TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
Astral Construct ::: An entity constructed through the willpower and imagination of the practitioner in order to accomplish a specific goal. The difference between this and an artificial spirit is more a matter of semantics and scope. Generally astral constructs have goals related to the Astral Plane and are viewed in terms of their effects on that layer of reality. See also Artificial Spirit.
Astral Temple ::: A temple and base of operations created through the willpower and imaginative faculties of the practitioner. Such a structure exists on the Astral Plane and through consistent practice and persistent reinforcement the structure can take on qualities of physicality that belie the usually fluid and transient nature of the Astral. This allows for such a place to be used for rituals and as a point to safely begin the exploration of other planes.
KEYS (10k)
2 Aleister Crowley
1 Yogani
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
19 Kelly McGonigal
13 Frederick Lenz
12 Cal Newport
11 Gary Keller
11 Anonymous
6 Stephen R Covey
5 Stephen Guise
5 Rick Warren
5 Charles Duhigg
5 Becca Fitzpatrick
4 Tony Robbins
4 Robert M Sapolsky
4 Rick Riordan
4 Pepper Winters
3 Toba Beta
3 Tim Ferriss
3 S J Scott
3 Roy F Baumeister
3 Robin S Sharma
3 Richelle E Goodrich
1:In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
~ Aleister Crowley, [T5],#KEYS
2:DHARANA
NOW that we have learnt to observe the mind, so that we know how it works to some extent, and have begun to understand the elements of control, we may try the result of gathering together all the powers of the mind, and attempting to focus them on a single point.
We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun. The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba, change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise, fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceivable change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disappearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concentrating his mind in the very smallest degree. Perhaps a student may go for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he does, the obstinacy of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably give up. As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.
For the first week it may seem rather amusing, and you may even imagine you are progressing; but as the practice teaches you what you are doing, you will apparently get worse and worse. Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
3:How to Meditate
Deep meditation is a mental procedure that utilizes the nature of the mind to systematically bring the mind to rest. If the mind is given the opportunity, it will go to rest with no effort. That is how the mind works.
Indeed, effort is opposed to the natural process of deep meditation. The mind always seeks the path of least resistance to express itself. Most of the time this is by making more and more thoughts. But it is also possible to create a situation in the mind that turns the path of least resistance into one leading to fewer and fewer thoughts. And, very soon, no thoughts at all. This is done by using a particular thought in a particular way. The thought is called a mantra.
For our practice of deep meditation, we will use the thought - I AM. This will be our mantra.
It is for the sound that we will use I AM, not for the meaning of it.
The meaning has an obvious significance in English, and I AM has a religious meaning in the English Bible as well. But we will not use I AM for the meaning - only for the sound. We can also spell it AYAM. No meaning there, is there? Only the sound. That is what we want. If your first language is not English, you may spell the sound phonetically in your own language if you wish. No matter how we spell it, it will be the same sound. The power of the sound ...I AM... is great when thought inside. But only if we use a particular procedure. Knowing this procedure is the key to successful meditation. It is very simple. So simple that we will devote many pages here to discussing how to keep it simple, because we all have a tendency to make things more complicated. Maintaining simplicity is the key to right meditation.
Here is the procedure of deep meditation: While sitting comfortably with eyes closed, we'll just relax. We will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. We just let them go by without minding them. After about a minute, we gently introduce the mantra, ...I AM...
We think the mantra in a repetition very easily inside. The speed of repetition may vary, and we do not mind it. We do not intone the mantra out loud. We do not deliberately locate the mantra in any particular part of the body. Whenever we realize we are not thinking the mantra inside anymore, we come back to it easily. This may happen many times in a sitting, or only once or twice. It doesn't matter. We follow this procedure of easily coming back to the mantra when we realize we are off it for the predetermined time of our meditation session. That's it.
Very simple.
Typically, the way we will find ourselves off the mantra will be in a stream of other thoughts. This is normal. The mind is a thought machine, remember? Making thoughts is what it does. But, if we are meditating, as soon as we realize we are off into a stream of thoughts, no matter how mundane or profound, we just easily go back to the mantra.
Like that. We don't make a struggle of it. The idea is not that we have to be on the mantra all the time. That is not the objective. The objective is to easily go back to it when we realize we are off it. We just favor the mantra with our attention when we notice we are not thinking it. If we are back into a stream of other thoughts five seconds later, we don't try and force the thoughts out. Thoughts are a normal part of the deep meditation process. We just ease back to the mantra again. We favor it.
Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.
As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.
