How do I stay interested in meditation over time?

Pretty much every long-time meditator has experienced times when their motivation or interest waned. Sometimes that's a signal to back off the gas a bit and maybe take a more relaxed approach to meditating for a while. If it starts to feel too forced, we're less likely to continue over the long term.

At the same time, part of what we’re doing when we practice meditation is cultivating the capacity to be with whatever comes up for us, and in this way it’s important that we meditate not only when practicing feels easy and delightful, but also when it’s less enjoyable or downright hard. The trick is to just keep coming back to it, with kindness and curiosity about what's happening in our experience.

Another suggestion to work with this challenge is to consider your intention for yourself when you first started to meditate. What drew you to it in the first place? And what benefits have you noticed in your life since then? Sometimes checking in with our original motivation and the changes we've seen in our life as a result can be helpful in finding our way again.