It’s Saturday here in Australia and I’m about to head to an all day workshop run by my Yoga teacher. I do a Yoga class once a week, although it’s not like your normal Yoga, it’s more like an all-in-one spirituality, meditation and Yoga package. At the end of each lesson my teacher gives a little talk about a subject – sometimes it’s about a Yoga posture, other times he reveals interesting things like niyamas and yamas, the guiding principles that all yogis follow.
I really enjoy the talks because it’s very clear my instructor has a passion for what he does. He can ramble on about the Yoga practice and leading a yogic life the way I can ramble on about Internet business and blogging.
Willpower
A few weeks ago one of the topics covered was willpower. Frequently I find many of lessons from the Yoga tradition have parallels with business, which makes complete sense given we are talking about life and we are all governed by the same universal rules.
The willpower discussion particularly grabbed my attention as relevant for people who are starting businesses and blogs. My Yoga teacher made a statement that some people have natural strong willpower and when they decide to do something they just do it. Others watch on and wonder how these people continue to achieve what they want, while they struggle to get anything done.
Isn’t that so true for blogging too. How many people begin writing a blog with good intentions and strong motivation, but a month later they are selling their blog or their posting frequency is down to one post a week. When instant results don’t come they are quickly discouraged.
A few select people seem to push past any set-backs and just keep working. In the business world it’s well known that two ingredients are critical for success – consistency and persistence. You must continue to do certain things over and over again and you can’t give up. If you don’t have the willpower to carry you through, you won’t stay to a course long enough to get rewards.
In each project I’ve had success with it’s because I had a mindless devotion to doing something. My very first successful website was built on the back of many hours spent playing with HTML, installing scripts and writing articles. My proofreading business BetterEdit was forged on countless trips to university campuses to put up posters (over three years I put up posters by hand at campuses in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Honolulu, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal) and of course this blog exists today because I’ve spent fifteen years writing articles to it each and every week.
Phew…I’m starting to feel tired 🙂
While knowledge, experience and vision are important, I argue that the single most important ingredient for success in business – and for success in any aspect of life – is willpower. If you don’t have the follow through then you don’t get results. It’s as simple as that.
For some lucky individuals they are born with strong willpower. Others are imbued with willpower because of upbringing and life experience. For many people – many people reading this article – there is a lack of willpower. The core reason why you are not achieving what you desire is a lack of the inner drive to get things done and follow a certain path for long enough.
Thankfully, as with many things in life, simply becoming aware of the problem helps to eliminate it. The minute you establish a full awareness that your lack of willpower is holding you back, you instantly gain more willpower. It may still not be enough to carry you through to your goals, but it is a start.
Fear
People claim that fear is the root cause why you don’t achieve what you desire. I think that’s a fair justification – fear has stopped me many times in my life.
Courage is considered the opposite of fear, but I believe willpower really is a more apt polarity. Willpower fuels courage. With the willpower to follow through you break through fear barriers.
I’m no expert on the subject of building willpower but I do know in my life I’ve followed through because the alternative is a lot worse. I dislike the taste of failure, stagnation and indecision a lot more than putting in the effort to get things done and breaking past fear barriers.
Neither path is comfortable, but it’s clear that one direction – following through – leads to positive experiences eventually, while holding yourself back tends to perpetuate the discomfort. Understanding that discomfort is temporary when you work to get things done boosts your willpower.
If you are wondering why you never seem to earn the rewards you are after or you are going through a low period and feeling like throwing in the towel, call on your willpower and just keep working. Sometimes it is more important to have a mindless devotion to a cause regardless of the reality of situation in order to get what you want. Build up your willpower and you will become one of those people who simply choose to do things and then go and do them.
Yaro
Willpowered
Very intersting Yaro. I don’t like the word willpower, I’ve never thought that I had very much of it.
There is a man called Tom Venuto who is a bodybuilder and he wrote a book about fat loss which in which he talks about willpower. The first chapter os his book is all about goal setting – having a deep and clear vision for what you want to achieve.
When you know what you want and you want it with an sbsolute burning desire then you don’t need willpower. But when you are doing something because you feel you have to or you want it but not *that* much, that’s when willpower comes into play.
When you totally focus on your goal, you want it badly, you know whay you want it, you think about it all day long then all those little setbacks are just mere blips. Well anyway, that’s how I like to think of it because it makes me feel better about not having much willpower!
I remember reading somewhere – and it may very well have been in connection with Tom Venuto (I’ve read a lot of what he has written, including the book Caroline references above) – about the difference between “willpower” and “motivation.”
The idea was that willpower was a short term force to call upon, while motivation was a longer lasting, and also deeper, source. Willpower is used to force yourself to do something, to break through a mental block or fear, while motivation provides more of a “burning desire” to do it despite the fear. Therefore, the short term nature of willpower means it can be exhausted fairly quickly. While on the other hand, motivation continues to act upon us and pull us to toward our goals.
Yaro, to me, it sounds like your definition of “willpower” rolls up my distinction from “motivation” as part of it. To that end, I agree that we need to call upon some inner drive or desire to overcome fear and keep on trucking. And, I appreciate the reminder to call upon this reserve as I’ve just started out with blogging.
I totally agree that willpower is the opposite of fear…..fear often stops me but on the instances when I can “will” myself to keep going the fear always goes away and I ride on the willpower in motion.
Thanks for this article. I will re-read and think about this.
While I agree with you that willpower and a decision to follow through are essential to achieving success,I believe knowing your purpose in life is a strong factor in the success equation.
Once you know your purpose,you will be able to focus on projects that will help you fulfill your purpose in life.
So,the big question to ask yourself is,what is my purpose in life? It’s the beginning of the success journey.
My belief also varies slightly, all though the end result is the same namely success.
