“If you’re required to exert willpower to do something, there is an obvious internal conflict.”
Full stop. Period. Hold up a minute.
This quote is in the introduction to Willpower Doesn’t Work, Benjamin Hardy, PhD, psychologist and author, and it is a doozy.
We are inundated with self-help advice that tells us to “just do it.” Think about weight loss, getting healthy, saving money, switching to a more rewarding career path, writing that book: who among us hasn’t had a goal, and not reached it? And thought of it as failure, felt like we weren’t as good as those other people who are succeeding, not as strong, or smart, or pretty, or lucky?
And repeated that cycle more than once?
I know I have.
Hardy says we’re thinking about this the wrong way. He says the problem comes before the goal, in the foundations that underlie the goal.
Specifically, one or more of these things are likely:
- we are not clear enough about what we want
- we don’t want it enough
- we are not invested in our selves and our dreams
- we have neglected to purposefully create a supportive environment for those goals.
Get these things straight, and the need for willpower (pushing, external force) gets replaced by desire (internal pull towards).
And success becomes a natural outcome rather than a forced task.
What do you think? How true is this?
And what could you accomplish if you got clear on the foundations underlying your goals?
Preston Larus, CPC 