The Monsters and Willpower

I was travelling on business last week, and I had quite some time for myself, being alone in hotel rooms between various meetings. Also lots of time on the planes, and so I ran many searches on a topic that interested me a lot: the Willpower. I read an interesting book during the flight: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.

While I am not going to give you a review here (there is plenty of such reviews on the Internet), I can tell you that it prompted me to think how my willpower works (or does not).

I know that I generally have  a lot of willpower. I managed to quit very heavy smoking, and  I did it cold turkey almost 20 years ago. I managed to get through the challenges of my marriage, in which not everything works perfectly (like in any marriage probably), and after more than 20 years we are actually quite a happy and successfully couple. I have been keeping my job and progressing in it despite the fact that sometimes the processes and people drive me crazy. All that because I can focus more on the future, and where I am going, rather than what is happening right now. For example, I know that in 10 years I will be proud when my children become independent, and I will be proud of being able to support them well in their way there (yes, I am perhaps compensating a little, as my parents divorced, and my formative years were a bit of a mess. I learned a lot of what my kids will not in a "normal" family - however I missed a lot too). So I am can resist a temptation to break my marriage, even though certain aspects of it may not exactly be as I would like. If I do, these things may be better immediately, but in long term I will not achieve what I want.

And while generally things work well, there is a caveat. Sometimes I lose my Willpower. Sometime I am having enough, I just feel I have no more power to withstand all the challenges. All of a sudden, I see the world in a different perspective; the problems which are manageable day after day, grow to the size of dark mountains, standing firm in the view of any green fields and blue oceans that used to be on the horizon. Rather than having to climb over a few hills, which does require some effort, but generally is OK, the mountains do seem impossible to cross. If you have ever been to Denver in Colorado, USA, you probably understand what I am talking about. All of a sudden, the flat prairie turns into peaks which are the height of the Alps (that's for the guys from Europe to be able to compare them to something they know). Today, there are excellent roads through the mountains, but imagine if there were not, and you had to go to the other side. Not easy. One needs a good motivation and a lot of willpower to get to Nevada. And there is California at the end, but you cannot see it from the plains. You can only see the mountains. Very big mountains.

So, let's assume that you are on the plains of central USA, and your dream is to get to California (please feel free to replace it with anything else that may be relevant for you).

You need three things if you want to get to California:
- remember that it is there, it is beautiful, full of flowers, vineyards, great companies to work for, with ocean, the Bay, Redwood forests, beaches, fantastic climate, and many other things you may like
- believe that you can get there; if you continue going westwards you will eventually get to California
- perseverance in your going there; you cannot get there by just thinking of it, you need the action.

The first thing is called motivation, the second is the confidence, and the third is the willpower. You need all three to get anywhere. And the problem with depression is that when it hits, it usually affects all three at the same time.You have not power to persevere, you do not believe that you can get there, and actually you stop seeing any reason to get there - California does not seem to be so attractive anymore.

The challenge seems to be that all three seen to be interdependent. When you have no motivation, you stop doing things, stop seeing the desired outcome, and generally your life turns into a piece of rubbish. As a result, you lose the confidence.

If you have no confidence, you quickly give up on any ideas, anything you might like to achieve. You kill your motivation. You also stop training your willpower, because again you stop doing things.

And if you have no willpower, then again you do not achieve anything. This kills your confidence and restricts your motivation.

So what can you do?

What I find that works for me is going with something small, that will allow me to exercise my willpower and then gain some confidence. Then it will allow me to dream about bigger things because I get the confidence and power to make things happen. There is one big challenge though. When I am depressed, I have difficulty moving with the smallest thing though. There is absolutely no satisfaction coming from doing anything, and thus my motivation is zero, and even if I use my willpower, it is all in vain. So the key for me is to find something small that will eventually give me some pleasure and satisfaction. Finding it sometimes takes me days, sometimes weeks, and sometimes months. Yet when I get into a slightly higher mood, I need to use my willpower to do the next thing. And the next one. And so on. If you go to my previous post and read about breaking the negative loops, this is exactly when the willpower comes handy. But to use it, I first need to find "my corn", as per hyperboleandahalf.