Unsustainable Motivation

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the relationship between happiness and complacency. So one of the things I often hear from people, one of their pushbacks to something like meditation, or even becoming more fulfilled, is a fear that they'll become complacent. They won't feel the same motivation in their work, in their life to improve things that are important to them. And to that, I would say, if you're concerned that becoming happier will make you complacent, there's a possibility that your current motivation for growth involves some combination of fear, anxiety, and low self-worth.

If you're concerned that becoming happier will make you complacent, there's a possibility your current motivation for growth involves some combination of fear, anxiety, and low self worth. Now that can feel like a hard truth. And one of the reasons I can say it is because I was certainly there. I remember a certain point in, my life most of my motivation came from anxiety, from fear, not wanting to let a person down, not wanting to let myself down and wanting to feel better about myself. And in some level it, it actually worked or seemed to work.

It helped me achieve certain things. But often what I found is that the satisfaction I got from those things was temporary. It was a little blip on the radar of goodness and like, oh, I accomplished something. But then I was back to the anxiety that was there beneath the surface. And the interesting thing is that there are different forms of motivation.

Motivation to improve our life that doesn't have to be contingent on fear, anxiety, and low self-worth. We can also be motivated by things like compassion, love, excitement and enthusiasm. And as we do become more fulfilled, as we become more self-compassionate, as we start caring for ourselves more and feeling happier from the inside out, there is a bit of a reorganization of what is our motivating force. And some of the things that we did before that we felt motivation toward may fall away. And that is a reality of growing your internal wellbeing.

There's certain things that you cared about before, just kind of seem non essential or less essential. But my opinion is that on the whole, that's a good thing. You're reorganizing your life around what is most important and where your motivation organically wants to take you, rather than just trying to achieve something for status or because there's a fear of not being worthy if you don't achieve it. So if you're experiencing this, or, you know, someone who's experiencing this, it's just something to consider that the happiness and complacency, if that is the case, there's a good chance that the motivation is coming from a place that's not sustainable and isn't actually serving you in the long run. But there's a different form of doing that, of finding motivation and it can come from being fulfilled.

And that is a life that is truly worth living. So thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.