourselves “What can I learn from this? How am I a co-creator in this chaos?” or “How am I architecting my own cage?”
The idea is to transform playful pursuits into a natural dopamine engine that sharpens attention, boosts productivity, and locks us into the present moment.
Novelty, curiosity, passion are all great triggers for releasing dopamine, which heightens attention, preparing you to learn.
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman reframes dopamine not as a gateway to pleasure, but as the brain’s reward currency for motivation. To harness it sustainably, he urges anchoring rewards to intrinsic effort and friction, not fleeting highs.
Wake up!
To reinvent who you are, ditch the old scripts drilled into you by family, mentors, or society. Swap them out for fresh perspectives, and surround yourself with new environment: people, places, routines that propel you toward the version of you that’s calling.
Identity is your secret weapon. When “Who I am” syncs with “What I am chasing”, motivation comes on its own. No more distractions, no more running away – just pure, purpose-powered flow.
Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.
So here is the final “Why?”
Why let someone else’s blueprint define your life, when you’re built to design your own?
You’re not here to sleepwalk through years, ticking boxes and chasing borrowed dreams. You’re here to feel alive. To move, ask questions & play like your soul depends on it, because it does.
Ditch the “should have, could have” narrative and go for it. Play ferociously because the kid in you isn’t asking permission. They’re demanding the adventure.
That person you were back in your younger years? They’re not gone. They’ve just been waiting for you to remember what it feels like to choose wonder over fear. To stop editing yourself to fit a story that was never yours to begin with.
This isn’t about chasing some perfect life. It’s about refusing to let it pass you by unnoticed. It’s about remembering that fire you had before the world told you to settle down and stay small.
So screw the script. Rewrite your own. The system cracks the moment you start questioning it.
And the only permission you need?
You already gave it to yourself when you started asking Why.
