How To Quit Without Will Power
Posted: Sunday, January 10, 2010
by Susan Living
http://www.susansfoodforthought.com
Will - faculty by which a person decides or conceives as deciding upon and initiating action.
Power - ability to do or act, vigour, energy.
Using the above definitions, will power can be described as using one's own vigour and energy to decide upon and initiate action.
So, will power is a momentary thing, a short burst of "YES, I can! I will!" an intense inner experience that can create a vast amount of change and allow us to do things we never dreamed of. Picture a 64 kg mother lifting a one tonne car off her trapped child and we have the perfect image of the amazing potential of will power.
These are 2 very different things with 2 very different results. The first kind of will power is magical; we can't summon it, we have no control over it. It may or may not descend upon us at times of extraordinary emotional conditions, situations or events. This kind of will power is shocking to us. We have no comparisons or safe place to put it in our minds. A peak experience that simply is, when it is and then it's gone. A mystery.
The second kind of will power most of us are much more familiar with. Every time we struggle against something in our way or try to force change we are using it. It can make us feel tense, hardened and pressured. Our eyes squint, our shoulders tighten, our stomachs constrict. It's us against the world. Little insignificant us against the great, almighty cigarette or the powerful pull of the chocolate bar. This is war and we are fighting the good fight day in and day out. We may indeed create change in this way; there is a place for hard-nosed determination but when dealing with substances or behaviours there is an easier and far less painful way.
When we use this second kind of will power to create lifestyle change we reinforce the idea that we are weak and somehow "less than" the substance or behaviour we are struggling against. We believe this is the way it must be done, there's no other way and that we will continue to struggle periodically for the rest of our lives.
We bring these beliefs into any attempt to change our behaviour - before we even begin, we've already made up our minds that this is going to be hard and require LOTS of will power which we're not even sure we have! Hence we have MORE pressure to deal with. Everyone's told us that we need will power, everyone's told us that we won't succeed without it and looking around at all the strong, successful people we know who've failed, we suspect we don't have enough of it to go the distance.
If we lose, if we eat that piece of chocolate or smoke that cigarette, if our will power fails us then the belief is proven. We are weak. We are a failure. We don't have enough will power. We are flawed and missing some vital ingredient that would allow us to change if only we possessed it.
Not a nice way to feel.
What do we do when we feel crappy? First, we beat ourselves up a bit, then we reach straight for that cigarette or that Cherry Ripe...
And so on. And so on. And so on.
So what's the easier, less painful and far more effective way to create change? We stop struggling, leave the constant internal conflict and take the pressure off ourselves. We accept where we are right now and put our focus on where we want to be. We search for ways to make ourselves feel good that don't involve substances or behaviours and we do them. Finally, we acknowledge every incident we can find in our life where we've created positive change, we find examples of our incredible strength and energy and we realise that we are far more powerful than we could ever imagine.
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