BUILDING WILLPOWER

I have been asked on numerous occasions how one goes about building willpower.  People perceive me as someone who has a substantial amount of willpower due to the amount of pain and misery I tend to inflict upon myself in my pursuit of training, along with how I’ve trained around and through numerous injuries.  Their belief is that I’ve acquired a large amount of willpower through some sort of process, and that it is something that can be replicated in order for others to do the same.  In reality, similar to my discussion on the impact of priorities to willpower, I find that willpower is more the product of one’s psychology and philosophy rather than a quality that can be directly increased.

But I suppose doing something like this couldn't hurt.

In my experience, one of the keys to possessing large amounts of willpower is an understanding that one’s body is not one’s self.  “Self” is an entity entirely separate from the body.  The body houses the self, but is in no way the manifestation of the self.  In fact, the body is what LIMITS the self.  We have our own ideal image of ourselves, but our body limits us from achieving that ideal, because the body is imperfect.  This understanding is crucial in the quest for willpower, for it is the foundation for one of the key elements of willpower: resentment.  Specifically, we experience self-resentment, for we resent our bodies for not being what we envision as our “selves”.  As much as we have been conditioned to believe that self-resentment is a negative quality, we must understand that resentment is in fact crucial to the “creation” of willpower.  Resentment is inherently a lack of satisfaction, and a satisfied man has no need for willpower.  For what would a satisfied man will toward?  He would have no need.

 This base of self-resentment segues into understanding exactly what an act of willpower is: an act against one’s nature.  As I’ve written before, one needs no willpower to do something that they want.  Acting in accordance with our desires in completely natural, to the point that many religious groups decided to make such acts “sins” as a means of instilling a sense of morality and provide some means of controlling a population.  For you Hobbes fans out there, the state of nature was reported to be solitary, nasty, poor, brutish and short because it was a constant state of war, as man fought against each other for resources to ensure survival.  Despite the hardships, that was not a life of willpower.  Willpower would be required for one to EXIT the state of nature and form the social contract, because it would mean acting against one’s base desires and drives and performing an action that seems entirely alien.  Why is this understanding important?  Because it’s indicative of the reality that, to have willpower, one must resent their current self more than they enjoy chasing their desires.

I mean, does this scream "willpower" or what?!

Overcoming out instincts (what many perceive to be an act of willpower) necessitates that one have so much self-resentment that it overcomes one’s self-preservation instincts.  Essentially, one has to be so unsatisfied with the way that their body is limiting their expression of their self that there are NO risks in any actions.  Either the body is broken, or the body improves; either is an acceptable outcome.  Why would one want to preserve something that they resent with every fiber of their being?  Why would one have any desire to spare their body pain, misery, torment, anguish, damage, fatigue, and ultimately destruction, when it is the body that prevents one from being their true self?  When one resents everything that their body stands for, they will find no difficulty doing whatever it takes to change it, in whatever way that happens.

Once all of this occurs under the hood, we witness “willpower” occurring.  Specifically, when one is in the process of either destroying or improving their bodies, they meet resistance in the form of pain, fatigue, sickness, injury, etc.  When one resents their body to the point that they are willing to destroy it, resistance of any form should result in anger.  Resistance is the body striving to maintain the status quo and deny you your ability to express your true self.  It is opposing you in your goal.  This SHOULD make you angry.  The absence of anger in this situation is indicative that one lacks the proper amount of resentment in order to affect change ON their body.  Once this anger takes hole, willpower occurs.  One feels the pain, injury, fatigue, sickenss, etc, and their rage drives them to push through and conquer the body as it tries to fight back.  The body is not the self; it is the enemy OF the self.

AS much as it pains me, there is a reason that Professor X always won these fights

We understand now that building willpower is simply building resentment.  In turn, resentment is built by increasing the divide between the body and the self.  The further this divide, the greater the amount of resentment, which in turn means the greater the amount of willpower demonstrated.  One who is content with how their body represents themselves will have no need for willpower to affect change.  One whose self is only marginally different from what their body represents will only have a marginal amount of willpower.  However, for those where the chasm between their self and their body is enormous, their amount of willpower will appear immeasurable, for they possess enough resentment to overcome vast amounts of pain, suffering, fatigue, injury and anguish.  In order to "build willpower", we must build the self.  We must envision our self to be truly unstoppable.

This is my “secret” to willpower.  Yes, it is unbalanced and unhinged, but it works.  Make no mistake; just because I resent my body doesn’t mean I have low self-esteem.  It’s actually the opposite; my self-esteem is far too great. I think far too highly of my “self”.  In my mind, I am the Juggernaut, Superman, Samson and Hercules, and the only thing holding me back is my body.  My neighbors think I’m a lunatic, because during conditioning sessions, they’ve heard me swearing at my body, telling it to harden the f**k up, strap in and hold on because I’m not quitting until the session is over, and f**k everything it has ever stood for.  When I blew out my knee, I blew it out because my “self” was greater than my body, and consequently I spent the next 6 months angry at my knee.  How DARE it try to deprive me of myself.  How DARE it hold me back.  And I punished it with no rest, constant training, and WILLING it to heal.

Still don't understand these folks that can't squat because of "bad knees"

The Hulk had it right.  “That’s my secret; I’m always angry.”