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| Melanie Elliott |
If you want to make a permanent change in life, willpower won't get you there.
Whether you want to get healthier, improve your relationships, be happier, write a book ..... will power won't help you with any of these things.
Personal progress and achieving success are best approached like you are overcoming addiction because quite literally, that is what you are doing. As human beings we all have addictions.
I openly admit being addicted to my current belief system, my comfort zone and my excuses. I am also addicted to behaviours that contradict my goals.
We are all addicted and the cognitive dissonance is numbing.
If you are serious about the changes you want to make, willpower will not be enough. Quite the opposite. Willpower is what is holding you back.
WILLPOWER IS A BROKEN APPROACH TO THRIVING AND SUCCESS
If you are required to exert willpower to do something, there is an obvious internal conflict. You want to eat the cookie, but also want to be healthy. Environment versus goal.
The tension is mounting .....
What are you going to do?
Are you going to be strong this time and resist or are you going to crumble?
According to psychological research, your willpower is like a muscle. It's finite resource that depletes with use. As a result, by the end of your strenuous days, your willpower muscles are exhausted and you are left to your naked and defenseless self---with zero control to stop the night-time munchies and time wasters.
At least, that's what you have been taught.
Clearly, the research on willpower explains human behaviour but only on the surface ... the effect. The very fact that willpower is required from two more fundamental sources --- the causes:
1. You don't know what you want, and are thus internally conflicted.
2. You have not committed to something and created conditions that facilitate your commitment.
WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?
If your life requires willpower, you have not fully determined what you want because once you make a decision, the internal debate is over.
After you decide what it is you want, the decision is made. Thus, all future decisions regarding that matter have also been made. No questions.
So, are you serious about this or are you just talking? Are you still on the fence, or have you decided? Until you decide, you will be required to use willpower, and you will continue making minimal progress. I strongly suggest you focus on commitment in order to achieve your goal.
ARE YOU COMMITTED?
What is commitment?
How do you know if you are truly committed to something?
When it comes to achieving goals, commitment involves:
- Investing upfront
- Making it public
- Setting a timeline
- Installing several forms of feedback/accountability
- Removing or altering everything in your environment that opposes your commitment
If you are truly committed to something, in your mind, it is as though you are already succeeded. All doubt and disbelief are gone!
If you are committed to a marathon, you are going to put everything in place to make sure it happens. You are not going to leave it up to chance.
Your are going to start by signing up for a race (your investment). You are going to make it public (phase one of accountability). Tracking your progress (feedback) and account your progress to your accountability partner. Lastly removing things in your life that keeps you from running is essential.
Commitment means you build external defense systems around your goals. Your internal resolve, naked to an undefended and opposing environment is not commitment.
CREATING CONDITIONS THAT MAKE SUCCESS INEVITABLE
No how much internal resolve you have, you will fail to change your life if you don't change your environment.
This is where the willpower approach fails. The willpower approach does not focus on changing the environment. It instead increases personal efforts to overcome the current environment. The result is your succumbing to your environment despite greatest efforts to resist.
The environment is more power than your internal resolve. As a human-being, you always take on the form of the environments you continually place yourself.
Consequently, the best use of your choices is consciously designing environments that facilitate your commitments. Actually, if you are really committed to something, this is exactly what you will do.
If you are trying to stop drinking alcohol, you must stop being:
1) around people that drink alcohol, and
2) at places that serve alcohol.
You need to truly decide you are done, to commit, and then to create an environment to make the success of your commitment inevitable.
If you want to become a professional rock-climber, you need to surround yourself with professional rock-climbers and orient your while lifestyle to that goal.
This is how evolution works. We adapt to our environments therefore conscious evolution involves purposefully choosing or creating environments that mold us into the person we want to become.
Everything in life is a natural and organic process. We adapt and evolve based on environments we select. You are who you are because of your environment. Want a change? Then change your environment. Stop the willpower illusion.
CONCLUSION
If you choose to use willpower:
- your actions will reflect the fact that you have not authentically made up your mind with sincerity and absolute. You will remain uncommitted.
- your desire (your "why") for your goals are not adequate
- your environment opposes your goals therefore you have not created an environment that make your goals attainable and will inevitable fail to achieve.
Instead of focusing on your behaviour, focus on your environment. Your environment......including the people you surround yourself with....is the clearest indicator of who you are and who you are becoming. ( Remember - "you are the friends you keep").
*a shared view with Benjamin Hardy
Melanie Elliott-Nightingale
