In case you didn’t notice, I took the last month off from the blog. This was actually a good thing. I had a great 2024 filled with many wonderful things, including finding my place at a new law firm, editing a legal treatise for LexisNexis, and many new opportunities. The only downside was that I was exhausted by December and, as a result, many of my normal habits fell away.
This means that I have been thinking a lot about motivation lately because I need to get back to my normal habits. As most of us know, January is the perfect time to refresh habits because it is the season of goal-setting and resolutions. I have already picked my word of the year for 2025, so now I just need the energy to execute my plan. This raises the question: how does one bring motivation back?
Motivation Starts with Intention
If I had to answer this question with one word, it would be “intention.” I used to think talk of intention was new age puffery. It made me roll my eyes and wonder what the heck it even meant. “Why did I need to think about intention?” I would think to myself. “I usually know what I am doing.”
Experience, and of course lots of meditation, has shown me that in many cases we do not know at all what we are doing. Sure, we know in the sense that we are generally aware of what is happening and have a vague idea about what we want. But, how often do you actually think about the direction of your life and where it is leading you? How often do you ask what your deep intentions are?
Mindfulness Can Help You Connect with Your Intention
More often, we are embroiled in habits and busy people, like lawyers, can get so distracted by life that we don’t think about how we want to live. For this practical reason, when we want to establish new habits or need to get back to old ones, it helps to reflect on our intention and ask what we want or are trying to achieve.
This is one of the reasons that meditation has become such an important part of my life. Not only does the practice give my nervous system a break, it also allows me some time and mental space to check in with myself, including what I need and what I really want. In fact, it is so important that I have made checking in with my intention the first step when I start meditating.
Motivation Requires a Connection Between Effort and Results
Identifying our intention may be enough to get us started with initial steps, but it won’t last for long by itself. It is commonly said that habits take weeks to form, so a burst of initial energy from a reflection on intention will only get you so far. The next essential step, I find, is often overlooked: we need to create a connection between our effort and the results we week.
In my experience, this connection requires two things:
- a belief that our effort will lead to some kind of positive result; and
- a plan to turn our belief into a reality.
In some cases, belief comes first but sometimes we may need to chart a course to inspire confidence. Last year, I succeeded in losing some weight in a few months. Of course, I had thought about starting for months before but put it off until I started imagining my plan of attack. Once I had a plan, I realized the feat was achievable and it gave me the energy to try.
Sustained Motivation Requires a Good System
Now, anyone who has tried to start a new habit or get back to your wholesome ones knows that energy fades. As you are creating your plan of attack, therefore, it only makes sense to factor in a system that will sustain your motivation.
To do this, you can’t rely on discipline and willpower alone because both of these things wear out quickly and may be heavily taxed by your existing lifestyle and work. If you are a lawyer or other busy professional, your schedule may not be your own. If you are a caregiver in addition to that, many people may depend on you too. This means, at some point, you are going to require support to stick to your good habits.
What Kind of System Supports Motivation?
So, what kind of system supports sustained motivation? For a deep dive on this issue, I highly recommend that you check out Atomic Habits by James Clear. He has a lot of practical tips for changing habits and making the change stick.
In general, though, what you want to do is create a system that offers you support on a practical level. It should reduce the friction and effort needed to overcome it in getting the relevant task accomplished. Ideally, if at all possible, your plan should support your intrinsic desire to do the task. That means increasing your personal enjoyment and satisfaction with the task.
An important way to do this is to track and check your progress and to regularly check in with your intention to remind yourself why you are investing the effort.
Self-Compassion Is Essential
Ideally, when you get back to your new habit, it will be smooth sailing with no major challenges. For most of us, though, challenges and struggles are bound to arise eventually. This is why self-compassion is one tool that is essential to sustaining or renewing motivation.
As I have written before, self-compassion is positively correlated with goal attainment because it supports persistence. When a challenge arises, it is self-compassion that helps us focus on what we need instead of how we failed to measure up. When our energy is depleted, self-compassion is what may help us take the time to rest so we can recover and get back on track.
Just like any other habit, self-compassion is a skill that can be trained over time and it is one that can support you in cultivating other positive habits. For this reason, as you set your intentions and craft plans to motivate yourself for the new year, be sure to include compassion for yourself.
Conclusion: Motivation Can Be Cultivated and Mindfulness Can Help.
This is a great time of year for refreshing habits but don’t fall into the trap of believing that motivation is an elusive energy that changes like the wind. Though motivation can be this way, it can also be something we cultivate with mindfulness and self-compassion. If we connect to our intention and craft a plan that supports our effort, we can cultivate motivation and sustain it over time.
If motivation to start or get back to meditation is what you are looking for this year, check out the downloads on our Resources page, including the Meditation Habit Worksheet based on the principles of Atomic Habits.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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