What Is "Will Power"?

"Will power" is an ephemeral action plan adopted by the committee we errroeously think of as "a unified self" in opposition to some of its members. Since the committee is unstable and open to outside influences such action plans are often prone to modifications and rationalizations.

"The first act of will power is to believe in it." - some pyschologist dude.

If you try to do something and fail, I think it is a weak excuse to blame it on will power. Like Yoda said, 'there is no try, only do or do not'.

If you failed, either you didn't work hard enough at it or your plan had a fatal weakness. Will isn't the thing, but choice.

Thanks for the responses,

I believe most will agree that there are some things that are not within the power of our own will.

There are many things that are outside the will of what ever it is that has put us here.

Is it impossible for God to contradict his own will and purpose? Of course it is. If God could contradict his own will there would not be any natural laws in place. We would not observe a universe that has for millions of years existed within an ordered set of principles.

But what is within the perceptible laws of God should be obtainable, i.e. health, prosperity and happiness should all be within the natural laws of God and be obtainable.

Yet it seems that health, prosperity or happiness are not always the motivating factor behind human behavior.

So the will may surrender to other powers that be...

The will is not visibly consistent from person to person so the will must be subject to the condition and outlook of the mind.

So it is the collective powers of the mind that create the state of the will. Since the mind differs from person to person then so does also the will.

Since the will does not seem to be held to any particular standard then the human will itself is subjective and perceptibly "flawed" by a lack of all knowingness.

So can the natural human will even be trusted? Are we only what the will tells us we are? If there is a war of wills within the human psyche, what is the correct path of enlightenment. (If enlightenment is even a motivation either.)

My "will power" is my contribution to the determinism that governs all things. Every percieved singularity is a part of 'everything', and all elements of this everything exert their influences according to their force and presence.

I know you said this wasn't to be a debate on free will, but I just felt this needed to be said.


But more on the subject; I think it is as flushd said, quoting a little green doll. There is no try, only do or not do.

If I fail it is because I wasn't doing what I thought I was doing. We hit where we aim every time. It's just that we do not often know where we're aiming.

I like the analogy of driving a car to explain this point. When we drive, we look towards where we want to go. If we want to pass a tree, we don't fasten our eyes on the tree, but look past it.

Similarly, whenever we fail in what we set out to do, it is because we cannot take our eyes off the obstacles in our path, and so we lose sight of the path.

So in short, in my experience, the best way to become the master of one's own will is to purge one's own heart of fear. If you do not fear failure, you will not fail.

Simply put, human beings are organisms made of organisms.

These organisms have a mind and will of their own. These organisms sometimes complain when they are too hot, cold, dry wet, etc. and they regulate the metabolism of the body.

In essence every cell in the human body is a "living" being with it's own objective "will power" to live and sustain itself through whatever set of obstacles they are faced with in the short time they are alive.

The ultimate purpose is the will of all life is to coexist and through the symbiotic networks that exist between all living creatures and to ultimately evolve into higher beings of nature and spirit.

Yet the war of the will is over our natural tendencies to take from life and the spiritual tendencies to give back to life.

Organisms, orgasm, more organisms.

Hahaha

Someone is so gonna signature that...

Philippians 2:5
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Comment:
This verse is implying that the mind that is obtained through life experiences is inferior to the mind that can be obtained through spiritual experiences.

Thus the faith of Jesus Christ is produced by the mind of Jesus Christ. Thus the will power is improved over the sum of the will created by the natural mind.

1Corinthians 2:14
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.


Comment: How much so is the will of the individual controlled by the mindset of the individual? Changing this "mindset" changes the will.

Philippians 2:13
For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Q.What is will power?
A.Something I dont have.

