FAMILY MATTERS

Staying Motivated:

An Essential Inner Skill for Adults and Children

In recent columns, we've been discussing how both adults and children can be skillful with their inner self.

The Key Points So Far

More than anything else, the happiness, love, and success in your life will depend on how skillful you are. This is true for kids and grown-ups alike.

Consequently, it's really important to help yourself and your children to become increasingly competent at more and more things. That's what gives you a steep learning curve at home and at work, rather than a shallow or even a flat one. You cannot change where you happen to be in life at this moment, but what is within your power is how much you learn and grow from here.

There are two kinds of skills. Outer skills are aimed at the world outside our skin, and they range from an infant holding a bottle to adults managing email, running a meeting, negotiating who's going to do the dishes, or doing estate planning for an aging parent. Inner skills are directed at your own mind, at both your moment to moment experience of living - all those thoughts and attitudes and feelings and desires bubbling away - and your longer-term patterns of personality.

While it's natural to assume that we can't do much about our reactions and personality tendencies, in fact every one of us was born with amazing abilities to change how we look at the world, turn negative feelings into positive ones, lift up mood, heal bumps and bruises from childhood, cultivate virtues, and build up more determination and willpower. In short, there are many easy, proven ways to train your own brain so that it is clearer and calmer, and more purposeful, energized, peaceful, and happy.

Therefore, while outer skills are hugely important, it is actually the inner skills, the ones directed at your own interior - where you live, 24/7 - that make the greatest difference in your quality of life, effectiveness at home and work, and contributions to others. It's hard to budge the world very much, but you actually have tremendous influence over how you approach it and react to it - it just takes some skillfulness with your own mind.

Books on lowering stress, relationships, self-help, recovery, psychology, and spirituality are full of methods for working with your own mental processes. In fact, there are so many different approaches that it can feel a little overwhelming. But what they have in common is actually quite simple and very interesting: they all rely upon one or more of these inner skills:

Self-awareness

Letting go

Insight

Taking in positive experiences

Staying motivated

These five skills are essential for several reasons. First, they are necessary; without them, little coping or growth is possible. Second, they are the boiled-down essence of the ways that humans have learned to handle stress and suffering, and to reach for the highest fulfillment, self-actualization, and spiritual development. And third, they operate within the core of your own being, within your own essential nature; they enable you to change you in subtle but profound ways; they are the unique birthright of every human, found nowhere else among all the other living creatures on Earth.

These inner skills are natural, common-place, everyday abilities. Everyone can do them. In the past four columns, we've covered Self-Awareness, Letting Go, Insight, and Taking In for both kids and their parents, with lots of practical ways to learn and use the skills in different situations. In this column, we'll address Staying Motivated.

By Your Own Bootstraps

There's a quasi-joke about counseling that's actually quite profound:

"Question: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change."

By helping ourselves and our children to continue to want to do the right thing, to keep pulling weeds in the garden of the mind and keep planting flowers and fruit trees in their place -- yes, that's how we stay on track in life, and there's nothing more central to inner fulfillment and worldly success.

Think of virtue, resolve, determination, ambition, commitment, and purposefulness as skills, not static character traits. Then the question becomes: How can I get more skillful at virtue, resolve, etc.? Suddenly you have opportunities; the field moves wide open. There are so many effective ways to help yourself stick with your virtues and good purposes, and we've summarized them below.

Are You On Your Own Side?

To pursue what would be better for you - the whole point of staying motivated - you have to care about the person who will be experiencing the benefits of a better life: in other words, YOU.

Therefore, there's a fundamental question of whether you are for yourself, whether you are on your own side.

For some, this comes naturally, while others - especially those who were criticized, neglected, or shamed a lot as children, or otherwise have developed a sense of learned helplessness - have to work at it. If you don't have a bone-deep commitment to your own well-being, please try one or more of these ways to cultivate the attitude of being for oneself:

Reflect on how getting more on your own side will help other people, especially the ones you care about most.

For example, bring to mind some aspect of your life, or some way that you are, that would clearly get better if you were more on your own side, if your own frustrations and dreams mattered more.

Then consider how those improvements in your well-being and functioning would contribute to others.

Reflect on your natural, basic goodwill toward others. Reflect on how you want to treat them with ordinary consideration, fairness, respect, and kindness.

Let these ideas become feelings in your body, feelings of simple consideration and decency toward others.

