How can I feel motivated?

I was having a hard time with school. During my first year of high school, the Covid-19 pandemic shut my classes down, and everything went online. As the school year continued, my grades declined. I didn’t feel motivated to finish any of my work, and I failed a bunch of classes. This wasn’t good, because I needed a certain number of credits to graduate. I started to be stressed and anxious about making it to the next grade level and graduating on time. 

I called a Christian Science practitioner to help me pray about this. I’ve always prayed about things and called a practitioner when I’ve had a challenge, so I was looking forward to the problem being resolved as we prayed together. The practitioner told me that I could go forward without any fear of classes, the pandemic, or anything else because God, who is Love, is loving and guiding me. She also reminded me that because God is perfect and I am God’s expression, I’m also perfect. There are no mistakes in God, so there are no mistakes possible in me. God creates only spiritual perfection. And that includes the ability to effortlessly express God’s perfect order, harmony, and intelligence. 

I started to be stressed and anxious about making it to the next grade level and graduating on time.

She also shared a hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal. It begins:

We talked about how this is much more than just a nice hymn we sing in Christian Science Sunday School—it’s a prayer. And it’s about how God is meeting our needs right where we are, including giving us motivation and joy. Speaking with the practitioner and talking about this hymn made me feel peaceful about the situation, and I didn’t feel stressed and worried anymore.

As the lockdown ended and school started up again, things began to get easier. I made a few friends and was doing better in school, but I was still struggling with finding the motivation to do the work needed to get my grades up. 

AARON CRANFORD — STAFF

Two months before the end of the school year, the principal gave me a deadline for turning in the work I hadn’t completed. I knew I couldn’t finish everything if I was just relying on my own efforts. So every time I hit a roadblock while doing my schoolwork, I prayed. I knew that as God’s reflection, I already had what I needed, because God is omnipresent and all-knowing. It helped me to remember that God was the strength and intelligence behind my efforts.

I ended the school year with decent grades, and I was so grateful. But I still had to attend summer school to make up the rest of the credits I’d lost. I wasn’t looking forward to it, because I was used to enjoying the summer holidays—relaxing and attending camp.

Remembering what I’d been praying about, though, I took summer school one day at a time and really felt the inspiration from God that I needed to get me through each day. It was such a relief to pass both sessions of summer school.

After that, I got to do an internship at a Christian Science nursing facility. I loved every minute of it! I really felt useful as I expressed spiritual qualities like orderliness, patience, punctuality, and joy. And it was easy to be motivated, since these qualities come from God and have God’s power behind them. The internship went well, and I know that was because of all the praying I’d done leading up to and during it and all the ways I’d been expressing these qualities in my schoolwork.

This experience wasn’t easy, but it helped me grow spiritually and showed me what it means to express God as His idea. It taught me that even when I’m having to do a lot of hard work, I can still find joy, because God is the source of that joy.