As we all know, success comes in many variations and it isn’t always money by the way.
Personally what drove me to getting success in endeavors I have been successful was passion. Passion is what gave me the “willpower” to keep stepping over sometimes impassable hurdles. And passion is what got me there in the end. 🙂
I also know, that my failures are directly related to the lack of passion I had for the cause.
And knowing this makes my blogging and freelancing journey exciting day by day as I slowly step toward success.
by the way Yaro, didn’t think you were a Yogi. 🙂
Monika
Great article, Yaro! To successfully run a blog, you have got to have willpower and persistence. It helps to set goals, and then go after those goals until you reach them, not letting anything stop you. Once you have success reaching a goal, then you get energized and excited about blogging all over again, just like the very day you started blogging!
I have NEVER lost the excitement and fervor of my first day blogging. I live to blog! Every day I bounce out of bed, eager to blog and pursue my goals and dreams! I can’t wait to comment on topics close and dear to my heart!
It’s SO FUN TO BLOG!! It’s SO INTERESTING TO READ OTHER FINE BLOGS, including your absolutely dazzling, sizzling blog, Yaro!!! 🙂
I really enjoy this spectacular blog!
To blog, you’ve got to have PASSION. You’ve got to learn to slog through the down days, slog through those tough days to VICTORY!! Man, I enjoy blogging so much that my sheer PASSION for blogging just pulls me through all the tough times! You gotta have PASSION, PERSISTENCE and PERSEVERENCE, and a good dose of PATIENCE.
Most of all though, what you really need, is a love of blogging, and a serious burning passion for your topic and niche.
Without that, you might as well delete your domain off the server and slowly back away from the keyboard.
Ready………Set……….BLOG!!!!! 🙂
Everyone experiences fear, frustration, anger, boredom in life or in the work they do. The only thing that will keep you moving is your will and a positive attitude in general. A great article and very well written.
That is so true. consistency has been the main thing stopping me from being successful. I give up way to easily, and it is something I know I have to work on.
I have already started to see with my blog the effects of being consist and it has motivated me to keep going – now I just have to apply it to other areas of life 😀
Nice article. I think doing anything that ends up in a long term payout requires will power. When things look bleak, you get up and keep at it anyway. When things are rosy, you know you have to get up and keep doing it. The same is true for raising kids…often it takes great will power to keep saying ‘eat your veggies, treat people nicely, say please and thank you, etc.’ many times a day.
It is often easy to give up because we are scared but to me that is true test of someone’s dedication to the success of a project, a business, a blog, a child.
Will power also goes the other way…not only to do something…but to not to do something that would be detrimental to your business, health, family, etc.
Again, nice post!
Yes Yaro again you have hit on something we really do not want to hear, but know we must listen. The whole challenge about life is finding the strength to carry on. We must face distractions, adversities, disasters with a singleness of purpose, an eye on the ball, a way of finding the future. The word for that is willpower and those who do not find it are lost. Blogging is a very contemporary way of looking at a need for willpower, but it certainly finds out and trips up those who are not truly committed and dedicated. When you start out you choose a subject, passion, life defining niche in which to blog and your pour out what is in your heart, your mind, your life for all to see. Sometimes you will be there in the right place, on the right subject, at the right time and you will find a takeup which is so big and fast it blows you away, but most of us must just do our best and listen to those who know to advise us as we patiently build our blogs into what we desire. You give that help very effectively through the Blog Mastermind course and I thank you for what you are doing. For me it has been the way to start and build and I hope to prosper but I must find the willpower to make it happen.
In addition to willpower, I think you also need to know your weaknesses and learn to work with it. I have a short attention span and I tend to be a procrastinator. I learnt to choose my projects with vast enough subjects so I wont be bored too soon and I set dated goals on a weekly basis, by doing to do lists. Because, strangely, the procrastinator in me loves to see little red crosses in front of finished tasks 🙂
Oh, and maybe the most important thing in your journey to success: your circle/entourage. One of my friends told me that “People are either wind in your sails or anchor on your tail.” You need to find the windy people and ignore the anchor ones. I found out it’s one of the most difficult thing to do when you want to start something new.
Ah, excellent post Yaro! Very well said… where there is a will, there is a way, as the saying goes. As always, your encouraging words inspire me to stay the course and never give up. I do not believe in failure. The road to success is full of bumps and turns, and everything is a teaching. 😉
Enjoy the moment,
Teri
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So deeply articles or just me. 🙂
@Yaro
is that willpower same as commitment ?….
I just started yoga 10 weeks ago, and the focus that comes from it can be very helpfull. I have no flexibility at all. I achieve total focus just because when tyring to do yoga it is so difficult for me that I can think of nothing but the position at hand. I believe that there is not just one part to will but several and focus being one.
Yaro, I’m so happy you’re talking about yoga in your blog now, how healthy of you!
The great thing about yoga too, is regular practice can increase your willpower 🙂
I think willpower is the force that drives the action to fulfill the commitment, if that makes sense 🙂
Good post, but I’d like to give a little plug to another important ingredient… DESIRE. If you have burning desire you’ll likely have the courage to begin and the willpower to carry on.
Figure out what you desire, REALLY desire. Then identify what steps you need to take to achieve what you desire. Then start stepping!
Great article and so are the comments.
I think the willpower comes in when it all seems too hard. When the going gets tough. When you feel that you’re knocking your head against the wall and all you really want to do is stop. That’s when the willpower has to be there to push you on and force you to keep doing the things you have to do to achieve your goals.
I really cannot stand the attitude of negative people. They are trapped in an average existance because they don’t have any willpower. Definitely these people lack will power because of fear.
On the other hand, a person that is too arrogant and driven to power can be annoying. Progress should be done in a humble manner (sometimes).