Many people are driven by fear and desire. Meditation has been said to enable you to know yourself and find your inner motivation. 

How does this happen?

Step 1: Beginner Meditation

At the beginning, people often meditate because they feel stressed, anxious or worried. Meditation helps them to relax, feel calm and clear the mind.

Step 2: Regular Meditation

When we practice regularly, it goes beyond relaxation. We begin to form deeper connection to ourselves. Meditation becomes a space to reflect, observe and be more aware of our thoughts, emotions, body and energy.

“What is necessary to change a person is to change is awareness of himself”
– Abraham Maslow

It’s about becoming more mindful / aware, which enables us to make wiser choices and change our ways of being, thinking, feeling and doing. 

Our inner motivation may not be what we think it is. We need to explore deeper. 

I’ll like to share an experience of finding my inner motivation. There was a time when I was overworked doing meditation, healing and coaching work under a manipulative team leader. I felt that by stepping out of a typical corporate path onto my own path of coaching, healing and meditation, I had freed myself of the need to prove myself to my father by being a competent and responsible corporate worker.

One afternoon, at the point of exhaustion, I meditated and connected to my inner motivation. The memories of my father and I flashed through from baby till the present. The strained relationship with my father dissolved and I felt the waves of deep love. I also realized that I was still trying to prove myself to my father and that caused me to continue to overwork myself. Through meditation, I released the emotional conflicts and made a wiser decision, stepped out of the toxic work environment and eventually started Xuan Healing Cove. 

In our inner motivation discovery, there are many layers and intertwining motivations. Be open to understand this web of interrelations. 

Back to topic:

How to find inner motivation with meditation? 

You need to meditate mindfully. Here are 3 tips:

Mindful Meditation Tip 1:
Practice awareness of thoughts

In the meditation space, when you are still, you may observe thoughts forming, developing and ending. Be objective in observing these thoughts as they are, and you may begin to get insights into:

• Which are the predominant thoughts
• What’s driving your thinking, emotions, decisions and actions.

Note: what you sense is only a fraction of the whole. Be open that these are not the final answers. Be open to the possibility that your understanding will evolve as you progress in your meditation and evolution as a person. 

Mindful Meditation Tip 2: 
Practice awareness of focus

Being aware of your focus refers to being aware of:

• how long you can focus for
• how, when and where your attention shifts to naturally
• what beliefs/emotions/values are driving your focus to stay and shift

For example, if you observe during meditation that your focus is mainly on the external surroundings (sounds, sights etc) and there’s a voice in your head that is constantly commenting/judging on that, you can go deeper and find out what’s driving this judgement.

If you find your mind focusing naturally on mulling over worries, go deeper and get a sense of what beliefs or emotions are driving you to invest energy into worrying.

Being more aware provides you with the options to let go, change or let it be.

Mindful Meditation Tip 3: 
Practice awareness of insistence

Often, we find it difficult to adapt to changes because we are insistent on something.

During meditation, what you are insisting on may surface. As you meditate, your mind goes into a state of being relaxed and alert (alpha state), where it’s easier to experience this insistence without getting carried away.

In deeper meditation and conscious choices that you make with the new insights, you may possibly loosen or even let go of the insistence. That’s when life begins to change from within.

You’ll only know when you choose to step forward onto a journey to discover and grow.