Willpower isn’t what you think it is. The true form of willpower is is going to shock you. Willpower is needed for change yes, but it’s more than that. Let me explain a way of thinking about this and give you some perspective.

“It’s hard to look forwards to the efforts required for greatness,

but it’s harder to look backwards to the realisation that you could have been great.”

 

 

Imagine the whole world represents your life as it is today, with each country being a different aspect of your life such as finances, family, friends, fitness, food and fun etc. Each country is run by a government leadership of habits, lifestyle behaviours, attitudes and beliefs.

Take some time to reflect. Find a quiet place, take a deep breath, allow the voices in your head to dim to a whisper and spend some time to observe your world from an external point of view.

In your world of life, most countries probably live a lifestyle of peace, balance and stability. However, you realise others are being dictated by tyrants of dysfunctional self sabotage, limiting beliefs, unstable lifestyle behaviours and mental unrest.

Everyone experiences mental unrest every now and then in their lives. If you have a war raging in you right now, it’s because you’re fighting mental battles and fighting for control in an aspect of your life. Be it financial trouble, obesity, laziness, poor eating, addictions, whatever it is, you have lost control of that country in your world, that aspect of your life. The shocking truth however is that you may have allowed it to happen without really putting up a fight, or even realising it was happening.

The current state of your world will continue to produce the same result and the same way of life until change occurs. If you want to reclaim your country for a better way of living then three distinct steps must be taken:

DECLARE WAR – You realise the current state of being has become unacceptable to you and it must change.

UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY – How it started, who it is and how it operates.

PLAN YOUR ATTACK – Anticipate attacks and analyse strengths and weaknesses.

FIGHT THE BATTLES – Take action every day. This is where your military troops of “willpower” come in. That mental strength and determination is required to ensure change occurs into your desired end state.

WIN THE WAR – Your country is now under your control and it follows an altered lifestyle congruent with your completed goal. Here, it doesn’t take effort any more to continue and maintain your success and dominance. Your strength and power has built to the point where success simply happens with minimal discomfort. Military willpower is replaced with citizens of love, enthusiasm and excitement for making your country great.

So I hear you asking me, how the hell do we do that? How do we use willpower to create a change that turns into a natural instinctive lifestyle of habitual greatness?

 

 

You must believe inside yourself that a change is needed. If you don’t believe it, then don’t bother even starting. The war is too long, too hard and you will fail. Your military willpower is not strong enough to beat that. If you’re trying to improve yourself for someone else, for other people’s approval, to impress a third party, then you’re in a system of disaster. That leads to people trying and failing, feeling even less of themselves and getting depressed. Not only that, but you miss out on all the positive effects of change and all you’ve done is work your ass off to become depressed.

You must believe in the struggle to begin with. Then you can elect a new leader of healthy lifestyle patterns that allow for a more successful and better way of life. That better way of life is different for each person depending on the country they are reclaiming. What aspect of life do you need to get back in control of?

In the land of health and fitness, it could be getting in shape and living a healthy lifestyle. Going from soft, fat and lethargic, to hard, lean and energetic. Improving your cardiovascular performance, lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, having longevity in your life. These are all health related goals.

In finance, it could be controlling cash flow so we can get out of debt this year. Get to the point where we are seriously saving money for ourselves, our kids and our bucket list of things to do before we retire.

Maybe it’s our career, and we decide to go back to school to get the education that opens up new job opportunities that weren’t available before.

Identify your successes to this point, along with your shortcomings where you could have done better. All of us have times when our efforts could have been applied more efficiently for a better desired outcome.

 

 

 

All these things are changes, that take us from our current state to our improved state. What’s in-between that is the enemy. Identify your enemy. The enemy is that dictator, that blockade that is stopping you from where you currently are to where you wanna be, your better life.

This enemy is within our mind and forcing us into self paralysis. It’s something that we’ve allowed to take over, and grow, and develop, and accept into our world. We have given birth to it, and nurtured it, let it wash over our land like a plague, and are playing host to it. Believe it or not, we are doing that to ourselves. Now we see it as a problem that must be dealt with. But it has a very strong presence and protective measure within ourselves.

