How To Strengthen Will-Power

Using the "will" always involves making a choice between at least two options.

There is some debate as to whether the "will" actually exists or if this is an illusion. The argument is that all of our actions stem from computations that combine innate genetic programming and our experiences and that we do not really have any choice in what we do. But of course, on a subjective level it sure feels like we have will, and we can either employ this mental faculty or not. Essentially, willpower - AKA volition - is that force of character which makes it possible to go against the stream, to take a path of not-least-resistance. We choose to make these efforts because we believe that the future rewards they will lead to will more than compensate for the difficulty of working hard now.


Volition always involves a choice - there must be at least two options in how to act for a given situation in order for us to will ourselves to take one action over another. Sometimes one of these options is to do nothing, other times an option is to keep doing things as you have been doing them. When we use the term "willpower," we are referring to changing course from our habitual tendencies or going in a direction that we know will test our endurance and bravery.

Roy Baumeister - A leading psychological researcher on the study of "willpower."

When I was a grad-student I had the opportunity to meet Roy Baumeister - a leading researcher into the nature of will. Some of the conclusions he has drawn from his many years of studying willpower are that:

• The will is a limited resource which seems to depend on a reservoir of energy, and depleting willpower with one task will make the reservoir low or unavailable to draw upon for another, separate task which would also require use of will (that is, at least until the reservoir replenishes).  When pressed to claim what he thinks this reservoir consists of, Baumeister says that he thinks glycogen (the sugar-energy used to power metabolism in the brain) is a likely candidate but that the true answer is surely more complicated and not fully understood yet.
  
• Willpower, like a muscle, can be trained so that one may increases their ability to wield this force. Although training will temporarily deplete the available storehouse of one's will, over time a person's capacity to impose their volition upon the world can be improved. This is in alignment with the age-old concept of "practice makes better" (I choose not to say perfect, because that is just silly). Like any form of practice intended for improving a skill, there are better ways and then there are less effective ways for improving willpower. If it is true that volitional actions all draw from the same reservoir, we would expect that whatever activities strengthen the will to persist at one activity should likewise be beneficial for applying will to other activities. That there may be some wisdom in this is evidenced by being in the presence of anyone whom has mastered any behavior(s) requiring the development of huge volitional resources - be it in athletics, business, education, art, science, what have you. Those who have persisted at their trade and achieved the massive success that only an indomitable will can provide exude a sort of glow and confidence that is readily felt by those whom come into contact with them.
  

Challenging our natural instincts and behavioral patterns is a powerful approach to improving willpower.

Exercises that strengthen willpower are, by definition, challenging to perform for any length of time. If they are easy for you to do, the behavior is not building new neural pathways nor expanding your volitional capacities - rather, such actions would instead be reinforcing your old, typical behaviors. When an athlete digs deeper into the lactic-acid burn than they ever had before (NOT the pain from a pulled/torn muscle!), they are further developing their will. When a business-person pores through the details of their plan and considers more variables and makes more efforts to exceed their customers' expectations than they ever had before, then their powers of volition are being enhanced. These are broad, macro examples, but we could think of specific activities that anyone could perform as exercises for strengthening volition...