When and Where to Meditate
How long and how often do we meditate? For most people, twenty minutes is the best duration for a meditation session. It is done twice per day, once before the morning meal and day's activity, and then again before the evening meal and evening's activity.
Try to avoid meditating right after eating or right before bed.
Before meal and activity is the ideal time. It will be most effective and refreshing then. Deep meditation is a preparation for activity, and our results over time will be best if we are active between our meditation sessions. Also, meditation is not a substitute for sleep. The ideal situation is a good balance between meditation, daily activity and normal sleep at night. If we do this, our inner experience will grow naturally over time, and our outer life will become enriched by our growing inner silence.
A word on how to sit in meditation: The first priority is comfort. It is not desirable to sit in a way that distracts us from the easy procedure of meditation. So sitting in a comfortable chair with back support is a good way to meditate. Later on, or if we are already familiar, there can be an advantage to sitting with legs crossed, also with back support. But always with comfort and least distraction being the priority. If, for whatever reason, crossed legs are not feasible for us, we will do just fine meditating in our comfortable chair. There will be no loss of the benefits.
Due to commitments we may have, the ideal routine of meditation sessions will not always be possible. That is okay. Do the best you can and do not stress over it. Due to circumstances beyond our control, sometimes the only time we will have to meditate will be right after a meal, or even later in the evening near bedtime. If meditating at these times causes a little disruption in our system, we will know it soon enough and make the necessary adjustments. The main thing is that we do our best to do two meditations every day, even if it is only a short session between our commitments. Later on, we will look at the options we have to make adjustments to address varying outer circumstances, as well as inner experiences that can come up.
Before we go on, you should try a meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit where you are not likely to be interrupted and do a short meditation, say ten minutes, and see how it goes. It is a toe in the water.
Make sure to take a couple of minutes at the end sitting easily without doing the procedure of meditation. Then open your eyes slowly. Then read on here.
As you will see, the simple procedure of deep meditation and it's resulting experiences will raise some questions. We will cover many of them here.
So, now we will move into the practical aspects of deep meditation - your own experiences and initial symptoms of the growth of your own inner silence. ~ Yogani, Deep Meditation,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I think willpower is very valuable. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 2:Willpower is nothing but willingness to do. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 3:Willpower is essential to the accomplishment of anything worthwhile. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 4:Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 5:In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 6:Willpower is that thing CEOs and professional athletes tell us they used to make it to the top. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 7:The development of willpower -I will, I won't and I want- may define what it means to be human. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove 8:The start of the day is often the best time to get things done. This is somewhat related to willpower. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 9:Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 10:A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he hadn't eaten in four days. I told him, "Man, I wish I had your willpower. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 11:When willpower is not guided, it's terrible. Hitler had a lot of will. But he used it for destructive purposes because he lacked wisdom. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 12:Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 13:When you abuse willpower you waste it. There really is not an infinite supply of it at your disposal. There is an infinite supply of it in the universe. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 14:When you meditate, you focus to clear the mind and to bring the willpower together. But then, toward the end of the session let go, just become eternity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 15:Willpower is concrete, not ethereal. When you do something, you demonstrate your willpower, and it becomes all the easier to have the same power of will the next time. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 16:We could go to monasteries. I could show you people who are very wise and they have great willpower, but they're not happy. They lack balance. They take it all too seriously. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 17:I think about willpower almost never. I realize for myself, trying to be more disciplined is pretty nebulous and it's often a slippery target. For me, I've just thought about incentives. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 18:The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (... ) these three skills ‚ self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most‚ are the foundation for self-control. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove 19:In Zen you practice zazen, mindfulness and other forms of introspection to find out who you are and what you want, to balance your spirit, develop willpower, increase your sense of humor and gain wisdom. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 20:Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm, but also as experiences in the material realm. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 21:Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better, not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills Over time, [meditators'] brains become finely tuned willpower machines. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove 22:It is possible with pure willpower to force the kundalini up the shushumna, through the chakras. You will develop visions of other worlds that will not necessarily stop when you want them to. This is a condition we call insanity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 23:Just deciding to forgive isn't enough because willpower alone won't work - we need divine strength from God. As He gives us the strength, we need to pray for our enemies and bless them. Praying for those who have hurt us is vital to successfully forgiving them. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 24:For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Willpower defines realm. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
2:willpower. Keep going! ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
3:I think willpower is very valuable. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