By that I mean it has a voice that keeps telling you why you need it. Like an evil dictator. It wants to stay in power, it doesn’t want to be overthrown, and it knows it needs you to serve it in order to survive. To do this, it tries to trick you into thinking you need it. We see this a lot with addictions and poor habits. Chemical addictions, food addictions, laziness addictions, poor habits, all that don’t allow us to rise to the level of where our real potential is. Instead it brings us down.

Related Content: Stop Holding Yourself Back

 

 

Once we know and understand what our enemy is, we can plan our attack. We find out where the enemy is strong and where it’s weak. This is the key to it all, you cannot win this war by fighting the enemy that’s been inside of you gaining strength and power for so many years by fighting it on its ground against its strengths. You must defeat it on your ground where you are strong and it is weak.

Think back to when your addictions and negative patterns attack, and the times of the day you can anticipate a raid. For most people, these attacks come in the evenings, social events and times when we are stressed or drained. Here the enemy notices our weakness, sees the opening, and strikes without mercy.

For us to beat the enemy, we must get organised. Prepare our defences against those times, and look for the opportunities for us to strike back. We can’t just win by force. That’s stupid, that’s suicide. People think that if they have enough military “willpower” they can just attack with sheer force and power and take the enemy head on. But then we realise that we require a smarter approach in order to take that dictator down. We set them up for failure, lure them into our trap and then they fall into submission and collapse themselves.

We can’t have our strength go against their strength. If you take your army into a solid blockade, you are not going to make much of an impact. You’ll just wear your troops out. Maybe after a few years you might take it down, but instead you could just side step to the weak smaller troops to the side and blast through it.

Once we know our enemy, where we are strong, where it is weak, then we know how to defeat it. Let me give you a few examples.

 

Food Battles

 

A lot of people have a problem with eating, they get a craving and they sight it (be it cheeseburger, cake, chocolate, candy, ice cream, chips). They think to themselves, “Wow that looks so good, smells good, wow I want that bad.” That little voice in your head is your weakness being exposed. At the same time, the enemy has spotted you, and is building its troops in front of your weakness ready to attack. You hear it building inside your head as the dictator declares how strong he is and how you need him. “It tastes good, go eat it, enjoy it, give up and try again later.” So you go and you eat it and you allow it to envelope you and take you over once again. Right after you eat it, you have lost a little more of yourself to the enemy, you’ve gained more fat and you feel worse inside, you feel disappointed, regret. Your goal was not to do that, and you just did it again. So now you’re more depressed and have stored even more fat than before, making you weaker in turn.

Now let’s look at the same enemy again, but at its weaker state. Then we can apply the troops of our willpower to win a little land back for ourselves. How do we do that? We don’t look at the now, we invest in the future. Instead of looking at the immediate effect of how good it tastes or feels to have instantly (fighting against it’s strengths), we look past that. Think to yourself “Ok, if I continue to eat that all the time, I’ll stay as I am and I won’t progress towards my goals of transformation. If I eat it, I’ll be depressed because I ate it and I’ll feel negatively inside.” Now you don’t see the food for how good it tastes, you just see the negative side of it at it’s weaker state. Now it doesn’t look so tempting does it? You now have enough willpower to overcome your enemy at this location. You move on and have some lean chicken breast and a massive bowl of colourful crunchy salad. Even though both will fill you up, but what you get out of the chicken salad is a sense of pride, power, confidence and achievement. A small victory there, but it felt good didn’t it? Next time it happens and you face the same situation again, you remember how good you felt last time by defeating it and it feels easier to do again. Make sense?

Recommended Content: Nutrition Daily Tips and Tricks

 

 

Alcohol / Addiction Battles

 

Another example might be drinking. You could think to yourself “Every time I drink I feel so good, I’m laughing, having a good time, dancing with my friends, people like me more.” But realise that is the strength of the alcohol talking to you there. It’s trying to reassure you that you need it in order to survive. It doesn’t want to die so it convinces you that you depend on it in order to feel good about yourself. How can you beat something that strong? It’s impossible to face that strength head on and you don’t have enough willpower in your troops against that strength because all you’re thinking of is all the positive benefits that you believe you will have if you continue drinking.

