What Is "Will Power"?

Terry notes that will power is the ABILITY to do what you OUGHT to do instead of what you WANT to do. My argument is that this "ability" is no less than the DESIRE to do what you feel you ought to do. I used to get up to go to work because I DESIRED to keep my job and not descend into homeless poverty.
"Socialization" is society's conditioning of the individual to WANT to do what (society says) he HAS to do.

As far as I can tell it's all about felt interests, values, desires, motives, etc., many terms for, basically, the same thing: mental states that drive behavior.

Don't know for sure that I can describe it...

...but mine is made of steel.

I think people who don't have it...want to suggest that it doesn't exist...right, JL?

Frank

We're not talking about that thing in your pants.

Oh that!.. I've got that.

I also have the drives to achieve what I'm too modest to describe here.
Those drives are the functional equivalence of that illusory thing most people of our culture believe in: will power. And that is a corollary of our belief in another illusion: the ego.

JL

I like it when you talk dirty :wink:

Yeah, I get off on the word, ego.

oooohh.. say it again

e-go ........ the will power to to stay online rather than do those chores :wink:

If so my e-go is huge..

FRESCO!!!!!
Where have you been?

Motivation is energy and energy is power...

2Sa 22:33
God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.

Eph 1:19
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Comment:
"exceeding" greatness.

Im not sure i understand the use of my will and how can i use it more effectively. Personally Ive used it for all my selfish desires and now im trying to use it positively can you help me with this

Fascinating topic and responses. A few that caught my eye :
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Fresco
Yet that committee that is made up of different ‘aspects’ of us, is also one.
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Flushd

Just a note on the two paragraphs " if you extend 'there is no try, only do or do not' " then failing has nothing to do with ‘there is only do, or do not’ " success and failure are subjective idea’s of the outcome, whereas the outcome is just the outcome.
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Cyracuz
It is also that, the process is often so automated, that the automated process may not serve us well for the particular circumstance.
Failure is subjective, and whether you fear failure or not, you will at some time, fail. Failure is over-rated though, for there is only creating (or Yoda’s do, or do not).
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JLNobody
Competing drives suffers from the same issue as the ego-self " what causes it? How constructed are they? Do you know that children rewarded for achievement grow up with a higher need to achieve than children not rewarded for success? How much of ‘drive’ is constructed via reward and punishment? How much of ‘drive’ is a result of hope or fear? Is fear real? What about hope?

Willpower is simply creating. You either (in Yoda’s words) do, or do not. And even in ‘doing not’, you are creating. It’s just a matter of what is created. You can be a passive observer of life, or you can create what is in your power to create (hence, will & power = willpower)
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Cyracuz
Unfortunately as I see it, you’ve already sacrificed that belief. The rest is just a veneer (ie. Self deception) we humans do to make ourselves feel better. Had you actual belief, you would already have submitted your work, because no reason would exist not to submit your work. Just create.
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Rockpie
Where do those two things come from?

Discipline is following a routine? Is it punishing yourself if you fail? Or rewarding yourself if you succeed? Is it sticking at something you don’t like? Doing what others don’t do?

Why is confidence necessary? Say you’re poor, and you’ve no idea how to get rich - do you have confidence that your first step will succeed? Do you think your skills, right now, are up to it? Is self-confidence the belief you can eventually succeed, despite likely short term failures? Or is that sort of attitude something else entirely?

Where does that attitude come from?
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Terry
Is the emotional/biological input wrong, or bad? What if it’s neither, but simply a faulty programme? Can’t you use willpower to get rich? Is that what you ought to do? Don’t people use their willpower to ‘crush’ other people?


So willpower is an automated programme? Isn’t that just a programme? If the programme is faulty, and not serving what you are trying to achive...but it's so automated that is what you are doing...where does it show the power to carry out your will?
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Drewdad
Where does motivation come from? I really want something to eat? Are you going to give me something to eat? I’m motivated by hunger, but I’m just sitting here at the moment...while someone with the same hunger as me is making himself a sandwich...what’s the difference?

Nietzsche had something interesting to say about the will.

"A man who wills- commands something in himself which obeys or which he believes obeys. But now observe the strangest thing of all about the will- about this so complex thing for which people only have one word: inasmuch as in the given circumstances we at the same time command and obey, and as the side which obeys knows the sensations of constraint, complusion, pressure, resistence... inasmuch on the other hand we are in the habit of disregarding and deceiving ourselves over this duality by means of the synthetic concept "I"."

will, in the traditional sense is an illusion created by the concept "I". there is a paradox in willing, in that we command and obey simultaneously, and this can only be reconciled by the concept "I".

As I understand (or misunderstand) Nietzsche the WILL does not refer only to the "will" (as in "will power") of human individuals. That too, but in that case it is simply an expression--or human manifestation of the will in nature--a concept inherited, but modified, from Schopenhaur, i..e, the latter's will IN nature. For Nietzsche, as I understand him the will IS nature, or at least its most fundamental characteristic. And it is not a dualistic concept; it has no contrast; no Thanatos for its Eros, as it were. The very life, movement and energy of the Cosmos is this Elan Vital (Bergson).

he was criticising the will as Schopenhar thought of it, as being something that is "known completely, known without deduction or addition"- "Beyond good and evil"- section 19.

There are three parts to the will, they proceed in this order... the commitment center of the will, the believing center of the will and the action center of the will.

And what exactly do you mean by committment? Is the same as 'drive'? or Motivation?

Do you need to believe to walk from A to B? obviously not.

Action is the end result, is it not? The product, rather than the process.

How do you walk? Do you tell your legs to go from A to B? if so, why can't babies do that when they reach the muscular age to be able to do so? Why do they have to learn to walk? Obviously balance is learnt. Say you don't think so...why do you have to learn to waterski on a single ski? Balance in the process of walking is learnt. Some people who've had bad accidents, have to learn to walk all over again. The 'will' to walk, doesn't immediately = the actual action in those people...but the eventual action...once they've relearnt.

You think driving from A to B is a conscious process, right? How come you tune out numerous times during the trip, but don't crash? How do you manage to drive in a straight line? (if you remember when you first got behind the wheel, you had to consciously adjust your line). You've learnt certain skills, and can now do them unconsciously while the conscious is free to do other things.

You want to solve a puzzle that you just can't grasp, and somehow the answer comes to you. Did you reach the answer by any conscious means? No...so where did the achievement come from?

Why is it you can make a decision without thought, and only after thinking about it for a while, be able to explain the decision? Why is it that sometimes you can remember your thought processes...taking time to explain each of them...yet at the split second of the decision, you weren't truly aware of what you were thinking - you were just doing 'what you believed you had to do'? (and what I'm getting at here, is how come we can be aware, after the fact, of multiple lines of thought that take quite some time to phsyically speak, or even to consciously think in our head...but these things happened in a fraction of a second..virtually automatically without conscious thought)

I know people are trying to define willpower here, but it's truly complex.

By the way, just a thought.

We seem to be mixing up here, will, and willpower.

Say what we will is what we want (whatever/wherever the source of what we want is/comes from)...what is the power to carry out our will? (ie. willpower). Where does it come from?

Don't see rex's need to quote from his bible.. Soon as you delve into mythologies you loose your right to be believed.