Many people unfamiliar with mindfulness meditation do so, but it is inaccurate to think of mindfulness meditation as only a state of deep relaxation, as spacing out and tuning out, and as roughly the same thing as sleep. In sleep, we are in a relaxed state that is less conscious than our normal mindstate, but in meditation, we are working towards being in a relaxed state that is more conscious than our normal mindstate. The brain waves of deep meditation are actually those of deep, restful, peaceful, and relaxed sleep and also simultaneously those of energized full alertness as if one were focused and motivated while working on a project while under deadline. This combination is something new, unfamiliar, and perhaps paradoxical to most of us, which is one reason why it usually takes years to understand, cultivate, explore, and develop it.<\/span><\/p>\nThis article also seemed to play off of one of the most common fears that beginner meditators have, which is that it will turn them into a non-responsive dull sack of potatoes. This can be seen as a trick of the ego mind to demand that it maintain control, the classic hindrance of doubt. <\/p>\n
The authors wrote, \u201cthe very notion of motivation \u2014 striving to obtain a more desirable future \u2014 implies some degree of discontentment with the present, which seems at odds with a psychological exercise that instills equanimity and a sense of calm.\u201d Again, it seems to me that the authors do not seem to fully understand mindfulness meditation, its methods, or its goals. Traditionally, in Buddhism, there is delineated a difference between \u201ctanha\u201d motivation, which is motivated by craving, compulsion, tension, and agitation, and \u201cchanda\u201d motivation, which is more spacious and easeful. It is like the difference between compulsively scarfing and gobbling on food, versus dining on food with dignity, presence, and elegance. One can have inner equanimity, letting our inner world flow in a natural, open, and unforced way, while still choosing to take productive and intentional action on the outside.<\/p>\n
To my eyes, yes, mindfulness meditation reduces motivation based on fear, shame, greed, trying to impress others, and other such unhealthy factors, which unfortunately are often what sometimes motivates some people to do their jobs. Once we have spiritually realized to some extent, we are instead motivated by expressing and manifesting waves of energy emanating from and disappearing back into Divine Source. And so meditation increases motivation based on cooperation, ethics, service, generosity, caring, responsibility, wisdom, and love.<\/p>\n
I sometimes say, “Meditation is just simply being ourselves, except more so.” If a work task is healthy and congruent with our soul\u2019s truth and our life purpose, and if it truly helps the other people, meditation may inspire us to deeper engagement. Conversely, if it is unhealthy and wrong for us, or if it is pointless or harmful, we will probably start to want to change something.<\/p>\n
The research study that the article was based on found that participants who meditated said that they felt less motivated to do the study’s fake work tasks. That is probably a good thing, though – I imagine that the meditators were coming from a more tuned-in, deep, authentic, compassionate, and purpose-driven place within themselves, and so doing pointless tasks felt relatively uninteresting. But I imagine that meditators would feel their inspiration arise when it comes to work tasks that actually make a real-world positive difference.<\/p>\n
In general, I think the effect meditation has on people\u2019s self-reported motivation to work during a study is less relevant than the effect it has on their objective productivity at their actual jobs. From the article, it seemed that the \u201cscientists\u201d looked at the former and not the latter. And psychology research has found again and again that objective, external measures of behavior make for better results than subjective self-reports.<\/p>\n
I will admit that, as someone who \u201cteaches mindfulness in the workplace\u201d, one issue that I have with how that sort of practice is generally portrayed is that we promote how small amounts of meditation can make someone less stressed, more focused, and generally more productive, we don’t usually talk about how a journey of intensive meditation meditative work often makes people less productive in the near term.<\/p>\n
One of the things I have seen on the meditative path is, admittedly, things often get worse before they get better. You\u2019re on a hill, you want to get to the mountain top you can see, but you have to walk through a dark valley first. One needs to take a pocket watch apart to clean it, and it can\u2019t tell time while it\u2019s taken apart. To wash clothes and get them clean, the washing machine water has to get dirty first.<\/p>\n
However, once on the mountaintop, once the watch is put back together, once the clothes are clean, a meditator is usually observably more productive, efficient, and competent than they were before the meditative journey. My main teacher Shinzen Young apparently failed his math and science classes in high school, but after years of monastic meditation, his clear focused mind helped him to gain employment as a professor of physics.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that true, sincere, and thorough meditation practice leaves people not as numb, unmotivated zombies, but instead as deeply motivated in a calm, patient, and competent way on things that actually matter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An article in the New York Times alleges that mindfulness in the workplace decreases motivation and therefore is something employers should discourage.\u00a0 I disagree in several ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-4703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-work-and-the-workplace","category-1","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4703"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5651,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703\/revisions\/5651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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