Motivation

I've always liked the idea of meditation but never saw myself as someone who would practice it. But, at the advising of a mentor 76 days ago, I settled in to my first three minutes of silence, peace and stillness. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing but I sat on the floor in a dark, quiet room and hit “start” on the Headspace App. After about a week, I felt different. I wasn’t able to pinpoint the difference but wanted more so she said go up to five minutes. I did that for a couple weeks and still wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing or that it was working at all. I’m a person who likes visible, tangible results, and just wondering what was changing, if anything at all, was driving me crazy. But I kept doing it anyway.

During the past two weeks, the voice guiding the meditation says to remember your motivation and intention of doing this practice. At the beginning, my motivation was easy – I’d started working with a mentor, meditation was on my daily list of tasks to complete, and I wanted to be able to say I’d completed them all on any day she asked. I wanted to get a “gold star.”

About a month ago though, my motivation changed. I’d had a series of four instances over the course of three days where people I highly respect pointed out things I’d done where I hadn’t made the best decisions. I wasn’t reprimanded – that word is too strong. They weren’t wrong or bad decisions, but decisions made for the wrong reasons – the wrong motivation. The choices were made with ME in mind. Not anyone else. No one was harmed or mistreated, and there are no lasting effects, but their schedules and lives were temporarily altered because of my choices.

Rather than getting upset and defensive, which is what I usually do, I was able to step back after each correction and recognize how my decisions affected someone else. I acknowledged the mistakes, admitted what I could have done instead, apologized, corrected and moved on. This realization is when I knew mediation was working, even if I didn’t know how, and my motivation shifted. In this moment I knew I was becoming more aware of my own behavior, my own thoughts, my own habits. I still wanted the gold star, but now I was curious about what else I could learn, what other ways I could grow. And I kept doing it.

It’s often said that it takes about 21 days to build a new habit – if you Google how long, it ranges form 18-254 days but… you get it! After doing meditation begrudgingly for about a week, it soon became a habit, and now is something I look forward to. It no longer feels obligatory and I’m not doing it simply to please my mentor, though it’s still nice to tell her about the progress I’m making with it. I do it because I enjoy it.

I tried this “21 days to create a habit” thing with my writing about a year ago and got stuck. I wanted to write for 15 minutes a day. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but as a mom of three who also works a full time job, finding that chunk of time isn’t always easy. I can wake up 15 minutes earlier in the morning, but I’m already getting up at 5:30 to do mediation and start work at 6. I can squeeze in 15 minutes before bed but often times I’m too tired and the content would be crap. Sure, these sound like excuses – and they are – but they’re also real things. By the time I’ve worked all day, taken care of dinner, showers for three and put the kids to bed, I’m exhausted. And sleep is important for my mental health and necessary to function.

But I tried it anyway. Maybe it was too big or maybe my motivation wasn’t there because it didn’t work. I made sure to work in the 15 minutes but it seemed to be staring at a blinking cursor for about 13 minutes and writing for two. Is that progress? Of course! But it’s SLOW progress and I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to finish my book, get it published and move on. I was doing it because I said I would do it and didn’t want to let anyone down. I didn’t know who I’d be letting down because it wasn’t a promise or commitment I’d made to anyone else, but I was sure I would disappoint someone if I couldn’t work in the writing time, get the book written and get it published. I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember and have hoped to one day publish a book. But now I was writing for everyone else, not myself. It became something I was not enjoying and I quit. My motivation wasn’t right.

If the intention is to publish a book, a shift in the motivation doesn’t make it impossible. But it has to be clear and it has to be true. Do I want to tell a story that entertains? Do I want to write poetry that provokes thought? Do I want to share my own experiences to inspire others? Can it be a little bit of all of it? The truth is, I don’t know the answer to any of these.

I’d love to be able to tell a story that entertains, but I’m not sure my skills are where they need to be for fiction writing. I LOVE poetry and the beauty it creates in the mind, but again, am not sure I have the skill set. Are my personal experiences really something that could help someone else? Maybe. But even then, who am I talking to? Who am I sharing for?

These questions are valid and the answers are critical to resetting my motivation. I also have a good chunk of fear to overcome…

I’m still working on my fiction novel, though it’s probably more like a novella, but I’m not sure the path is right for me. It doesn’t feel right and, full disclosure, it hasn’t felt right for a long time. The last thing I wrote was a scene I wasn’t particularly happy with and I find myself again writing just to write, not because I enjoy it. I know that I don’t HAVE to write a book or publish a book. The people I’m writing “for” will certainly cheer me on and support me along the way, but if I decide to no longer follow this path, I know they would support me anyway.

Maybe I could write with resistance for three minutes a day long enough to earn a few “gold stars.” The skill won’t build itself and you can’t write by osmosis – I’ve tried. Perhaps in the same way mediation piqued my curiosity a few minutes at a time and presented me with new motivation, daily writing will too.