Now take the bird's eye view and get a sense of yourself as another one of the people on the planet. Perhaps imagine meeting yourself in a group, in a work setting, as a neighbor, etc. Try to apply the same standards of fairness and decency toward yourself that you would naturally apply to anyone: why not you, too? Try to bring the same feelings of care and goodwill to yourself that you would naturally bring to other people.

Consider your own child or children, or other children you know, or children in general. Call to awareness the sense, the feelings, of caring for children. Let it fill you.

Now get a sense of yourself as a little child many years ago. Then try to apply those feelings of caring for any child . . . to the child that you once were. Imagine what you would do if you could go back in time and be good to the little girl or boy you were.

Next, sense that child still inside you, still residing in the deepest layers of your psyche, in the residues of all the lived experiences of your first ten or twenty years. Then apply those feelings of caring, of sweetness, tenderness, even love, to that child within your own brain. Soak in this experience. Allow any feelings of sadness that might come up with this to be there and add to the sweetness, the tenderness of your feelings for yourself.

Keep staying with that child as we use the fourth method: lovingkindness.

Using whatever words you like, think thoughts to yourself that wish that child well, using the form: "May you ____________ ." Such as, "May you be happy. May you be at peace. May you be well. May your heart be at ease. May your body be at ease." Perhaps also think of specific wounds or needs in that child, and offer lovingkindness that is related to those.

Now give that child a hug . . . and let him or her go . . . and bring to mind your adult self. Extend lovingkindness to yourself today. You can experiment with different forms, like "May I feel good about who I am" or even address yourself in the third person: "May you, John (or Susan) feel good about who you are." You can use both all-purpose statements - like "May I stay healthy" - and ones specific to particular needs or issues, like "May I release my anger. May I stay cool with the kids. May I think before speaking."

In particular, whenever you do lovingkindness practices, try to feel your good wishes emotionally, and as true intentions for yourself and others.

Set Your Course

Naming the virtues, good purposes, and actions that you want to pursue is like setting a compass heading for your life. Then you know what you're aiming at -- and when you are succeeding and when you are falling short.

Identify basic virtues for you and your children to live by, like generosity, honesty, forbearance, courage, and grit. In previous generations, virtues were discussed routinely at school, church, and in public life, but these days we need to make them explicit. Without shaming or self-righteousness, talk with children about virtues, both ones that are already strengths and ones that could use some developing. Frankly, kids are naturally egocentric and selfish, so be prepared to offer a good explanation as to what's in it for them to practice a particular virtue; for example: "If you are generous and share your toys, other kids will share their toys with you. Plus you will probably feel good about yourself inside."

Think of major areas of your life, like Health, Spirituality, Love, Pleasure, Marriage, Childrearing, Career, Creative Expression, Finances, etc.

Then put them in a list in priority order. Sorry, no ties are allowed. (Think of this as an exercise; in real life we tend to pursue multiple priorities.) One way to do this is, ask yourself if you could have just one of those priorities fulfilled, which would it be; OK, then take that one off the table and repeat the question with the remaining priorities.

When you have your priority list, take an honest look at it, and tell the truth to yourself about how you are and how you are not living your life accordingly. Most of us have to wince a little when we contemplate the gulf between our real priorities and how we actually spend our time. It's OK to feel abashed, chagrined, or remorseful. Let those feelings become a conviction that you want to live truer to your real priorities, and let the feeling of that conviction really sink in.

Take out a piece of paper and head it with something like: "Dos and Don'ts," "How To Make My Life Work," "Admonitions to Myself," "My Precepts," "I Agree To," etc. Whatever works for you

On that page, toward the top, create a sub-heading: "Daily." Under it, list, in your own way of saying it, bottom-line do's and don'ts for yourself that you want to do each day or always. Like:

Don't smoke

Go to bed early enough to get up to meditate the next morning.

Meditate

Don't sneak sweets

Do not speak or act out of anger

No spanking

Be loving and affectionate with my mate

Spend 15+ minutes of quality time with each child

Don't let Bob/Mary get to me

No dope

No alcohol

Play the piano

Read something spiritual

Re-center myself at every meal

Don't agonize about it. Most of us know immediately what should be on that list. We've thought about it enough!

Now create a new sub-heading: Weekly. This list is for things that you don't do daily but want to do at least once a week. Like practicing your tennis serve, or exercising three times a week, or taking on a dinner or two instead of your wife doing it, or initiating sex with your husband (!). You know the drill; just take a few minutes to write down specific things.

Then there's one last sub-heading: Monthly. This is for those few remaining activities that you want to do less often than weekly but at least once a month. Like have people over for dinner. Or do something neat with your spouse. Or take a one-day class in some aspect of personal growth.

