So what's all this about willpower?

Many people believe they could improve their lives if only they had more of that mysterious thing called willpower. With more self-control we would all eat right, exercise regularly, avoid alcohol, save for retirement, stop procrastinating, and achieve all sorts of noble goals.

There are three necessary components for achieving objectives:

1) You need to establish the motivation for change and set a clear goal.

2) You need to monitor your behavior toward that goal.

3) Then there is will power. Whether your goal is to lose weight, reduce alcohol intake, study more, or spend less time on Facebook, willpower is a critical step to achieving that outcome.

At its essence, willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. And there are good reasons to do so.

Defining willpower

We have many common names for willpower: determination, drive, resolve, self-discipline, self control. We can define it as;

• The ability to delay gratification, resisting short term temptations in order to meet long term goals.

• The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse

• The ability to employ a 'cool' cognitive system of behavior rather than a 'hot' emotional system

• Conscious, effortful regulation of the self by the self

So if you find you have good will power in some parts of your life and not in others, you want to start questioning why?  Doing this without judgment nor criticism. Let’s use the example about getting to a healthy weight and allowing your best optimal health. This is a typical scenario that I have witnessed from time to time; In the morning you wake up, just a short time before you have to start work, you don’t have time to make breakfast but you have time to have a coffee, then you start getting into your work, your calendar is full, there is no time for lunch and you didn’t have enough time to make lunch, you think, ‘It’s OK, I can plough through this!”. The afternoon comes, you are starving so you start walking around the office, taking the chocolates out of the bowls at the reception desk, the cookies out of the cupboards, you feel better for a bit, then your blood sugar crashes, you start to feel tired, so you go and make yourself another coffee, get back on another call then boom! You are starving. You leave the office in search of food or you call DoorDash - you order, Carb heavy, it’s the only thing that will do! You have 5-10 minutes of pleasure inhaling the food then the judgment starts to come in, ‘Why did I do that? I was having such a good day!

Is that true?

If you are not planning for your health and wellbeing I can tell you right now that no one else has your good health at heart. The food system is fast, it’s unhealthy and it’s quite toxic. You need to have a very good plan if you want to outsmart the system.

So you need to start exploring what gets in the way of shopping, planning, meal planning, cooking, putting in some exercise every day, meditating, drinking an optimal amount of water and getting 7-8 hours of sleep.

To assist your willpower you need to prioritize yourself, create boundaries with your schedule, with your friends, get your sleep in, it takes reorganization - you are the priority not the system.

If you don’t change your priorities, your will power will have to be so strong, it will feel like pushing a huge boulder up a hill, this we call false will, when things feel just too hard and they come from your mind and ego. If you want to reach deeper, for something more permanent, then you need to come from the heart, from true will, from your being, from a true place of consciousness. You have to be ready to change, mind, body, spirit!

Are you?

If you need some help on your journey, give us a call!

This is what we do, help you along every step of the way!

Hope to hear from you soon,

Love and light,

Cassale Sherriff