Heard people say: “I want to start running in the morning, I want to quit smoking, I need to lose weight.” But willpower is not enough. That is, there is a will, but its strength is weak. Is it possible to cultivate willpower in yourself?
Will — the ability of a person to achieve his goals in the face of overcoming obstacles. You can call the will — the power part of the personality, which is always valued in a person. It looks especially beautiful when, regardless of any difficulties, the goal is achieved.
Where there is no will, there is no way. B. Shaw
So, the will helps us on the path of life. Then the question is any will or only having force. And what is it?
Strength of will…. And there is no definition. That is, there are many understandings of what it is, but there is no clear and understandable definition. For example, someone understands willpower as its quantity. But in what units is it measured? If a stupid child stubbornly and persistently hits your favorite sideboard with a hammer, moreover, the number of repetitions is surprising, regardless of any punishment, then we can say that he has a lot of willpower? Okay, a very strong-willed child, but how is this different from — stubbornness?
Sometimes motivation is understood as willpower, which is also not entirely true. Willpower is in the person himself, and motivation can be external, for example, a salary increase — it increases motivation well, but not willpower.
Another understanding. Willpower is the ability to convince yourself. Tell why you need to do something, what it will give, what it will save you from. Again, it looks like self-motivation. In addition, you can have such conversations for a long time, and convince yourself of anything, but nothing can be done as a result. Many persuaded and promised themselves not to eat at night. So what? After another midnight visit to the refrigerator, they postponed this event for the next month, and preferably after the New Year. Convinced — yes, but the willpower was not enough to resist.
To develop a definition, I will first propose to separate the concepts of “will” and “strength”.
The definition of what is will is given. Force is a source of energy of movement, activity, phenomenon. Now we connect.
Willpower is an internal source of energy that allows a person to achieve their goals in the face of overcoming obstacles.
For clarity, I will give a metaphorical explanation. For example, a human muscle is weak, but it still works. A person can easily lift their usual weight — a barbell of 50 kg. — this is will, since there is an obstacle — weight, or rather gravity, there is a goal — to lift weight, overcoming gravity. But if the weight is not made familiar, but large, for example, 80 kg. Then you need — a lot of muscle strength, the degree of its tension should increase. Perhaps the weight will be taken, but there may not be enough muscle strength — willpower, because it is not trained, that is, as a source of energy, movement, it is not ready to lift 80 kg.
Continuing the analogy, I admit that willpower can be trained in the same way as muscles, that is, by regular repetition with setting more difficult tasks. By the way, the analogy is very appropriate, since nothing develops willpower like regular exercise. Who can say that real athletes are not strong-willed people?
Muscles grow slowly, but if you exercise, you will see their strength. They will increase in volume and be able to lift large weights. Also with willpower, it increases slowly, but after a while, what seemed impossible before is quickly overcome by a slight effort of will. For example, think about what for you at the moment is just a feat or seems impossible? Get up at 6 in the morning, go to bed early, start jogging in the morning, join the gym and visit regularly, learn a foreign language, get a second higher education? Start doing this, at first do not load yourself too much. If this is a run, then just as much as you can, then increase the distance. I am sure that after two months of regular training, it will be easy to run physically, but most importantly, even if you don’t really want to, then with a slight effort of will, you will quickly set yourself up and run with pleasure. And fat and lethargic people will look at you and argue: “what kind of willpower you need to have in order to run regularly and look so good.” They do not yet understand what willpower is. Let them read this article.