Why Do I Behave the Way I Do? The Two Forces Behind Your Core Behavior
22.09.2026
Why do I behave the way I do? Why am I the way I am? Almost everyone asks this at some point. I asked it for most of my life before I found an answer that held. It is worth asking properly, because the answer gives you two things. The first is peace with yourself. What you feel and how you react follow patterns that were set before you were born, and they are not flaws you keep failing to fix. The second is what those patterns can give you, since every pattern is also a gift. You cannot change them, but you can work with them, and that is where a more meaningful life begins, not by becoming someone else but by working with what you are. Life is full of options, but not every option fits every nature. Knowing yours is how you see which of them make sense for you.
So where does human behavior come from? Countless theories try to answer it, and most of them land on the same ground: our genes, our upbringing, our experiences and our habits. Of course those matter. I tried them on myself for years. Some things I could improve, and my core never moved. But they rest on something we keep missing, and it is the most important part, the core behavior beneath everything. It does not change, because it was set at our conception and through the pregnancy that followed, and it can be read from your date of birth.
In the Maya calendar tradition, the conditions you were formed in, the atmosphere of your conception and everything your mother lived through in the nine months that followed, are called your pregnancy condition. They set the two forces at your core: an automatic impulse, which is how you react and operate, and your character and personality patterns, which are what you seek and how you feel. In a natural birth the baby chooses the day whose nature matches those conditions, so the day you were born reflects them. That is why the core of human behavior can be read from a date of birth, and that is what the Pregnancy Condition reports describe.
I know how this sounds the first time. It sounded that way to me too. The best test is not argument but self-reflection, reading the patterns of the day you were born and seeing whether they are about you. If they are, that is what matters. I stay with that deepest layer here, because it is the part those theories of human behavior never explain.
You feel the answer every day. It comes as feelings that rise before you know why, as thoughts that arrive on their own, as the conversations you keep having with yourself, and as the way you approach everything, how you begin, how you react and what you reach for. These are forces, and they guide you like familiar patterns. They were at work long before you started asking about them.
There are many of them, and the full picture is complex, because the Maya calendar tradition sees a person as a council of different forces, patterns we already sensed in the womb before we were born. I want to make it easier for you, and show what matters most when you start understanding yourself.
What matters most is the day you were born into. In the Maya calendar it is your day sign, and it carries those two forces. Each of them is called a nawal, a living force with its own consciousness. Among all the forces in you, the day sign leads, because it is the one you feel most and the one behind how you make your decisions in life.
To understand yourself, you need to tell the layers apart, and this is the deepest one.
The first force: your automatic impulse
This one formed in a single moment, your conception. It is the response that fires before you think. Something happens, and you respond before conscious thought. It is not a decision, not a habit, not a preference, and it never changes.
There are two ways to see it, and each has its name. In a single moment it is your automatic impulse, your instant reaction. Seen whole, it is your operating style, because every moment brings its instant reaction, and all those reactions together, adding up through hours, days and weeks, form the manner in which you handle everything. It is not two patterns but one, seen in the moment and seen added up over time.
The tradition describes it like water. Water takes its character from its source and flows that way for the rest of its course, whatever it meets. Your source is the atmosphere of your conception, where the energies, the feelings and the intentions your parents brought to that one moment left the first imprint, and that imprint became the way you meet life, simply how you handle everything.
Some people describe it as energy, because that is how it comes across to others. An impulse can be very gentle and easily influenced. It can be calculated, weighing everything before it moves. Or it can be so charged that it goes forward no matter what stands in its way. The Maya calendar carries it in your number, and there are thirteen of them, so there are thirteen versions of the impulse.
It is the easiest force to see in others and in yourself. Watch how the people around you begin things. Some start with full energy, everywhere at once, some quietly and privately in their own time, some are consistent in everything they approach, and some are hesitant, unable to decide and always pondering. None of these is better than another. Each is simply a different way of operating, set by a different kind of conception. What matters above all these descriptions is that you find yours in yourself.
Here is the part worth sitting with: this force does not respond to self-improvement. You can build skills on top of it, and you can learn to work with it, but the way you begin things and respond to them stays yours for life. People may spend years trying to change their impulse, not realizing that it cannot be changed.
I know, because I spent years on it. My own impulse takes its time. Things go into incubation before I move, and often the impulse fades before they happen. Life goes on and nothing comes of it. I need time to process, and often in private. My partners did not understand why I needed my own space for that, and my employers did not understand why the work was not done as quickly, and as visibly, as they wanted to see. For a long time I treated it as a flaw to fix. The Maya calendar gave me the best description and explanation of it I have ever read, one I had not even hoped to find.
It also gave me a different kind of advice. The usual kind asks you to become someone else, to start faster, decide sooner, push harder. That is working against your nature, and it does not work. The impulse stays exactly where it was. Advice that fits your nature does the opposite. It shows what your impulse serves and what it needs, which conditions let it work, which people and settings complement it, and which recommendations were built for other natures and will turn against you. That is what the reports are for. Not a better impulse, but the right conditions for the one you have.
