The Art of Maintaining Consistent Motivation
At the end of this blog post, you'll find a guided meditation for activating your inner fire. This practice with the fire element is supportive of burning through fears and awakening more motivation in your life.
Is there something you’ve wanted to create, but your focus keeps shifting up and down?
One day you have ample energy, and the next you just want to sleep?
Maintaining consistent motivation can simplify the process of creating anything in your life, from a happy family to a successful business. The fire element shares insights with us about discipline and taking action. Breathing into the fire within can give you those peaks of energy that are necessary to move things forward.
The key to adding the consistency aspect is to also incorporate the teachings of the earth element, which reveals important insights about being grounded in life. Imagine creativity is like electricity that runs through your body. The current of energy wakes you up and sparks motivation for action steps.
That electricity alone is not enough to generate results in whatever it is that you are focusing on. It is necessary to see things being created in the physical realm. Having an idea for a book, as an example, is wonderful. Then it is necessary to make a schedule and continue to write down the information to be able to reach the physical result of a printed book.
Only when you have the creation in physical form will you receive energy from it, like getting payments for your book. Being aware of how these two energies of fire and earth work together can unlock a deeper understanding of why motivation can be sporadic. Fire alone coursing through the body will simply lead to burnout.
However, if you take that inspired idea and flesh it out into a grounded plan, you are essentially using the structure the earth element provides to spread your energy out over time. This prevents fire from coming in and zapping you full of energy and then disappearing. In creating content for Elemental Medicine Healing, I incorporated this teaching.
A few years ago, when making content, I simply took whatever was inspiring me and made blogs and posts. This worked at times, but overall was quite stressful because I had to constantly get inspired about what to share. Sometimes it was easy to create, but most of the time it was a challenge to remain consistent, resulting in a lot of ups and downs in my consistency.
I then made a shift to connect my content creation with the earth. By looking at the seasons of the year, I allocated an element to each month, which separated the year into three-month sections. By this simple shift, I am writing about the same thing, but the structure makes it abundantly easier to tap into elemental wisdom.
When creativity arises, I have already made a plan for where to channel it. With that, when we construct these types of plans, whether it is content creation or an exercise goal, it becomes possible to be aware of how much energy we have to give to any aspect of life. One of the significant reasons why motivation disappears is due to aiming too high.
This is not to say we cannot achieve big goals. Of course, it is possible. It is more probable when we are realistic about where we are as we start. The earth element supports us to look at factors like time, energy, and money. For example, if I only have an hour free per day for exercise, then I can realistically plan how long it will take to become fit enough for a marathon.
Motivation can remain constant with a more realistic approach because we are less likely to fall short and feel like a failure. At times, deeper wounds can have us stuck in these cycles of setting ourselves up for failure. Using the wisdom of the elements, we can break free from these tiring patterns that diminish our true potential.
The Deeper Wounds of Inconsistent Motivation
Those are some surface level ways that we can observe the elements in their interplay with motivation. Let’s dive a little bit deeper to observe some possible root causes for this imbalance with the fire and earth elements. The way that I teach about this practice of observing ourselves through the lens of the elements is that if we are doing something, there is always a reason.
Something about how we are behaving is benefiting us. By communicating with the body, we can discover our hidden motivations. If you start a project of doing artwork but then can never seem to find the time to finish your work, the root cause could be a fear of being seen. This may be linked to traumas in childhood when you tried to be artistic and were made fun of.
The reasoning behind the hidden motivation is unique to each person. It taps into the web of understanding that we each have about ourselves and the world around us. Fire supports us to consciously illuminate fears that may be holding us back. Many fears that are held within the mind are irrational. They come from experiences in childhood.
As a child, many things were labelled as extremely dangerous. Like the example above with the artwork, an adult's perception may be well not everyone is going to like what you create, it is not a big deal. However, to the child, being accepted is linked to their survival instincts. They have not developed enough security within themselves to withstand intense criticism.
Someone disliking them or what they create is connected to not having a community, which essentially means they will not survive. This is all happening unconsciously, underneath the surface. That fear can then reside within the body and have a strong implication in later years of life. Because it is within the unconscious, it can be challenging to see.
Taking the time to observe our behaviours and why there are dips in motivation can unlock these secrets that are connected to the roots of the problem. Once the basis of the behavior is addressed, it becomes much easier to welcome a healthy pattern to take its place. Imagine your body is like a garden. Those older patterns are like well-rooted plants and trees.
If we try and plant new behaviours like seedlings, they can be overshadowed by the already existing plants. Finding these fears is akin to consciously taking out the unwanted plants. Then, when starting a new habit, it is so much easier for it to take root and become a long-standing part of your inner garden.
This approach can seem like the longer road because it takes time to look within and discover what is the root of the blockage. However, in the long run, this saves us a lot of time and energy. The fire within can convince us that we want to get there as fast as possible, and we are running out of time because we are x years old etc.
In truth, these are stories that are coming from the fear within that wants to continue controlling you. It keeps this illusion that a fast-paced approach will lead to more success. Slowing down and grounding yourself in the present moment actually significantly increases your chances of overcoming fears like failure.
Creating Healthy Patterns
The key to overcoming these surface level and deeper imbalances is to bring success and consistency together. Merging these two is where the magic happens. This means not seeing an end result as being successful. Instead, you see the simple act of showing up on a regular basis as being successful in whatever you are doing.
This could be in relation to parenting. There can be ideas in the mind about what it means to be a great parent. Then the fire chimes in with fears about not achieving that vision, which results in feelings of inadequacy until you have become this perfect parent avatar. Bringing earth medicine in can switch that to seeing yourself as a great parent because you consistently show up.
In the end of the day, that is truly what the child remembers, who was there for them. Children are wonderful earth element teachers because they are super present all the time. The bells and whistles of making certain foods or having a specific holiday that you saw someone do with their family on Instagram are sprinkles, they are not the actual cake.
Switching this idea of success has the power to completely transform the ability to remain consistently motivated because it allows for a lot more recognition for the amazing work that you do in life. Getting up and showing up to whatever it is that you are creating in life is something to be celebrated.
Continuing to get up and show up over long periods of time is absolutely amazing. There may be some mistakes in some paintings or spelling errors in your writing, but that is not what matters the most. Those small errors become super tiny when you look back after six months or a year at what you have achieved.
It is funny because by focusing on consistency, naturally, if you do something again and again, you will improve in your skills. Before you know it, you are more successful than you possibly ever imagined you could be. Your creative energy has a clear plan on where it is going, and your fears are put into perspective through having that grounded approach to support you.
Connecting with the wisdom of fire and earth can transform our approach to many areas of life, making the day-to-day lighter and more playful. Wherever you are on your journey, you are doing amazing. The elements are within and around you to support coming into harmony and happiness with whatever creative projects you are manifesting.
Guided Meditation
Activate Your Inner Fire
€3.33
Through a guided inner energy healing practice, this meditation encourages you to harness and amplify your fire energy, enabling you to burn away fears and gain greater clarity about your life's direction and purpose. To fully benefit from this experience, it is recommended to find a quiet, undisturbed space. If you feel called, light a candle or make a fire to enrich your experience.