Let’s look at drinking on the negative side now. The weak side of the enemy becomes exposed the morning after. You’re hungover, chemically imbalanced, unproductive that day. Maybe you have to pick up the phone and call some people to apologise for your actions that night. You remember that some people loved how cool you acted that night, but soon it dawns on you that the person who everyone enjoyed wasn’t even you. It wasn’t the real you, as you could only be that way when you are infused with a third party influence – aka alcohol. That’s a big deal, and we haven’t even discussed the huge health risks and consequences of drinking to excess. Remind yourself of that weaker state (the next morning) in order to have the strength and choose to put the bottle down.

Recommended Content: Free Alcohol Drinking Guide 

 

 

Laziness / Motivation Battles

 

One enemy that we all face from time to time is the laziness of going for a workout. You get from from work / school after a long day and you think to yourself, “Man, it’s been a tough day today, I’m tired” The enemy is rising its troops and you hear that voice “I deserve to relax, chill out, relax on the couch and watch some TV or play a video game.” You feel good watching it and playing your favourite games because you’re able to escape your issues, get out of yourself and get into an outside experience (movie story and game play action). After that false sense of reality finishes and the movie is over, you remember you’re still just lazing away on the couch. You’ve lost a couple of hours and you’ve missed an opportunity for a great workout.

What if instead, when the credits from the movie are rolling on the TV, you are walking back through the door from the gym all fired up, feeling good, pride, satisfaction. “I got a great workout in today! Wow what a natural high I feel. Feeling a great muscle pump so gonna get a protein shake in now and plan my next workout tomorrow. Let’s do this!” Next time you’re tempted to skip a workout because you’re a little tired, think about how great you’re gonna feel when you come back from the gym. Think about how you will set yourself the goal of going to the gym and then you’re gonna stick to your word and follow through with what you say. That strength will get you and your mate into the car and off to the gym for an awesome session together.

Lets recap:

Enemy’s strength – Temptation, easy, comfort, cravings.
Our weakness – Instant satisfaction, short term benefits.

Enemy’s weakness – Negative consequences, depressed, self regret, lack of progress.
Our strength – Positive consequences, pride, confidence, lasting satisfaction, long term benefits.

 

Question your enemy and find your own voice again.

– Do you really think you need it to feel better?

– What do I really want?

– What do I really need right now?

– What will really help me long term?

Recommended Reading: How to Get Motivated: A New Perspective.

 

 

To face your enemy you must leave comfort behind and step out into no mans land. We must leave our comfort zone and experience the war zone, the rickety bridge, the uphill struggle, the hard work we must endure. It’s scary and it’s intimidating because we’re facing our fears and taking on new challenges. We are placing ourselves into a situation where things aren’t quite as easy. We can see the goal on the other side, but we must enter the battlefield in order to take on our energy and succeed.

That enemy is strong. We’ve spent years allowing it to grow, develop and take control of us. We can’t take it down at it’s strongest point by charging the front door. We need to seek and find the secret passageways and points of weakness to have an effective means of attack. Distribute your troops (your willpower) at the points of weakness, not at their strengths. Then we can win that battle each day.

Your military willpower is NOT unlimited. You only have so much at your disposal. Willpower is ultimately a depreciating asset, a finite energy reserve, an exhaustible resource. Just like your daily energy from sleep, you wake up in the morning fresh, ready to go, alive and driven. Everyone starts with a set amount of willpower at our disposal each morning. Each time we face a little daily battle, we are forced to use some of our willpower to tackle it and stay the path to success and change. It is expressed through dedication, effort, work, sacrifice, focus, determination, persistence, patience and consistency. The willpower you use during the day, the more fatigued and mentally weak you become in the later hours. This is one of the reasons we only go after one change at a time. People don’t succeed because they are lazy, it’s because they’re exhausted.

Willpower has been proven in a case study. In a book called “The Switch” (click here for the book) they took 20 people and had them fast for a set duration. They then bought them into a room and split them into two groups of 10. All of them are pretty hungry at this point. In the first group, they told them they could have some chocolate chip cookies that they could enjoy. They bought this big platter of freshly baked warm cookies all smelling good and the group ate them and enjoyed them all while the second group were forced to watch without touching a single cookie. The second group were ravishing and drooling with hunger but were told they weren’t allowed any. They were forced to sit there and use their willpower to fight the urge and temptation. What did they get to eat then? Radishes. Yup a cold, gloomy bowl of plain radishes. (Personally, I’d rather starve).

