Self - Discipline: Willpower

Self - Discipline: Willpower
The difference between a successful person
and others is not a lack of strength, not a
lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
– Vince Lombardi
Willpower — such a dirty word these days.
How many commercials have you seen that
attempt to position their products as a
substitute for willpower? They begin by telling
you that willpower doesn’t work and then
attempt to sell you something “fast and
easy” like a diet pill or some wacky exercise
equipment. Often they’ll even guarantee
impossible results in a dramatically short
period of time — that’s a safe bet because
people who lack willpower probably won’t
take the time to return these useless
products.
But guess what… willpower does work. But in
order to take full advantage of it, you must
learn what it can and cannot do. People who
say willpower doesn’t work are trying to use
it in a way that’s beyond its capabilities.
What Is Willpower?
Willpower is your ability to set a course of
action and say, “Engage!”
Willpower provides an intensely powerful yet
temporary boost. Think of it as a one-shot
thruster. It burns out quickly, but if directed
intelligently, it can provide the burst you need
to overcome inertia and create momentum.
Willpower is the spearhead of self-discipline.
To use a World War II analogy, willpower
would be D-Day, the Normandy Invasion. It
was the gigantic battle that turned the tide of
the war and got things moving in a new
direction, even though it took another year to
reach VE Day (Victory in Europe). To make
that kind of effort every day of the war would
have been impossible.
Willpower is a concentration of force. You
gather up all your energy and make a
massive thrust forward. You attack your
problems strategically at their weakest points
until they crack, allowing you enough room to
maneuver deeper into their territory and finish
them off.
The application of willpower includes the
following steps:
Choose your objective
Create a plan of attack
Execute the plan
With willpower you may take your time
implementing steps 1 and 2, but when you
get to step 3, you’ve got to hit it hard and
fast.
Don’t try to tackle your problems and
challenges in such a way that a high level of
willpower is required every day. Willpower is
unsustainable. If you attempt to use it for too
long, you’ll burn out. It requires a level of
energy that you can maintain only for a short
period of time… in most cases the fuel is
spent within a matter of days.
Use Willpower to Create Self-Sustaining
Momentum
So if willpower can only be used in short,
powerful bursts, then what’s the best way to
apply it? How do you keep from slipping back
into old patterns once the temporary
willpower blast is over?
The best way to use willpower is to establish
a beachhead, such that further progress can
be made with far less effort than is required
of the initial thrust. Remember D-Day — once
the Allies had established a beachhead, the
road ahead was much easier for them. It was
still challenging to be sure, especially with
the close quarters fighting among hedge rows
in France before the Rhino Tanks began
plowing through them, but it was a lot easier
than trying to maintain the focus, energy, and
coordination of a full scale beach invasion
every single day for another year.
So the proper use of willpower is to establish
that beachhead — to permanently change the
territory itself such that it’s easier to
continue moving on. Use willpower to reduce
the ongoing need for such a high level of
sustained force.
An Example
Let’s put all of the above together into a
concrete example.
Suppose your objective is to lose 20 pounds.
You attempt to go on a diet. It takes
willpower, and you do OK with it the first
week. But within a few weeks you’ve fallen
back into old habits and gained all the weight
back. You try again with different diets, but
the result is still the same. You can’t sustain
momentum for long enough to reach your
goal weight.
That’s to be expected though because
willpower