• Let's consider a basic practice that we have ALL worked at. This willful behavior was one of the first instances where you learned how to direct your will, and you make use of this power every day: controlling the muscles which regulate your need to "poo and pee." No joking. This was an enormous accomplishment of "mind over matter" for every one of us. This is such a basic societal expectation and not much else can trump the importance of this ability. Of course, most animals instinctively know where it is alright to urinate and defecate and where it is best not to (i.e., on their food), but humans develop these regulatory powers to great heights. But consider this - you can further strengthen your volition by, at least occasionally, resisting your need to pee even when you have easy and ready access to a toilet (this should not be an excessive practice because physical damage could result). Sometimes we are forced into "holding it," either due to social pressures (like being in a meeting) or location (i.e., being in a car, stuck in traffic).  We can also strengthen our ability to "choose the path less traveled" by purposely waiting when the option to go is at hand. This can even be manipulated to double as a lucidity induction exercise - you could hold off on urinating until deep into uncomfortable levels; next, go to the toilet and continue to hold off for a few more moments while conducting a "reality test" (similar to asking the "critical question"); and finally, release the pressure. If you drink liquid before bed and have to pee in the middle of the night, the muscles which inhibit urination are receiving signals urging them to let go - this urge may be felt while in REM (while dreaming), even if only on a subconscious level - and if you have associated the urge to pee with conducting reality tests, well, this may trigger the suspicion of dreaming while in a dream.
• As you would likely notice if practicing the above exercise, when our willpower is being exerted to assert one choice over another (holding it, over going to the bathroom), our ability to assert willpower in other domains is challenged, if not diminished - when you are employing will to not wet yourself it is increasingly difficult to perform other tasks. Another basic urge which we have to develop the will to direct is hunger/eating. By early childhood, we are taught the rules of eating within our family and culture, and we have to conform to some extent to the acceptable times to eat and to the acceptable foods to eat. Because of the availability to indulge in foods designed to entice us without necessarily supporting health, the issue of choice and will in eating is a serious topic. Whereas will was once a requirement to patiently stay on the hunt when the animals or berries were no where to be found, today the issue is more usually "what box should I pull my food out of and when should I stop stuffing my face?"  It is apparent that willpower is not being used on a regular basis, for millions of people, when it comes to these modern choices. Instead, the easier choice of instinct (taste and satiation, even if these are being hijacked by the food industries) and habit take precedence. But the focus here is not to discuss diet; willpower may be exercised directly through temporary eating fasts. The idea of long-term fasting from nutritional sustenance is controversial (and rightfully so), but a much saner approach gaining in popularity is Intermittent Fasting (IF). The approach to IF is to only eat during a relatively short time window (say, for 6-hours) out of any 24-hour period. An example would be that you can eat between noon and 6pm but at no other times. IF is not intended as means to restrict calories, rather, the idea is that the extended length of time in which the body is not digesting food allows the metabolic processes to devote energy and resources to other tasks such as maintenance and cellular repair. Most people who use IF in their dietary approach do so a few days per week instead of as an everyday chore - giving the body regular downtime from the heavy work of digestion. The point here is not to argue for the health benefits which IF may provide; what fasting in this way can do is offer us opportunity to strengthen our will. If you have ever gone without eating from dinner-time all the way to 6pm the next day, then you know how much resistance your cravings will throw at you. And yes, when unaccustomed to this practice your volitional resources (and your brain-sugar) may become severely affected - for these reasons do not attempt IF for the first few times during a work day (at least, not without a backup snack should things get too uncomfortable). As you can imagine, playing with the volitional control of your diet can be. Powerful approach to stretching your willful capacities. And again,  there is a great opportunity here to associate lucid dream induction practices. When feeling those hunger pangs you can rehearse reality tests. The most common fasting time for everyone is during the 6-9 hours of sleep we get on most nights. Our hunger invariably builds throughout the night up until when we awaken and break-fast. If you have ever had "food dreams" where you are either eating or on a quest to eat, these may have been triggered by actual feelings of hunger and incorporated into your dream scenarios. By coupling feelings of hunger with reality testing, you increase the likelihood of asking the critical question while dreaming.  
• If you notice a trend here concerning willpower, good. Willpower is the directing of behavior toward actions which are at odds with our instinctual and/or habitual programming. Willpower is tied to consciousness because the latter is the platform in which will is made possible. Ever wonder why we have the ability to be subjectively "aware" of the world (inner and outer), instead of simply being automatons reacting blindly to the winds of change? Consciousness is the mental space in which we can make complicated choices which are predicated on long-range goals. Rather than pissing where ever we stand or eating whenever and whatever we are accustomed to, we can make choices based on very complicated computations - and the platform in which these computations can exist in is what we call consciousness. Many animals have the ability for conscious thought, presumably, but humans have an especially developed form of this natural wonder. Consciousness allows for a special control of behavior, but what exactly is behavior? Behaviors are any organized pattern of muscular contraction, gland excretion, or neural-circuit activation. This third category of behavior infers that thoughts are actually behavior actions, but it should be understood that all three categories are intertwined and depend on each other. Which brings me to a third will-strengthening technique: single-point meditation. The "how-to" for this type of medication is outlined in another article, but the relationship between volition and just sitting still and breathing for a few minutes is that this type of behavior is VERY difficult to endure and necessitates the exercising of one's volitional faculties. Because we are all accustomed to particular patterns of muscular and glandular contractions and to the progression of somewhat un-restrained thoughts every second of every day, the ability to sit still and return conscious awareness back to your breathing (as it invariably strains to flow elsewhere) may require a Herculean effort of will. Training in meditative practice is one of the most direct routes to improving volitional control. And breath this in: Lucid Dreaming may be viewed as willpower 2.0. Not only does maintaining lucidity require a high level of conscious control of behavior, it also allows for an unprecedented manifestation of our intents. In lucid dreams you can practice and learn to control the environment and even your dream-body in ways which are simply not possible during normal waking existence. 
• One more exercise for expanding willpower: resisting sleep. This should need little explanation, and be extremely cautious when attempting to resist sleep if you are out and about in the world or using any potentially dangerous machines. Combined with the solid basics of a good lucidity program, I have often found that resisting the urge to sleep - deep into the point where it becomes irresistible - is a potent tool for creating a mind-state conducive to lucid dreaming (this occurs not only because of the willpower stretching but also due to the manipulation of the wake-sleep cycle). 
  

Here we have gone over four very approachable exercises for strengthening willpower, and we can assume that if we improve at any of these behaviors through conscious practice, then our volitional reserves and ability to exert our will onto other behaviors will likewise be improved. I tend to think that carry-over effects - where improvement at one activity leads to improvement in other activities - is somewhat limited. Yes, learning to hold your urge to eat may have some effect on your ability to, let's say, run longer when we want to give up, but it should be no surprise that actually practicing at the running longer should have the most influence on that same activity. Cross-training is beneficial, but also keep in mind that only you know what it is you would like to, or need to, improve the most at when it comes to improving your will-reserves and endurance. Do that! Like the saying goes: "If I can't, then I must."  This quip concerns stretching our realities, expanding our abilities. It is not meant to refer to things like "If I cannot jump off a skyscraper without a parachute then I must." No, be intelligent. However, if you need to work 10-hours straight every day for a few weeks or months to achieve the implementation of your business plan, then you simply have to practice stretching that ability. Relentlessly. With passion. Will can overcome almost any challenge.