Self-discipline: Willpower

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength or knowledge, but rather of will. Vince Lombardy.

La definition of self-discipline is an example of what can be achieved with its application: it is the training and monitoring of oneself to carry out personal improvement.

Willpower is not a buzzword these days. You have surely seen many advertisements that try to position their products as a substitute for willpower. They start by saying that willpower doesn't work and then they try to sell you something "quick and easy" like a diet pill or some wacky exercise equipment. Often times, they even guarantee impossible results in a remarkably short period of time; it's a safe bet because people who lack willpower probably won't take the time to return these useless products.

But be clear about one thing ... willpower works. However, in order to take full advantage of its potential, you must learn what you can and cannot do. People who say that willpower doesn't work are trying to use it in a way that is beyond their capabilities.

What is willpower?

Willpower is your ability to establish a course of action and say, "Go ahead!"

Willpower provides a powerful but temporary boost.

Willpower is the spearhead of self-discipline. To use an analogy I will use World War II as an example; the will would be D-Day, the invasion of Normandy. It was the great battle that changed the course of the war despite the fact that it took another year to reach VE Day (Victory in Europe). Making that kind of effort every day of the war would have been impossible.

Willpower is a concentration of force. You collect all your energy and make a big push forward. You strategically attack your problems at their weakest points until you crack them, allowing you enough room to maneuver deeper into their territory and finish them off.

Application of Willpower

The application of willpower includes the following steps:

1. Choose your goal
2. Create a plan of attack
3. Execute the plan

Willpower can take its time in phases 1 and 2, but when you get to step three, you have to hit hard and fast.

Don't try to cope with your problems and challenges in such a way that you demand enormous willpower every day. Willpower is unsustainable. If you try to use it for a long time, you will get burned. It requires an energy level that can be maintained only for a short period of time… in most cases the fuel is used up in a matter of days.

Willpower is used to create and self-sustain momentum.

What is the best way to apply it? How can you avoid falling back into old patterns?

The best way to use willpower is to establish a base camp so that new advancements can be made with much less effort than the initial push. Remember D-Day. Once the allies had established a base camp on the beach, the road was much easier for them. It was much easier to try to maintain concentration, energy, and coordination once the initial effort was made that cost so many lives but that was the beginning of the end of World War II.

So the proper use of willpower is to establish a starting point in such a way that it is easier to keep moving forward.

EXAMPLE

I am going to expose all of the above, along with a concrete example.

Let's say your goal is to lose 10 kilos. You try to go on a diet. It takes willpower, and you do it for the first week. But after a few weeks you have fallen back into old habits and regained all the weight lost weeks ago. You try again with different diets, but the result remains the same. You can't maintain momentum long enough to achieve your ideal weight.

That was to be expected because willpower is temporary. It is for sprints, not marathons. Willpower requires mindfulness, and mindful concentration wears out an awful lot, it can't be sustained for long. Something will finally distract you.

Here's how to tackle that same goal with correct application of willpower. You have accepted that only a short burst of willpower can be applied ... maybe a few days. Then it disappears. So you better use that willpower to modify the territory around you, in such a way that maintaining momentum will not be so hard.

So we sat down to make a plan. This does not require a lot of energy, and work can be spread over many days.

You identify all the various goals that you will need if you want to have any chance of success. First of all, all junk food has to come out of your kitchen, including everything you have a tendency to overeat, and it has to be replaced with foods that will help you lose weight, such as fruits and vegetables. Second, you know that you are going to be tempted by fast food if you come home hungry and have nothing ready to eat, so you decide to make food for a week to anticipate this scenario; every weekend. That way you will always have something in the fridge. You have set aside a multi-hour block each weekend to buy food and cook all the food for the week. Also, you buy a good cookbook of healthy recipes. You set up a weight chart and place it on the wall in your bathroom. You get a decent scale on which you can measure weight and body fat percentage. You make a food list (5 breakfasts, 5 lunches and 5 dinners), and you put it in the fridge. And so on …. All of this goes into the written plan.

Then you make preparations according to your action plan. You can probably make the plan preparations in one day. Eliminate unhealthy foods from the kitchen. You buy the new foods, you buy the new cookbook, you get a weight scale and you make the list of meals. You select the recipes and cook a batch of food for the week.

At the end of the day, you have not used your willpower directly, but have set the conditions that will make your diet easy to follow. When you wake up the next morning, you will find that your surroundings drastically changed according to your plan. Your fridge will be stocked with plenty of healthy convenience foods to eat. You will have a regular block of time devoted to shopping and food preparation. It still takes some discipline to stick to your diet, but things have already changed so much that it won't be as difficult as it would be without these changes.

Don't use willpower to attack your problems directly. Use willpower to attack the environmental and social obstacles that perpetuate the problem. Establish a starting point and then strengthen your position (that is, make it a habit, for example, doing a "30-Day Challenge"). The habit of action puts you on automatic pilot so that you achieve success in whatever you set your mind to.

This post is the third part of a series of 6 articles on self-discipline: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | Part 6

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