Why does everything in the universe have a

tendency to achieve the lowest energy state?

It's a question of probability.

I like to start off my course on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics with a

demonstration: I hold a ruler standing upright on a table, and after a suitable pause
to build dramatic tension, I let it fall to lie horizontally. The question then is, "Why
did that happen?" It seems rather mundane, but it illustrates some central concepts
in statistical mechanics. Just before it hit the table, the ruler had higher kinetic
energy than after it came to rest. That energy was transferred to the table and
surrounding air in the form of heat or sound waves. Why did that transfer of energy
take place, and why does the reverse process never occur? Why does it never
transpire that vibrations of atoms in the table and air all converge on the ruler in just
the right way to fling it back into the upright position?

Note that although the ruler goes to a lower energy state, the table and air go to a
higher energy state (the total energy must stay the same). So the question is actually,
"Why do some systems tend to transfer their energy to other systems?" If a system
has no way to transfer energy to another system, it will not go to a lower energy
state. A clue to the answer is that usually energy is transferred from the less random
system (the ruler, in this case) to the more random system (vibrations of atoms in the
table and air). As it turns out, most macroscopic objects are able to transfer energy
to very random systems like vibrations or rotations of atoms or molecules in the
environment, so we frequently see these objects going to lower energy states.

We can go about solving this question by considering the number of possible ways
that the total energy can be divided up between the ruler and the environment (the
table and air). Then we'll assume that the transfer of energy between the ruler
motion and the environment is random - so any of these possible divisions of energy
is equally likely. Then we shall see what we expect the ruler to do.

Which case will have a greater number of ways the energy can be divided - when the
ruler has some amount of kinetic energy, or when the ruler has no kinetic energy,
and all of that energy is given to atomic vibrations? In the former case, there is
pretty much just a single way you could put that energy towards moving the ruler. (A
single way if we assume the ruler is hinged on the table. If we don't assume this, then
there are more ways the energy can result in overall motion of the ruler, but still not
a huge number.) In the latter case, there are a vast, vast number of ways that you
could divide up that energy amongst all the atoms in the surrounding air and table.
(E.g. you could give all of the energy to any single atom in the environment, you
could divide it equally between all of the atoms, or any pick any other distribution of
this energy amongst the very large number of atoms in the surroundings.)

So then, there are just a few ways that some energy can go towards the motion of the
ruler, but a mind-bogglingly large number of ways in which that energy could be put
towards random vibrations of atoms in the surroundings. If we say that all of these
possibilities are equally likely, then the case with a mind-bogglingly large number of
possibilities will occur virtually all the time, and the case with just a few possibilities,
essentially never. That is, the energy has been transferred from the macroscopic
object to the environment, never to return.

When you do this rigorously, what you are talking about is the concept of entropy.
Entropy is the logarithm of the number of ways a system can be arranged. The total
energy will be divided up in the way that maximizes the number of ways the system
can be arranged, and hence maximizes the entropy. When someone talks about a
system's "tendency to go to lower energy," it means that transferring energy from the
system to the environment results in an increase in entropy.

An interesting final note is that (in principle), if the temperature were high enough,
vibrations in the table and air could fling the ruler up into the air. (It's very unlikely
that it would go exactly back to the upright position, but would bounce about at
random.) Essentially, this happens because at high enough temperature, the atoms
in the environment are already going so completely nuts that adding in the energy of
the ruler doesn't appreciably enhance the entropy of the environment, and so even
though adding the energy to the ruler motion only gives a little extra entropy, it has
more of an effect than adding it to the environment. For a macroscopic ruler, this
temperature would be ridiculously high (the ruler would have long since burned), but
this could certainly occur for, say, a long stiff molecule.

It is because of the definition of energy.

A difference in potential energy between neighboring regions of space means that

there is a force from the higher potential energy region towards to the lower energy
one. Force, FF, is the negative of the space derivative of energy, UU.

F(x)=−dU(x)dxF(x)=−dU(x)dx

If U(x0−)>U(x0+)U(x0−)>U(x0+) then the derivative at x0x0 is negative, hence

there is a force in the positive direction.

So, "why does everything moves towards to the direction of the applied force?" is the
same as the question in the title. But stating it using concepts such as "tendency"
makes it sound mysterious.