Meditation and Motivation

Viewing my experiences thus far with mediation through a lens of learning theories regarding motivation is an apt focus point. Quite a few of the concepts we learned from the reading this week make sense to my learning experience.

Let me begin by making this clear: nothing, and I mean nothing, tests the limits of your intrinsic motivation like meditation. It is challenging enough to motivate yourself to do something productive, like mow the lawn or prepare tomorrow’s lunch—things that have some sort of tangible extrinsic motivation as well. You eat the food or admire your lawn. But it is nearly heroic to do literally nothing for half an hour everyday. Try it now. I dare you. Drop everything you are doing right now, close your eyes, and sit for the next thirty minutes. You won’t do it. Your mind begins to race with all of the reasons you couldn’t—nothing inspires. You’re thinking I have to finish this homework, make dinner, go to work, and sleep. These are the same thoughts that race through my mind every time I meditate, and that’s why it requires a heroic dose of intrinsic motivation.

At this point I know what you’re going to say dear learning theory expert, you’ll say but wait, achievement motivation, curiosity, and competence motivation can inspire you! And you’re half right. I do sit most mornings now because I am do possess the need for achievement. I want to be a successful in meditation. I’m hoping to gain all of the great things that people who meditate seem to have: confidence, self-discipline, and an undeniable calmness. The problem seems to be that I have my doubts that I’m capable of being one of those people. My expectancy-value perception is far too skewed. I view the value as exceedingly high, yet my expectation of my ability to claim those rewards is next to zero. I may also have a real fear of failure because of this. It hasn’t stopped me from meditating, but it has made it difficult.

So I need to work on my self-efficacy when it comes to meditation. Truthfully, it may be half rooted in the fact that I haven’t been this bad at anything I’ve tried in a long time. It’s easy to be confident in familiar activities, but something this foreign tests the belief you have in yourself. While I’m sitting with my eyes closed, all of my self doubt creeps up into my mind—after all there is no noise (stimulation from the outside world) to overcome these thoughts. It is difficult to not think to yourself, I’m not doing this right or I’ll never be like Buddha.

Me at a Buddhist Sanctuary (not sure if I belong)

Luckily, I’m getting plenty of positive influence (some of each of the four influences on self-efficacy) from my weekly class.  I have had a couple of enactive attainments. I’ve found myself in flow, a term which applies very well to mediation, several times. I’ve been able to slip into a Zen trance of clarity for longer lengths of time (several minutes). So that has added to my self-efficacy, as well as the vicarious experience of listening to my classmates’ (there are nine of us in the class) detail their meditation successes. Several of my peers are doing really great and a few are struggling as well. It’s encouraging to hear the experiences of both. If I didn’t hear other people talking about their challenges, I would probably have already given up. It’s such a help to know how other people are fairing.

The teacher of the class is very encouraging and her verbal persuasion builds a great deal of self-efficacy for all of us. She is very understanding, yet she helps us set high goals (I need to be sitting for thirty minutes everyday for one week within the next five weeks—no easy task!). The last of the four influences, physiological state, has an impact as well. When everything becomes quiet and you shut off all stimuli, your body does strange things. You notice your breathing, you notice how fast your heart is beating, and your stomach grumbles. Meditating can really make you anxious. Being good at it helps to curb that from happening, but I often start to feel really anxious. I feel the need to do the dishes and my homework; I begin to worry about work. It’s difficult, but eventually your body begins to enjoy the activity. Your physical body becomes a positive influence to your self-efficacy as it begins to relax. It can be really excellent when you have a great session.

I could go on forever about how motivation plays into mediation. In fact, I’ll probably discuss a few other terms that I missed this week.