Today I want to share some thoughts on motivation in the current COVID-19 situation. Working from home is the new reality for many of us, and I find that motivation is a big topic for both myself and my students. This situation really leads us to question what our motivation really is, which I think is a good thing. At the same time, it is not easy. Normally we are often motivated simply by being in a context that expects a certain work from us, and it happens more or less automatically. Now in this situation the motivation has to come from within, and it has to withstand countless sources of distraction that varies from the news to kids (depending on your situation) and everything in-between.
I find the current Lojong slogan I am working with quite helpful in this respect: slogan 24 says: "Change your attitude but remain natural." Changing your attitude refers traditionally to working with your mind so it is not so much focused on hope and fear for yourself, and instead more occupied with care for others. This care for others is not so much primarily about what you do, but rather about the motivation with which you do things. For example, when you sweep the floor, you can do this with the motivation that it makes a cleaner world for all living beings, and even maybe that it clears away all the infections that beings are currently suffering from. In this way, every single thing you do can become something inspiring and meaningful. In a recent podcast, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also expressed this idea very well when she talked about how we can relate to COVID-19 not so much in terms of our hopes and fears, but rather in terms of what we can learn from it. "remain natural" refers to not displaying these efforts in an attempt to appear like the most amazingly compassionate person--because then it becomes again a self-aggrandizing effort. And besides the fact that the point of the Buddhist path is to reduce this tendency of ours to want to increase our ego, a more important reason to not want that is that whenever we engage in self-aggrandization it is also causes a lot of fear. It is more helpful to ask "how can I serve?" than to ask "how can this serve me to get ahead or to get appreciated."
I have been reflecting on these ideas in the last few days, and I found that what helps me to stay motivated (while I live and work pretty much by myself and spend about 10 hours a day in front of my computer screen) is to go back to the question "what is my motivation?" again and again. I am striving to cultivating this memory more and more, because if I reach for a new binge (my weak spot currently) and I ask "what is my motivation?" then it is just to get entertainment. If I instead work on a paper and I inquire about my motivation, then it is to help my students, or even bigger, science, ahead. If I dance, then I can do this with a motivation to nurture my body and mind, and maybe even to make others happy who see my dancing. If I post on social media, I can do this to get the likes, or instead I can just do it to benefit others without hoping for anything in return. In all these cases, the latter motivation is the bigger one and the more sustainable one.
The main thing is to keep investigating your motivation instead of just going on autopilot.It is not easy to stay with the bigger motivation to benefit the world--or to be the best person I can be, as someone put it beautifully today--but it is a beautiful aspiration!
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| picture taken on the Manali-Leh highway in India |
I find the current Lojong slogan I am working with quite helpful in this respect: slogan 24 says: "Change your attitude but remain natural." Changing your attitude refers traditionally to working with your mind so it is not so much focused on hope and fear for yourself, and instead more occupied with care for others. This care for others is not so much primarily about what you do, but rather about the motivation with which you do things. For example, when you sweep the floor, you can do this with the motivation that it makes a cleaner world for all living beings, and even maybe that it clears away all the infections that beings are currently suffering from. In this way, every single thing you do can become something inspiring and meaningful. In a recent podcast, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also expressed this idea very well when she talked about how we can relate to COVID-19 not so much in terms of our hopes and fears, but rather in terms of what we can learn from it. "remain natural" refers to not displaying these efforts in an attempt to appear like the most amazingly compassionate person--because then it becomes again a self-aggrandizing effort. And besides the fact that the point of the Buddhist path is to reduce this tendency of ours to want to increase our ego, a more important reason to not want that is that whenever we engage in self-aggrandization it is also causes a lot of fear. It is more helpful to ask "how can I serve?" than to ask "how can this serve me to get ahead or to get appreciated."
I have been reflecting on these ideas in the last few days, and I found that what helps me to stay motivated (while I live and work pretty much by myself and spend about 10 hours a day in front of my computer screen) is to go back to the question "what is my motivation?" again and again. I am striving to cultivating this memory more and more, because if I reach for a new binge (my weak spot currently) and I ask "what is my motivation?" then it is just to get entertainment. If I instead work on a paper and I inquire about my motivation, then it is to help my students, or even bigger, science, ahead. If I dance, then I can do this with a motivation to nurture my body and mind, and maybe even to make others happy who see my dancing. If I post on social media, I can do this to get the likes, or instead I can just do it to benefit others without hoping for anything in return. In all these cases, the latter motivation is the bigger one and the more sustainable one.
The main thing is to keep investigating your motivation instead of just going on autopilot.It is not easy to stay with the bigger motivation to benefit the world--or to be the best person I can be, as someone put it beautifully today--but it is a beautiful aspiration!
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