After the group have finished the cookies, both groups were given a 50 page paper pad and a pen. Each page was an identical maze that they had to draw a pen line from the start point to the finish. Each time they couldn’t solve it, they were told to start a new page in the book and try again until you get it right. What they didn’t know was the maze was unwindable. It was an impossible maze with no solution and what they were testing is how many tries each of the groups would do before giving up.

The guys who ate the cookies jump straight into it head on and really go for it, on and on for 30 to 40 attempts. How many times did the radish people do it? The average number of attempts was just 4. Why was that? Because they had already used up all their willpower from not eating the cookies.

So from this, understand the importance of being smart with your use of willpower throughout the day. Don’t waste your willpower against the enemy’s strength. Otherwise you’ll run out and give up in the evenings. Think about it like the battery life of your mobile. You start each day with it fully charged and the more you use it during the day, the faster the battery life fades until you run out of battery. The same goes for how you use willpower. You can’t expect to have unlimited willpower for the whole day and so you have to be smart and manage it.

 

 

 

You can’t expect to take back your whole country all in one day. It is about daily battles, again and again. Winnable, achievable daily goals that add up to win the war of health and happiness. That fight is with the willpower. Win the war village by village, town by town, state by state.

Every time you win a battle, the amount of willpower needed isn’t as strong. Why? Because your military power grows stronger as you start experiencing the results of your efforts. You start to see, feel and get a taste of the new improved you. Once you start to get a taste of success, you wonder why you ever stayed where you were for so long before. You get stronger and your enemy gets weaker. The amount of work, energy and willpower required to make the change goes from being a voluntary forced effort, into an involuntary feeling of passion and drive. It becomes habitual, you reclaim that part of your life and you own it. It’s part of your character.

Pick a country, a single aspect of your life that you want to change and improve. Once you’ve defeated that enemy, the willpower needed to drive the change is replaced with passion and love. Once we’ve done it long enough, we see who we are with a cleared sense of vision. All the voices of those old dictators are overthrown and no longer have the voice to try and convince us we might need them. Day by day, we’ve beaten them again and again until it gets so weak and so small that it has no strength left and requires no real willpower to defeat.

Just like you require no willpower to resist an addictive substance like heroin, we soon are able to conquer addictions to other substances like cigarettes or alcohol. Now we aren’t feeling lazy and tired on the couch because we did go to the gym and we aren’t craving the hamburger because we’ve decided to go for the lean chicken. We’re seeing, feeling, and fully experiencing the results of our battles and becoming new masters of our fate in life instead of being slaves to our enemies and addictions.

All these daily battles determine the outcome of the overall war and overall change. We feel love for who we are, we’re looking forward, never looking back and smiling the whole way. Change and challenges are no longer work and change becomes who we are.

 

They say it takes about six months of continuous effort for change before it becomes habitual and a comfortable new way of life. Personally I believe that is individually based, depending on how bad that person wants it and how strongly they believe that a change is required. For some people it’s a should be done, for others it’s a must be done. However long it takes, know there is no true quick fix for a long term outcome (however much people might try and sell it to you). Your old dictator has been running your country for years growing stronger and stronger, and blinding you of what else could be with false propaganda. It will take a while to get your country back for yourself.

Is it hard work? Hell yes it is. It’s extremely hard to face the enemy, to fight the battles, to get off that couch, to put down the drink or the food and put that effort in and win the war of health and happiness. But let me tell you what else is even harder. It’s even harder to sit back and accept that you are still sitting there out of control, at the mercy of your enemies. See the difference there?

You might be on the couch or sitting at the computer right now, knowing that first fight is hard. But it won’t be anywhere near as hard as sitting there this time next year or 5 years from now knowing you could have done something and you didn’t.

This year, make the choice and commit the sacrifice for world peace and happiness. In one year, you can make the rest of your life worth while. Give up one year for the next few decades of success. When you put it that way, one year seems like a small sacrifice for the return on your investment. One year of work for 60 years of bliss? Sign me up!