Intro

"There's only one question you can ask people that matters," Dr. Cleere said as she raised her coffee cup in a dramatic pause.
Dr. Michelle Cleere was Stevo's counseling skills supervisor, and he was pretty sure she enjoyed messing with him like this. Stevo had chosen John F. Kennedy University because it was the only school offering a Master's Degree in Sport Psychology that emphasized counseling skills as the means to apply research. Dr. Cleere had attended the program before going on to get a Clinical Psychology PhD and now helping students like him learn how to ask effective questions.
Stevo had been drilling Open-Ended Questions, the core skill of anyone trying to help people. OEQs are questions that can't be answered with, "yes" or "no" and they encourage people to explore their answers with more depth. Stevo had spent hours asking them in roleplays with other students. He'd spent even more hours listening to tapes of himself with clients and figuring out new and better ways to ask them. He'd made lists of hundreds and practiced using them casually in talks with friends. And Dr. Cleere accurately perceived—as was her habit—that he was over thinking things—as was his habit.
"What question is that?" Stevo asked.
Dr. Cleere put down her cup.
"Why?' Ask in, 'Why do you think that?' 'Why do you believe that?' 'Why do you want that?' 'Why the hell did you do that?' 'Why' is the only question that really matters. The problem is, you can't ever ask people 'why?' It's too much. We get defensive when we have to answer 'why?' Even though it's kinda all that matters if we want to get better."
"Oh." Stevo said. "So what should I ask instead?"
Dr. Cleere put down her coffee cup. "Everything else."
_________________________
Human beings have always been fascinated by why humans—ourselves and others—do things. For as long as we've been human we've watched people, listened to our friends tell us stories about themselves, told our friends stories about strangers, and thought, "why the hell did they do that?" Whenever we hear a story about someone doing something unexpected, we have a compulsion to stop and ponder "why?" Why do we eat too much? Work out too little? Why do some people persist with diets and so many of us do not? Why do some people seem to always be motivated while the rest of us struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Why do some kids seem to love math and others hate it? 
We all do wonderful, stupid, brilliant, lazy, powerful, amazing things every day for reasons ranging from mysterious and obvious. And as we watch or hear about those behaviors, there seems to be a parallel compulsion to explain those behaviors. We just need to make people's actions make sense.
As humans, we just seem to need to know..."why?"

Motivation and Why