4:Willpower alone cannot change one’s fate. ~ Sabaa Tahir, #NFDB
5:It's amazing how willpower can build walls. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
6:Sugar and caffeine. My willpower crumbled. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
7:Willpower is steam for life's locomotion. ~ Praveen Kumar, #NFDB
8:Willpower is nothing but willingness to do. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
9:Design your life to minimize reliance on willpower. ~ B J Fogg, #NFDB
10:For a great willpower, no road has length! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
11:Forget about willpower. It’s time for why-power. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
12:I don’t possess the willpower for long-term grudges. ~ R S Grey, #NFDB
13:When it comes to willpower, timing is everything. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
14:Willpower is a muscle that can be strengthened. ~ Roy Baumeister, #NFDB
15:Sometimes willpower alone cannot make things happen. ~ Nick Bantock, #NFDB
16:Willpower is the shortest shortcut to success. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
17:Darren Hardy says, “We need why power not willpower. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
18:Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower. ~ Phil McGraw, #NFDB
19:"Many people mistakenly overestimate the role of willpower." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
20:Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
21:My willpower hadn’t just dissolved…
It was shattered. ~ Marita A Hansen,#NFDB
22:When you're out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
23:Loneliness is stronger than resolve, willpower, or discipline. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
24:Willpower is real, but it needs the right conditions to thrive. ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
25:You surrender to love; you do not accomplish love by willpower. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
26:Unlike motivation, willpower can be strengthened like a muscle. ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
27:Willpower works for a few weeks, or maybe a month or two at best. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
28:In ultrarunning, the mountains and willpower equalize the genders. ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
29:If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
30:You can keep your willpower, Frog. I am going home to bake a cake. ~ Arnold Lobel, #NFDB
31:Don’t tempt me. My willpower can’t stand much more.” “So give in. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
32:Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics. ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
33:There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
34:Our # imagination is ten times more potent than our # willpower . ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
35:The perfect team in personal development is small steps and willpower. ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
36:We lack willpower, but we have enough will to succumb to the will of others. ~ Ji Weil, #NFDB
37:If you find you require willpower, you aren't ready to lose weight. ~ Augusten Burroughs, #NFDB
38:Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
39:You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
40:make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is its highest. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
41:Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
42:Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
43:In ultrarunning, the mountains and willpower equalize the genders. Strawburst ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
44:It took every ounce of Mina’s willpower not to do a face plant into the table. ~ Chanda Hahn, #NFDB
45:Willpower is a limited resource; we run low on it, just like a tank of fuel. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
46:You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
47:Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
48:...and with the deftness of a thief, he was picking the lock of her willpower. ~ Mary Jo Putney, #NFDB
49:Low blood sugar levels turn out to predict a wide range of willpower failures, ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
50:A big part of willpower is having something to aspire to, something to live for. ~ Mark Shuttleworth, #NFDB
51:do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
52:To die before coming to the end of willpower, was that not an aristocrat’s choice? He ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
53:Willpower is the ignition that gets a car started, not the gasoline that keeps it moving. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
54:Whatever you are aiming at in life, willpower is one of your most important resources. ~ Frank Martela, #NFDB
55:Willpower is breath and heartbeat of life; Life blooms in the girdle of taut willpower. ~ Praveen Kumar, #NFDB
56:In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
57:We, performers, work on willpower. This willpower works in a short term, not durational. ~ Marina Abramovic, #NFDB
58:Willpower was never my own. It sucked ass not having a choice over my own fucking destiny. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
59:It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it. ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
60:It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it. ~ Junot Diaz, #NFDB
61:The willpower to do anything would come, the songs and writings said, if the motive was pure. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
62:While decisions tap our willpower, the food we eat is also a key player in our level of willpower. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
63:Getting where you want to be has everything to do with awareness, and nothing to do with willpower. ~ Cheri Huber, #NFDB
64:The development of willpower -I will, I won't and I want- may define what it means to be human. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
65:The start of the day is often the best time to get things done. This is somewhat related to willpower. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
66:Like my father before me, I'm a very passionate person, with boundless energy and tremedous willpower. ~ Raymond Blanc, #NFDB
67:Living with past trauma takes work, strength, and willpower to keep on breathing, trying, wanting, living. ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
68:In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
69:My heart's been torn wide open, just like I feared it would be, and I have no willpower to close it back up. ~ Marie Lu, #NFDB
70:Consistency in any endeavor, despite external distraction, is the recipe for gathering personal willpower. ~ Michael Brown, #NFDB
71:He does seem to have a lot of willpower.” “That is an understatement,” I agreed. “Tall, blond, and stubborn. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
72:Willpower is just another name for the idea of choosing long-term outcomes rather than short-term ones. ~ Ant nio R Dam sio, #NFDB