All thirteen versions are described briefly, and for free, in the calculator. And for each of them I have written an Automatic Impulse report, a comprehensive overview of yours and the place to start.
Think of your automatic impulse as the thing that sets how you respond to life. And because it sets how you respond, it also shapes the way you move toward what your character wants. What your character wants, what you are drawn toward and what you seek, is a different layer of you. That is the second force.
The second force: your nominal nawal
This is the force people ask about most. Why do I behave in certain ways? Why am I drawn to some things and not others? Why do my feelings run warmer on some days and colder on others? Your nominal nawal is a living consciousness with different expressions. It is what you seek, what you are drawn toward, what compels you, what gives you meaning and what you reach for. Where the impulse is how you do things, this is what you want to do.
It was set during the nine months in your mother's womb. Through that time she felt a certain atmosphere, and what she lived through, you formed through. That atmosphere set the patterns that answer those questions. Over centuries the Maya determined the keywords that explain each of these patterns, what triggers them, and how their two expressions, warm and cold, change and why. The patterns themselves were set before you were born, and they stay. What moves is how they show.
There are two movements to it, and each has its name. The tradition describes it like fire. When the fire ascends, your patterns burn bright and warm, at their most alive, generous and capable, and when it descends the same patterns dim and go cold. Warm when your conditions let your nature express freely and there is enough energy. Cold when it cannot, when you run on empty, when conditions turn hard, when something triggers you, or when the purpose you are pursuing no longer feeds it. This is not a good you and a bad you but the same you at two heights of the same flame.
The cold side is never a flaw. It is the same force expressing itself when there is not enough energy, or when it cannot do what it wants, and then it turns protective and works for its own survival. That is the force's nature, not a verdict on you. This is the part people argue with me about. Nobody likes hearing that their worst days are not a fault to repair but a side of the same fire.
The Maya calendar carries it in the nawal of your day, and there are twenty of them, twenty kinds of pregnancy and so twenty kinds of personality. They fall into four broad groups, by the atmosphere the mother carried through those nine months. The nawals also differ in strength, some carrying a quieter force and some a stronger one that shows more visibly. This is part of why two people can share a day sign and wear it differently.
It is the force you feel most, and it is behind something you have known your whole life. You don't always feel good. Some days everything in you is available. Other days the same you runs on empty, and nothing explains it. Those ups and downs are not random. They follow your conditions, your energy and what you are living through, and they have triggers, personal to your pattern. Only the nominal nawal moves like this. The impulse never does.
The aim is not to stay warm and never go cold. Both belong to you. The aim is to recognize which one is moving in you right now, and why. That is what lets you spend more of your time on the warmer side, not by trying harder but by giving your nature the conditions it needs. When the cold side shows, the question is never what is wrong with you. It is what is draining you, what is not giving back, which purpose turned out unworthy of the fire, and what is standing in the way of what it wants.
How the two work together
Your automatic impulse and your nominal nawal always operate at the same time. The impulse sets the way you operate and react, the manner in which you do everything, and the nominal nawal sets the direction, what you seek, what you move toward, what is important to you, and how warmly or coldly you pursue it. Every moment of your life carries both, a constant way of moving and a direction that rises and falls. That meeting of how and where is what makes you you.
This is your core behavior, and it is what answers why I behave the way I do, and why I am the way I am. It comes from before your first breath, from the moment of your conception and the nine months that followed. And it is not one thing but two forces.
Neither of them can be changed. It took me a long time to accept that, and longer to see it was good news. That is why so much effort goes nowhere when you read self-help books and listen to gurus telling you how to behave. Their advice was never meant to be yours, because it is not based on who you are.
So the question changes, from how do I change to how do I work with what I already have. That is what to take from this article: learn your patterns. Knowing how they work is what improves a life. It is like having a manual of yourself, one that leads your nature to where it works best for you. That is where it gets complex, because every nature is different, and every nature has its own answers about what feeds it, what drains it, what fits it and what does not. Those answers are what the reports are written for, nature by nature.
Both forces can be read from the day you were born. That is the heart of what your pregnancy condition means, and it is where all self-understanding begins. The full reading of both forces, warm and cold, what tips them from one to the other, and how they work together in you, is the Pregnancy Condition report. The first look is free, so enter your birth date in the calculator and it shows a short summary of your own, your automatic impulse, your character and personality patterns, and the pregnancy group your day belongs to.
Questions people ask
Can my automatic impulse change?
No. It formed in the atmosphere of your conception and runs the same way for life, in calm and under pressure. What changes is how clearly you see it, and how well the conditions around you fit it.
What is the difference between warm and cold expression?
They are the same personality patterns at two heights. Warm when your conditions let your nature express freely and there is enough energy; cold when it cannot, because you run on empty, conditions turn hard, something triggers you, or the purpose you pursue no longer feeds it. Neither is good or bad.
Does this apply if I was born by scheduled caesarean or prematurely?
The day sign and the patterns it describes apply to everyone, whatever the birth. Only the Pregnancy Condition report, which reads the connection between your patterns and your formation, applies where the baby chose its day. The birth types page explains each case honestly.