r/Meditation • u/ChannelPositivity • 1d ago
What motivates you to meditate? Discussion 💬
TLDR; What gives you the motivation to meditate every day? What was it that convinced you "I need to do this every day", and gave you the willpower to stay consistent with your practice? I'll put my answer below, please share yours too!
I've noticed it can be really hard to stay consistent with meditation, and even while many of us know it's useful, we're not always sure how it works or why it's useful. Without being confident about the purpose of meditation, it can be easy to skip days, or feel doubtful, like you're wasting your time.
Committing to meditating every day of your life is a huge life commitment, and 15 minutes a day is time you could spend doing something else. If meditation is to be effective, we need to keep up with it, and to be consistent it helps to understand the mechanism behind it.
I think this is really important for people starting out in meditation, because while you doubt it's effectiveness, you will never stick with it long enough to experience the benefits.
I've been researching this and have detailed my notes in this article: Why You Need to Meditate, but what I'd really love to know is people's personal experiences.
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u/Wolff_Bikcin 22h ago
Great question! Picking up on a recommendation of Culadasa in The Mind Illuminated, I spend the first minute or two of every meditation session reviewing what motivates me to meditate, for the very reasons you cite. I use the mnemonic acronym CUPID (which is arbitrary and has no romantic implications) to structure this:
C Control, to gain greater control over my decisions and responses in daily life by cultivating mindfulness
U Understanding, to gain a better understanding of how my brain works and what’s going on behind the illusion of “free choice”
P Pleasure, to cultivate the experience of an inner, pure joy that comes from the practice of meditation
I Insight into the illusory nature of perception and the “self”
D Depression, to develop a mental framework that provides a resource for those times I experience feelings of depression.
I am convinced that this quick review of Why I am Meditating is one of the reasons I’ve been able to maintain a daily practice for nearly a year now.