quotations about willpower
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
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 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
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
ROBERT MCKEE
Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
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
The higher life begins for us ... when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Willpower, or lack thereof, has been blamed for failed diets, missed fitness goals, credit card debt, and other regrettable behavior since the third century B.C., when the ancient Greeks began to study self-control as a means of overcoming destructive behavior.
DARIA MEOLI
"7 Things You Didn't Know About Your Own Willpower", Shape, January 26, 2017
Bad habits are hard to break -- and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once. The human pre-frontal cortex is like a muscle. It has to be trained. If you joined a local gym, you would never dream of starting out lifting a 300-pound barbell on your first session. You'd start with a 2-pound weight for a 2-minute session, working up slowly to heavier weights and longer periods of endurance. Trying to keep a New Year's resolution to quit smoking or lose a bunch of weight, is expecting your pre-frontal cortex to pick up the equivalent of a 300-pound barbell on the first attempt -- and to keep doing it for hours on end. It's not possible.
MARY HUNT
"Everyday Cheapskate: Sticking to New Year's resolution requires baby steps", Twin Cities Pioneer Press, January 23, 2016
Willpower is your ability to set a course of action and say, "Engage!" It is the spearhead of self-discipline. It provides an intensely powerful yet temporary boost. Think of it as a one-shot thruster. It burns out quickly, but if directed intelligently, it can provide the burst you need to overcome inertia and create momentum.
JOHN AURTHER
Personality Development
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
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
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
He who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
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
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
Willpower is comparable to a "magic" power because it helps us reach any goal that is important to us. It helps us create a new reality and perform miracles, big and small. It helps us take initiative and then actually put it into practice. It helps us become the person we really want to be.
BELLA TINDALE
The Magic of Willpower
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
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
Willpower apparently gets depleted if we use it too much -- a growing body of research shows resisting repeated temptations takes a mental toll.
FISHER FUNDS
"Fisher Funds: Willpower keeps bears at bay", New Zealand Herald, February 5, 2016
Willpower is consciousness in action.
NIKIAS ANNAS
Karma is Negotiable: Destiny and the Divine Power of Love