Developing a Rust-Free Will of Iron
How do you rate your willpower? Do you possess that unstoppable steely resolve that powers your actions and supercharges your decisions? Or does your willpower sometimes suffer from rust and weaken in the presence of temptation and difficulties?
It’s an intriguing topic to consider because the idea of training and developing the will seems oddly out of place in our modern, technologically-advanced society. But think about it for a moment. How many individuals do you know who regularly train their will? I know. It’s unusual, to say the least, isn’t it?
The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focused on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts.
― Dr. Roopleen
Yet, it wasn’t so long ago that a strong will was considered to be an excellent and essential virtue to cultivate. It was widely considered to be the bedrock of a well-rounded personality and the hallmark of a mature and capable individual. So, what changed? Why do we ignore the properties of a well-disciplined will in favour of a more generalised preference for freedom of expression?
Part of the problem lies in the way we’ve interpreted the concept of willpower.
We began to see the concept of willpower as an undesirable trait around fifty years ago. Willpower was re-interpreted and gradually associated with the idea of male dominance. It strongly implied a stern and unyielding attitude that reminded people of the problems of living in a patriarchal society, a world that favoured aggression and bred a sense of superiority – hardly the most attractive qualities in any environment and certainly not the kind of character traits that we wanted to encourage in our children!
‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens
to the which our wills are gardeners.
― William Shakespeare
But this was not the original purpose of encouraging a trained and focused will. Quite the opposite. The original intention was to endow people with the power to control their attention and develop an extremely useful degree of mental focus that permitted intense levels of concentration and granted a surprising degree of control over the body. In other words, the trained will was intended to grant dominance over oneself – not over others. It was an inner strength. Not an outward manifestation of the need to control other people.
I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.
― Pietro Aretino
This lifelong commitment to learning how to master the world within ourselves resonates with the ancient advice of philosophers, teachers and scholars, highly-trained individuals who were taught to process and retain vast amounts of information within the compass of their minds. Yes, it’s obviously much easier to store all the information we could possibly need on a laptop or smartphone - and that’s a truly marvelous development. But we also need to train and develop our minds, our memories and our power of focus. A high-capacity laptop is no substitute for an active and engaging mind. And the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Far from it. We certainly don’t need to abandon our technology to develop our minds and willpower to their full potential.
So, if the concept of a laser-sharp focus through a trained and disciplined willpower offers so many advantages, how do we set about developing its amazing potential?
Let’s answer the question with a very important insight:
Employing your will is not some titanic struggle where you have to dominate your mind, your emotions and your body.
The will is engaged with a surprising degree of calm and gentleness. You simply choose where your focus will be and you decide how long you will hold your focus – and then you do exactly what you have chosen to do.
The subtle secret to developing the technique is to learn to connect the decision with the resulting action. So, it’s best to start with very simple, easy tasks. It might involve standing up and walking to a chosen point in the room. Does that sound too simple for you? Please, never underestimate the accumulative effects of a successful feedback loop. Even the simplest actions can be recruited in the quest for a heightened and strengthened will. If you choose some previously unobtainable goal as the whetstone to sharpen your will, the inevitable setbacks and difficulties will lead you to associate your will with failure.
Build your associations carefully, patiently and slowly. As you begin to notice that you’re automatically doing whatever it is you’ve chosen to do, you can extend the tasks to include more complex activities. Gently, slowly and carefully. Everything you choose must be fully achievable in order to reinforce the connection between your will and the expected outcome.
As you develop greater and greater control over your focus and over the way you think and feel, you can learn to extend your will to the way your body responds. At this stage, you can effortlessly instruct your body to relax, to sleep, to feel energised or whatever’s appropriate. Not through some massive expenditure of energy with clenched fists and furrowed brow. Rather through a whispered instruction in your mind that knows with absolute certainty that whatever it demands of you will be achieved.
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
― Robert McKee
If you want to discover what it’s like to develop the power of laser intensity through the focus of your will, launch your very own revolution today and begin with a few minutes’ practice, linking simple actions to your power to choose. Prepare to be astonished at the difference this simple daily routine can make to the quality of your life and to your potential to achieve extraordinary results.
Greg Parry created the Cognitive Empowerment Programs specifically to help people master their stress, overcome their limitations and explore the power of their true potential.
If you enjoy these blogs, you can imagine how much fun it is to have Greg in the room as an inspirational and highly perceptive speaker. If you’d like to learn how to create a better working environment, more productive teams, better communication, invite Greg to talk to your company or organisation or event. Feel free to get in touch.
You can contact Greg at:
?