Am I Showing Up, or Just Trying to Get Something?

(air whooshing) (mouse clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (bright music) (light music) Hi there. Welcome to "Radio Headspace." It's Dora. (light music) So a few years ago, I was at a conference and after I finished speaking, someone came up to me. They were super enthusiastic, eyes bright, clearly excited about getting started with meditation, and they said something like, "I'm really ready to start meditating. "I've been reading about how most successful people meditate "and I wanna be more successful, "so I figured I should give it a try," and I smiled, because I understood. It's not a bad reason. It's not wrong to wanna be successful. But something in me also paused because what I heard underneath was, "I'll meditate as long as it makes me successful, "and if it doesn't, I probably won't keep doing it." It was conditional. And that got me thinking about intention, about the why behind the things we do, because our intention, our motivation, that's what controls our actions, and when our intention is conditional, when it's based on getting something in return, we're setting ourselves up for a kind of fragility. (light music) The Buddha had this really beautiful teaching about this. He said that whatever we keep thinking about, whatever we keep turning over in our minds, that becomes the inclination of our awareness. Basically, whatever you focus on grows. Whatever you think about becomes what you see everywhere. So if I'm constantly thinking about success, about achievement, about getting ahead, then every action I take gets filtered through that lens. I start asking, "Will this make me successful? "Will this help me get somewhere?" But there is another way. When our motivation comes from a deeper place, from care, from curiosity, from just wanting to show up and be present with our lives, that's different. We're not doing it to get somewhere. We're doing it because it matters, because we care. One of the simplest ways to bring mindfulness into everyday life is just to pause and ask yourself, "What's my intention here? "Why am I doing this?" Not to judge the answer, but just to know it. (light music) It reminded me of this one time, maybe a year or two into my meditation practice, when I finally started to feel good after meditating. In the beginning, it was painful, but after a while, something shifted. Some practices felt lighter, peaceful, and like anyone would, I started chasing that feeling. I'd sit down to meditate, and then there'd be this, like, subtle expectation of, "Okay, let's feel good today. "Let's get to that calm place." But if you've ever meditated before, you know that every practice is different. It's never the same. Some days you sit down and it's like coming home. Other days, it's like sitting in a room full of bees. Your mind won't settle, your body won't relax, and nothing feels good. And I started getting frustrated, like, "Why isn't this working? "I did everything right....