quotations about willpower
Willpower is sorely tested at Easter, when temptation comes in abundance and is often coated in chocolate.
LAURA FROM PEMBURY
"My Rant", So Magazines, March 31, 2017
Willpower is that thing CEOs and professional athletes tell us they used to make it to the top.
JOYCE MEYER
Start Your New Life Today
We are told at a young age that we could accomplish anything if we just have enough willpower to push through. How exhausting! The truth is willpower can be very inadequate. If we continue to pull from this power supply--the reserves will become empty.
CORINE GATTI
"Are You Suffering From Willpower Depletion?", beliefnet
Willpower is a hard thing to explain. It has no defined limits. It is the driving force to all human accomplishments; things exist now that did not exist in the past because somebody focused their will and their concentration on creating something that filled whatever need they saw. Will is what makes the impossible possible.
MICHELLE STEVEN
Double Your Mind Power
Your willpower is a specific resource pool. The more you tap it, the faster it disappears.
CAROLINE ARNOLD
"Meet the new you: a self-help guide to shake you up", The Guardian, January 17, 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 years there was the received wisdom that willpower was like a muscle which became exhausted with overuse. If you squandered your willpower on, for example, controlling yourself at a meeting when you really wanted to shout at your colleagues, then you would have no willpower left in the evening to diet, exercise etc. This has now been challenged by the University of Miami and others showing quite the reverse. The more you succeed in overcoming bad habits (even small ones) or achieving challenging goals, the more you know you can overcome most adversities with willpower.
ROS TAYLOR
"10 ways to build willpower", Irish Independent, March 13, 2017
Willpower is hard. Whether it's avoiding unhealthy foods, saving money, being kind, or simply just sticking to what goals you create for yourself, there is so much temptation luring us in all sorts of directions. About 24% of people who set new year's resolutions actually fail to achieve them. There's a much easier way to continue achieving your new year's resolutions so you don't have to make them again each new year. At the beginning of every month, set a new goal or intention. This could be losing three pounds on your journey to 20, not spending as much or decreasing your BMI every month. Setting monthly goals will make it easier for you to accomplish your resolution by year's end. That way, come January 1, 2017, you can finally have the opportunity to make a new resolution.
EMMA REYNOLDS
"How to Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions All Year", CheatSheet, February 1, 2016
The first step toward building willpower is to celebrate the fact that you've got it. You've got willpower, just like that muscle in your arm. It might not be a very strong muscle, but you do have that muscle.
STEVE CHANDLER
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself
There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct -- not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.
THOMAS HARDY
Far from the Madding Crowd
Your brain doesn't have a special structure that contains so-called willpower. It's not something that you have a set quantity of and that you can't do anything about. The reason why people believe that they don't have willpower is that they merely don't do what they think they should. But reasons other than willpower exist to account for the lack of effort.
ANONYMOUS
Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies
Realize that willpower is not always enough, and that supports are not a sign of weakness.
CYNTHIA GAMBLE
"Free quit smoking program increases success by 700 per cent", The IFP, January 25, 2016
Willpower is a finite resource. Every day we wake up, we have a limited supply of willpower and we spend it throughout the day, and it is how we spend it that makes the difference.
JAMES COUSINS
lecture series, "Limitless"
Willpower is steam for life's locomotion.
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Celestial Glow
We tend to think of [willpower] as good old-fashioned resolve, unlimited and with each act of self-discipline separate from every other. But if you've ever felt like you've "drained" your willpower, you may be right. According to some psychologists, using willpower is actually akin to using a muscle -- doing 20 push-ups means we have less juice left for those subsequent chest presses.
LESLIE BAEHR
"How to improve willpower? Feed it.", Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2015
Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello
He that will not when he may,
When he will he shall have nay.
ROBERT BURTON
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Willpower is a fickle beast. Some days you feel in control. Some days you don't. But the truth is, a large portion of our daily actions is simply a response to the environment around us. According to Food Psychologist Brian Wansink, making changes -- big and small -- to the world around us is much easier than mustering the willpower when it comes to our levels of physical activity and how much we eat. If you serve yourself on a smaller plate, you'll eat less; if you lay out your running kit or pack your gym bag the night before, you'll hit the gym. In other words, in order to change individual health behaviours, you need to change the environments that give rise to them.
KATHLEEN ALLEAUME
"Five real ways to get back in shape", News Australia, January 23, 2016
For most of us, willpower is very easy to disrupt and not strong enough to work over and over again. If you only needed to use it once or twice a day, willpower would matter. But you need to use it dozens of times a day for it to be effective.
TRACI MANN
"Why diets fail you: 5 things to know about weight, willpower and your body", Today, January 18, 2017
Willpower is something you can work on, like a muscle. Every time you use willpower, you are more capable of doing the same next time.
AMELIA FREER
"Eat like you love yourself!", Daily Mail, March 19, 2017