73:For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
74:Self-knowledge—especially of how we find ourselves in willpower trouble—is the foundation of self-control. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
75:attempting to schedule deep work in an ad hoc fashion is not an effective way to manage your limited willpower.) ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
76:Desiring a will was not enough. I would have needed precisely what I could not have without willpower: a will. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
77:We touched base at several strategic locations down our bodies, and it took all my willpower to break away. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
78:In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
~ Aleister Crowley, [T5],#NFDB
79:Research has shown, namely, that those people who are most confident about their willpower are most prone to fail ~ Frank Martela, #NFDB
80:Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
81:If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth. ~ Geoffrey Miller, #NFDB
82:What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions. ~ Roy F Baumeister, #NFDB
83:A heart full of love and compassion is the main source of inner strength, willpower, happiness, and mental tranquility ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
84:Human beings actually have quite a bit of willpower. They don't know too much about it, but they have quite a bit. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
85:Marriage doesn't just happen! It takes a solid set of decisions, a huge amount of skill and enormous willpower. ~ Neil Clark Warren, #NFDB
86:When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along. ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
87:There's no guarantee of disaster-free in any world religion,
but love, faith and knowledge give men hope and willpower. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
88:The psychologist Roy Baumeister has shown that willpower is a limited resource, so we have to be careful not to deplete it. ~ Guy Spier, #NFDB
89:What positive changes in your life could happen if you relied on God’s unlimited power instead of your limited willpower. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
90:Mini habits are low willpower trojan horses that can leverage their easy access into the brain’s control room into big results. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
91:The key to willpower is "want-power". If U want something strongly enough, U will find the discipline necessary to do it. ~ Douglas Merrill, #NFDB
92:In the beginning [Hitler] was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. ~ Hermann Goring, #NFDB
93:Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal ~ Reinhold Messner, #NFDB
94:A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he hadn't eaten in four days. I told him, "Man, I wish I had your willpower. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
95:So in the path of love - rather than pulling our willpower together, using our discrimination, or working - we just cry inwardly. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
96:We exhausted ourselves in all the love we felt and we held off the shadows by sheer willpower until there was nothing left. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
97:Willpower and dedication are good words' Roland remarked 'There's a bad one, though, that means the same thing. That one is obsession ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
98:You must be sure - and I mean absolutely positive - that you have the willpower to pay off those credit cards and not use them again. ~ Jean Chatzky, #NFDB
99:So, if you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
100:Trust God more than you trust that thought. Don’t try to fight those thoughts with your willpower alone—challenge them with God’s Word. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
101:You need to recognize when you’re making a choice that requires willpower; otherwise, the brain always defaults to what is easiest. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
102:Get out of your own way... What we call 'lack of willpower' is actually just losing an argument with an outdated version of yourself. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
103:You can train weapons and fighting techniques, but you can't train that kind of courage and willpower. You either have it or you don't. ~ Shamim Sarif, #NFDB
104:The number one reason the Bulletproof Diet is so effective and easy to maintain is that it gives you back your willpower instead of sapping ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
105:Ultimately, self-control lets you relax because it removes stress and enables you to conserve willpower for the important challenges. ~ Laura Vanderkam, #NFDB
106:On the other hand, if the future is not the one you chose then you may have to use your willpower to obtain the future of your liking. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
107:Think about this: What positive changes in your life could happen if you relied on God’s unlimited power instead of your limited willpower. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
108:When willpower is not guided, it's terrible. Hitler had a lot of will. But he used it for destructive purposes because he lacked wisdom. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
109:... self-control is not control by oneself through one's own willpower but rather control of oneself through the power of the Holy Spirit. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
110:Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear. ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
111:The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” This famous line from Walt Disney on willpower cannot be more true ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
112:Between being able to and actually doing something lies an ocean, and on its bottom rests all too often the wreck of willpower. ~ Marie von Ebner Eschenbach, #NFDB
113:Strength is not just about brawn, but also brain. I know because I've had to use brute strength and willpower to live through my entire life. ~ Kim Dong Hwa, #NFDB
114:We pray to you, O God ... for strength, determination, and willpower, to do instead of just to pray, to become instead of merely to wish. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
115:Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. With faith there is no anxiety and no doubt - just absolute confidence in yourself. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
116:Talent is the discipline, commitment, and willpower to practice/train/study often, long, and hard. Discover your passion and pay the price. ~ Bradford Winters, #NFDB
117:If you want to do something that requires willpower—like going for a run after work—you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day, ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
118:In many cases, the problem isn’t about having or noticing insights; it is about acting on them. The organization lacks the willpower to make changes. ~ Gary Klein, #NFDB
119:We made a rule,” I whispered.
