quotations about willpower
Strong willpower is always driven by a strong underlying purpose. A reason to put in the necessary effort and take action. Reasons are the fuel behind the dream!
CANAAN MASHONGANYIKA
It's Do-able!: Power to Unleash Your Dream
Willpower is not going to be enough. You need some type of program.
CHRIS URAN
"From prescription pills to heroin addiction: How a Racine man was able to break the cycle", Fox 6 Now, January 27, 2016
Deal with the dread by addressing it. As soon as you get up as this is when willpower is at its peak. So send the email you've been avoiding, do the task you've been procrastinating on, go to the gym, Do whatever it is in the knowledge that you will feel relieved afterwards and therefore lighter for the rest of the day.
SARAH BERRY
"Five scientifically proven morning rituals to make you happier every day", Stuff, January 15, 2016
Willpower can produce short-term change, but it creates constant internal stress because you haven't dealt with the root cause.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose-Driven Life
The problem with blaming everything on willpower is that when failure occurs, as it often does, you end up blaming yourself for being weak or inadequate. Willpower is not sprinkled on like fairy dust or granted to the few lucky souls born with the right stuff. Instead, willpower comes from the ways people structure things to stimulate the will--where there is a way, there is a will.
GRAHAM SIMPSON
Spa Medicine: Your Gateway to the Ageless Zone
Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Oatmeal for breakfast. Salad for lunch. Chicken and veggies for dinner--and a bag of chips, some ice cream, a glass of wine, and two cookies for a midnight snack. If this sounds like a typical day, you're not alone. It's a classic example of depleting willpower. Research suggests that willpower may actually be a finite resource, rather than something over which you always have complete control. Studies have shown that people who make one virtuous choice find it harder to choose right when faced with the next decision--as if willpower ran out.
JAMIE DUCHARME
"Is This Phenomenon Ruining Your Healthy Diet?", Boston Magazine, March 15, 2017
Willpower is likely the most important keystone habit there is. Willpower has more of an impact on individual success than intelligence, talent or education level.
P. JAMES HOLLAND
The Power of Habit
Willpower is consciousness in action.
NIKIAS ANNAS
Karma is Negotiable: Destiny and the Divine Power of Love
We know what willpower is, but by some misguided conception, many of us believe we have to be a certain type of person, strong, determined, extroverted, to be able to be willful, to exercise willpower. Not so. We all have it and just don't know how to use it.
ROSEMARY ALTEA
You Own the Power
There's a lot of psychological disagreement about whether or not willpower is a limited resource. For many years, psychologists believed that self-control was finite, and could be "depleted" after you use too much of it. The classic study supporting this point of view found that students who'd had to resist eating chocolate-chip cookies did much worse on a self-control test afterwards than those who didn't have to resist the cookies beforehand. But we're increasingly discovering that our perceptions of willpower may shape our self-control more than anything else. Various studies have discovered that if people believe that their willpower is limited, they'll exercise it less often -- they make fewer New Year's resolutions, for instance, or take a break after a task that involves a lot of self-control and show less self-control afterwards. If they believe that willpower is infinite, though, they'll just keep showing it, no matter how many other bits of self-control they've exercised that day.
JR THORPE
"Why Are Some People Good At Saving Money? And What Can We Learn From Them?", Bustle, March 28, 2017
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
ROBERT MCKEE
Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; Influences circle him on all sides, and yet must he answer for his actions: For the being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will, But a slave to selfish passions is the wavering creature of circumstance.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
If you have a will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure!
LEE LABRADA
FaceBook post, May 13, 2011
For I am--or I was--one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all--a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named--but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Willpower is another important ingredient in self-control. Sticking to one's plan is hard work. Without the willpower to bring about changes, the best laid plans and all the monitoring in the world will not be good enough.
SHAHRAM HESHMAT
Eating Behavior and Obesity
We tend to think that habits like eating junk food are a matter of willpower--too little willpower, too much sugar and fat in our diets. But the more we learn about the malleability of the brain, the more we know that "willpower" is a far too easy explanation for what's really going on. The truth is that habits change how our brains work. What begins as a behavior morphs into changes in brain circuitry, and with repetition and time those changes strengthen and endure.
DAVID DISALVO
"Why Breaking Habits Is Even Harder Than We Think", Forbes, January 24, 2016
Unless your willpower is ridiculously strong, chances are you will give into temptation if the people around you have unhealthy habits.
AMANDA TEJUCA
"Ways to Facilitate your Healthy and Fit New Years Resolution", Uloop, January 17, 2016
To assert your willpower is simply to make up your mind that you want something, and then refuse to be put off. In short, think about what you want and hold to that thought. Believe in it as a reality, regardless of what may appear to be true. This is willpower in action, and anyone can do it.
PHILLIP COOPER
Secrets of Creative Visualization