Reflect On The Benefits

We are naturally drawn to pursue what is enjoyable and rewarding. So bringing to mind the pleasures and the pay-offs of our desired virtues and priorities and practices is an easy way to tilt toward the good life, like always walking downhill.

Reflect on the benefits to yourself of living from a virtue or purpose. Do things to keep those benefits in mind (e.g., pictures of healthy people on the refrigerator, a list of reasons on a bathroom mirror for lightening up and not sweating the small stuff).

Reflect on the benefits to others of you living from a particular virtue or good purpose. Really try to have positive feelings about those benefits, not just passing thoughts.

Consider the costs to yourself and to others of not living from virtue, wise priorities, and your Dos and Don'ts list. Allow yourself to feel any appropriate remorse or guilt, and then use those feelings to keep you on a wholesome course.

Commit Yourself

When you put yourself on the line, when you commit yourself, a kind of magic happens in which all your energies concentrate at a single point, like the rays of ordinary sunlight focused through a magnifying glass to ignite a great blaze.

Privately "take precepts," give yourself admonitions, or make a vow to yourself or to God.

Declare yourself publicly and commit yourself to others. For instance, make a solemn promise to a significant person that you will stick with a commitment (e.g., routine exercise, no junky sweets, less alcohol, daily meditation) unless you specifically tell him or her that you have changed that commitment.

Get a little angry at the tendencies, addictions, sloth, etc. that arise in the mind to divert you from your virtue or purpose.

Write a letter to yourself to be read if you start to fade in your commitment.

If it works for you, imagine a friend, teacher, group of people, body of teaching (e.g., the Bible, Buddhadharma), or perhaps spirit or God, who stand for virtues or purposes you want to live by, and basically, do what they tell you to do.

In general, surrender to your highest virtues and purposes. Give yourself over to them and let them run your life. In a deep sense, real will is surrender to a higher purpose.

Like A Carrot Before A Horse

The mind keeps pursuing the purposes that are set before it.

Do things that remind you of your highest intentions. For example, in the morning, write out some key purposes for yourself for the day. Or at the end of the day, write in a journal, perhaps in a structured format (e.g., How did I live by my highest purposes today? How did I not? What do I want to focus on tomorrow?). Post intentions, admonitions, inspiring quotes from others, or motivating pictures where you will see them regularly. Name your highest commitments to yourself just before sleep and upon waking.

Notice the benefits that come your virtues and purposes. Really soak in the experience of those benefits so that you will naturally be attracted in that direction in the future.

At special times like your birthday or the advent of the new year, or really any time at all, make a collage out of words and pictures. It's not about the art of it, but rather about finding messages that move you.

If feelings or desires come up that would divert you from a commitment - like a craving for a food or the urge to turn the alarm off and skip the gym this morning - notice them as an experience . . . and then just ignore them. You could think or say to yourself things like: "It's just a craving, it's just sloth or laziness . . . SO WHAT?!"

Make It Easy For Yourself

Life's a marathon, not a sprint. To sustain you down that very long road:

Seek "good company." This includes: friends who support you; an exercise buddy; mentors/ teachers who inspire you; communities of like-minded people; routine involvement in a church, synagogue, runner's group, meditation class, etc.

Prime the pump: do things that put yourself in a place where it is easier, or you are more inclined, to do the right thing (e.g., go to bed sooner, meditate or read inspirational/spiritual literature in the morning).

Create routines that embody your virtues and good purposes - like a blessing before a meal, a regular volunteer commitment on the first Saturday morning of each month, or ten minutes of yoga after coming home from work - and which are woven into the fabric of daily life so they're easy to do, and so the people you live with expect you to do them.

Remove temptations (e.g., don't bring alcohol into the house, stay out of the dessert aisle at the supermarket, put the alarm clock across the room from the bed so you have to get up to turn it off).

As a broad principle: do activities that intensify the will, like concentration practices, exercise, intense physical activity, or doing at least one thing each day that opposes a habit or tendency in yourself.

Take things one day at a time. Or make an agreement with yourself that you will do things a certain way for a specific amount of time, and then reevaluate.

* * *

While each of the five essential inner skills covers a lot of ground and might seem a little overwhelming, getting good at it is just like getting good at anything else, whether it's learning how to bake a turkey, or change a tire . . . or diaper. Like most things, if you keep working at it, you'll get better at it. Just keep planting a few seeds of skillfulness each day, and you'll harvest the fruits for the rest of your life.