The idea of "will power" is mistaken. It rests on the notion of a self (ego) that is either strong or weak, that succeeds or fails depending on its degree of freedom and control. I say there is no such thing as an ego-self. But If there is no "ego-self", how do we describe the difference between a person who quits smoking and one who "can't"?
I think we can more accurately describe our actions with reference to "drives" (physical, psychological, utilitarian, etc.). "I" smoked for 27 years and told myself (for the last five or more of those years) that I wanted to quit but simply could not. Then one day I just quit. Why? Because before that moment of "resolve" to quit, I didn't really want to quit; I just thought that I SHOULD quit. Then one fortunate day I suddenly wanted to quit and did. As I see it I quit because "my" drives changed. We are systems of competing drives. I have a complex value system that provides a set of drives (motives) to do and to not do various things. At the same time I have a set of drives (what I sometimes call "interests") that are inconsistent with my values. Freud might categorize them as the drives of my "superego" and "id", respectively.
His "EGO" is that mental administrator that decides which sub-system (superego/values vs. id/passions) prevail at particular moments--often accomplished by means of a form of suppression or sublimation. I see it in terms of a simple model of competing drives--the stronger ones win out at any particular occasion.

JLNobody says "We are systems of competing drives"

And that rings so true in my head that there's even an ehco.


Maybe we should just go easier on ourselves, and it wouln't be so hard. We think we want something, and beat ourselves up about it when we fail. In reality we wanted to beat ourselves up about something. Fickle...

Yes, Cryacuz, we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. If we do not do what is needed to succeed at something it is very likely because we do not want to have that success. I have my share of successes in life, but I can't make myself learn how to use my computer to the extent needed. I cannot, for example, teach myself how to scan photos of my artwork and then send them to other artists. I DO feel the desire to do that but I also feel a stronger desire not to subject myself to the task of learning the necessary skills.

I can relate to that JL. I make tons of recordings of my music. Demos that never reach beyond the closest cirlcle of my friends. It is because I do not know if I am willing to sacrifice the belief that I can succeed. If I should try and fail, I do not know if I'd like that very much.

But there is really little chance of that. I've had established norwegian musicians and artists, some of them known nationwide, telling me that my music is right up there. I've had approaches from various interested parties. I've already got a few fans... But I'm holding out. Not for the best offer, but until I feel the readiness within to do what is needed to get where I want to be. If there is doubt in me it will manifest along with the fruits of my labor.


Have you read Paolo Cohelio's 'The Alchymist'?
In it, he says that if you truly desire something, the whole universe will work in helping you achieve what you want. Recently it has begun to dawn on me that this seemingly preposterous statement is really quite true. The problem is always knowing what you want.

I agree, Cyracuz, that an necessary condition for achieving success is always knowing what you want. I would add that we must REALLY want what we want.
My comments, however, have been directed not so much to what is involved in achieving success--that's a very complex matter involving, in addition to drive, innate ability, connections, luck, etc.--so much as what is involved in determining our behavior, the drives or motivations so often confused with the ghost of "will power".

i believe it is a combination of self-discipline and self-confidence. no more, no less.

Will power is the ability to do what you ought to do instead of what you want to do. The reasoned input to the gestalt mind triumphs over the emotional/biological input.

I do not "want" to get up in the morning and go to work, I want to continue sleeping. But my mind informs me that if I don't go to work I could lose my job and the income that allows me to do some of the other things I really want to do - as well as self-respect and the respect of people I care about. Eventually it becomes ingrained and I don't have to argue with myself every morning.

I think that a large component of will power is learned through punishment/reward training in childhood (such as parental approval for exercising self-discipline) and one of our biggest social problems in America is that so many reach adulthood without developing it. They want immediate gratification and do not distinguish wants from needs or consider the consequences when they satisfy their own desires at the expense of others.

If there is a God, it seems to want us to fail since we are all designed to do so and some have less innate ability than others. Belief that praying to God gives you more will power might be just enough additional input to a neural network to reach its activating threshold and allow you make a choice that you would have been unable to make without that belief. Belief that we are supported by other human beings who care about us can do the same thing.

So you do not want to go on sleeping. You want to give in to all those things you percieve as neccesities. And you may keep doing it even though it makes you miserable. Then you want to be miserable.

Will is not the impulse of the moment. After all, it is you who decides what you ought to do, same as what you want to do. When those two are no longer in conflict, you have become the master of your own will.

Yep. No such thing as "will power." There is only "motivation."