If you don’t live somewhere alone, isolated from others, then you see people and you notice them and their behavior. The question is: how often do you judge them based on their behavior and how often do you seek and try to understand the reason behind that behavior?
One of my biggest beliefs is that noticing one’s behavior is not enough for drawing a conclusion, therefore I try to find out what made them behave in that certain way (and that’s what psychology tries to do since… forever).
The biggest struggle is to get past the behavior. Since the behavior is what we see, it’s so hard to consider that the person might had something else in mind, but he/she couldn’t behave the way that person wanted.
Let’s take shop-lifting as an example. From what I noticed, people don’t always do it because they need those things. There are times when people do it just because they love the adrenaline rush or because they have friends that do it and they just want to be part of the group. Or maybe they have a crush on the cute security guard and they want to be “inspected” by him/her.
Okay, now let’s get back to our question: which one is more important? The reason behind or the behavior? For me, the reason is always the important part because it says something about the inner universe of that person. The behavior itself only speaks about how one decides to do something, but the decision-making process is the important one (aaand that’s why Psychology exists).
Since this is important, what’s the best way to find the reason behind one’s behavior (take into consideration that most of the time people are not willing to reveal the real reasons)?
PS: If my writings mean something to you and if you feel you can learn anything from me, check out my book (Fighting the Inside Dragons) on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback format!