willpower myth

InSights On Willpower – A Societal Fallacy?

Willpower definition:

“Control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.”

‘most of our bad habits are due to laziness or lack of willpower’

‘he summoned his willpower to resist the spell’

Reference: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/willpower

“Energetic determination”

‘Oftentimes, willpower is promoted as the only thing a person needs to improve their health.’

Reference: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willpower

InSights on Willpower

  • You look for energy to pull you in one direction because you feel a thought-created pull in the opposite direction. Therefore, you resist that opposing pull and call this energy willpower. I consider willpower and the supposed need for it a societal fallacy, few ever question it. Here’s an example to give a better understanding of this InSight: Imagine this – You’re on a nutrition plan to lose weight and you start thinking about the cookies in the cupboard that your spouse bought. You now resist the urge that your thought created, which is to go into that cupboard and have a cookie (or 2). So what do you do? You muster up all your willpower to resist doing what you don’t want to do. Now, most people would think they’re resisting the cookies, but in actuality, they’re resisting the thought of eating the cookies. Keep in mind, we only resist a thought because we have labelled it as bad or undesirable. You then attempt to will the thought away with all of your willpower and live in a state of resistance. As the old saying goes, what you resist will persist. The urge/craving will never truly go away. It may feel that way because you’ve suppressed it via resistance, but it will always come back, usually more often than you’d like. Instead of trying to push that thought and subsequent craving away, sit with the thought and feeling without judgment. Accept it as it enters your consciousness, give it permission to be there and don’t fear it or judge it. See it as just a thought, no more and no less, because that is all it is, it cannot hurt you. This will allow you to let the thought go resistance-free and the urge/craving then slowly dissolves on its’ own. And the need for willpower diminishes once we dissolve the source of the resistance.

  • Is will power necessary? Yes, but only when you don’t go deep enough within yourself to dissolve your resistance. Get still and ask yourself: Where is this resistance coming from? What are the thoughts I’m believing that are creating this resistance within me? Who am I to be in order to dissolve this resistance?

  • Willpower is like driving with one foot on the brake and pressing the gas pedal harder while the fuel tank runs out faster, all in an attempt to generate momentum. Wouldn’t it be easier to just let go of the brake (thought) to eliminate friction and conserve fuel? Just a thought. Release attachment to the security of holding on to the brake or gas (thought) and set yourself free to move forward more gracefully instead of forcefully.

  • All emotional resistance within yourself is thought-created. This is helpful to know because when you can see the resistance for what it is, a thought believed, it begins to hold less and less power. Thus, absolving the need to generate power from your will to resist this thought and expend unnecessary additional energy.

  • Willpower doesn’t really seem to be power at all, it more resembles force. We are forcing momentum in a specific direction against a high friction resistance (a resisted thought). Force is needed due to the friction we have created within ourselves via our thoughts.

  • Fighting power with force is exhausting and inefficient, it requires a massive amount of energy. Think of a time when you had to exert a large amount of will power (force) toward something, how did you feel after? Drained? Exhausted? Most likely. Imagine you were able to conserve this energy and direct it toward your creativity instead? How would that feel?

  • Find your stillpower instead of your willpower. Once you experience the power of stillness, your perception of willpower will change forever. Your stillpower is that quiet place within you that is the source for all of your inspiration and wisdom. It’s not forceful like willpower, as force is not needed, it’s resistance-free inspiration, it breathes life into you.

  • Look beyond the thought created resistance that’s taunting you to fire up all of your inner resources and put them toward your willpower, leaving you with little energy left for anything else. When you look beyond these thoughts, there is a quiet space awaiting you, your stillpower. Look toward that and a whole new landscape will arise.

  • Manipulate your environment to eliminate resistance, and therefore the need for willpower. For example, a couple of years ago when I first started implementing a morning ritual, my plan was to start waking up 1 hour earlier than normal. What I did to make this much easier on myself was I manipulated my environment by placing my cell phone across the room. When my alarm went off in the morning, I had to get out of bed in order to shut it off, and if I didn’t shut it off my wife would have killed me, so it left me no choice but to jump out of bed.
self relationship

InSights on Self-Relationship and Self-Discovery

  • What do we do when we want to get to know someone? We spend time with them. If we want to get to know ourselves we must do the same. In a world of deadlines and so-called busyness, most people I know don’t even give themselves 10 minutes of their own time on a daily basis to connect, reflect, and express love for themselves. Make yourself a priority, create a loving foundational relationship with yourself. This lays the groundwork for all other relationships you currently have and create in the future. This is what is needed for any relationship to maintain itself and flourish, whether it be with another or with ourselves.

  • I used to tell myself I wasn’t worth it, until I kissed that self goodbye. I came to the realization that any concept of myself that I deemed unworthy was just a conceptual lie. I made it up. This is also how I rid myself of the perfectionism that plagued me for so long. I no longer see the truth in it that I once used to.

  • Be gentle and compassionate with yourself, this sets the stage for growth and new opportunity.

  • You will stumble, you will fall, get back up and give it your all.

  • I’ve learned more from looking into my own reflection than I did from 14 years of schooling, and it was free.

  • One thing school won’t teach you is the abstract art of looking into your own reflection and discovering the innate wisdom that can only be found through contemplative introspection.

  • If you don’t make time for yourself, don’t come down on others when they don’t make time for you either.

  • Ask yourself: Why does this persons’ action bother me so much? There’s a good chance that you have performed, or still do perform that same action and continue to judge yourself for it. We place a bulls-eye on actions that we judge ourselves for, and we seek these actions everywhere we go. Have you ever noticed that you tend to notice the same actions that bother you, repetitively? Be honest with yourself, and when you discover the truth, be compassionate with yourself and let go of your judgments. You will then begin to notice less and less the action of another that used to bother you. This is all because you recognized it within yourself, that it was you who was bothering you the entire time.

  • You must learn to stand alone without feeling alone before you can stand with solitude amongst the multitude.

  • I’ve been through some shit and I’ve been through some shit, let’s not judge each other. No, that second “I’ve” is not a typo. Until we transcend our self constructs, we associate ourselves with multiple identities. We become chameleons, transforming our identity according to past experiences, who we are surrounded by, who others have judged us to be, who we’ve judged ourselves to be, and our emotional state. We judge all the different identities we have given ourselves as parts of ourselves we like or dislike, yet none of the identities are truth.

  • The depth of our relationship with another can only be as deep as the one we have with ourselves. For example, if you are too afraid to face the source of your guilty feeling, you will feel very uncomfortable in the presence of another who is feeling guilty.
    This discomfort will create a roadblock to new depths for that relationship. We will be comfortable to face with another only that which we have faced within ourselves.

  • Try this: Instead of trying to create a new version of yourself, aim to reveal your true self by taking off the mask of the version that disguised you.

  • We wear many masks over our lifetime, few of us take them off to experience who we really are.

  • We are one truth wearing the mask of many lies.

  • Truth is what remains when we can see that we’re not the chameleon, we’re the creator of the chameleon.