“Unlike you, I don’t follow rules.” He didn’t give me a chance to respond. His lips met mine and stole my willpower. ~ Kasie West,#NFDB
120:If you want to do something that requires willpower - like going for a run after work - you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day. ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
121:There’s emptiness in him that can never be filled, emptiness that dresses up well at prep school, where a lack of willpower is called creativity. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
122:We’ve said that willpower is humans’ greatest strength, but the best strategy is not to rely on it in all situations. Save it for emergencies. As ~ Roy F Baumeister, #NFDB
123:Willpower was just like any other muscle. It needed to be exercised in order to become strong enough to be there for a person when they really needed it. ~ Dean Murray, #NFDB
124:The best way to use your limited willpower resources is to change the situation so that you do not actually need willpower at all to do the right thing. ~ Frank Martela, #NFDB
125:THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS Everything Matters Equally Multitasking A Disciplined Life Willpower Is Always on Will-Call A Balanced Life Big Is Bad ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
126:When you abuse willpower you waste it. There really is not an infinite supply of it at your disposal. There is an infinite supply of it in the universe. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
127:Feel that the energy of your willpower can easily deflect tension-causing feelings and frustrations that are directed towards you from the outside world. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
128:When you meditate, you focus to clear the mind and to bring the willpower together. But then, toward the end of the session let go, just become eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
129:He took a step forward. Behind him, Ryu growled. It was a test of willpower for Scarlet to smother a grin. That wolf had really grown on her lately. Though ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
130:I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
131:The future of Japan's economic growth depends on us having the willpower and the courage to sail without hesitation onto the rough seas of global competition. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
132:The inferior man lived only in his fantasies, because he lacked willpower and imagination. The superior man made his fantasies a reality. (Martin Darius) ~ Phillip Margolin, #NFDB
133:This ancient Pinto was held together with sheer willpower and a whole lot of prayer. But she wasn't going to let her old jalopy ruin her perfect mood either. ~ Holly Jacobs, #NFDB
134:If you feel stronger and good when the weather is sunny, and weaker and bad when the weather is cloudy, then it means your willpower is not powerful yet! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
135:THERE COMES A point in life where determination supersedes circumstance. Where willpower wins over what should be done. I’d lived in that point for two years. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
136:You try moving things with nothing but willpower. It's about as easy as trying to lasso a bull with a licorice whip."
—from "Phantom's Veil ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
137:Since a good behavior change strategy must be able to succeed in the worst circumstances, it’s best to design a strategy that works in low willpower situations. ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
138:Celibacy is not about a heroic feat of willpower. It’s about giving up one way of expressing love in order to be able to love widely, profligately, indiscriminately. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
139:It was masturbation, not willpower, that made it possible for gazillions of women to walk down the aisle with their reputation and their hymen still intact. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
140:Never will I succeed in putting as much strength in a portrait as there is in a head. The mere fact of living demands such willpower and energy … ALBERTO GIACOMETTI ~ Peter Stamm, #NFDB
141:Our tendency is to be strong, self-sufficient, and dependent on our own willpower, but rather than try harder, we should reach out to the God who is all-powerful. ~ John Townsend, #NFDB
142:Addiction is a brain disease. This is not a moral failing. This is not about bad people who are choosing to continue to use drugs because they lack willpower. ~ Michael Botticelli, #NFDB
143:Get your friends involved. Let your shopping buddies know that you're on a tight budget, and they can help you out when your willpower starts to weaken at the mall. ~ Jean Chatzky, #NFDB
144:Willpower is compared to a muscle. In the same way that your muscles become fatigued with use, your willpower also becomes fatigued, and the amount of willpower you have ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
145:It required a great deal of Cam’s willpower—and he had a considerable supply—not to skewer Christopher Frost with a dining utensil. He wanted her attention. All of it. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
146:A brilliant idea doesn't guarantee a successful invention. Real magic comes from a brilliant idea combined with willpower, tenacity, and a willingness to make mistakes. ~ Lori Greiner, #NFDB
147:Willpower is concrete, not ethereal. When you do something, you demonstrate your willpower, and it becomes all the easier to have the same power of will the next time. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
148:a stony road, hard on the feet. I would beg for us to sit down but you discouraged it, knowing that sitting was fatal, because of the willpower required to get up again. ~ Edna O Brien, #NFDB
149:Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource. Frontal neurons are expensive cells, and expensive cells are vulnerable cells. Consistent ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
150:There's no doubt that Mexican men and women - full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work - are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States. ~ Vicente Fox, #NFDB
151:Early on, Abraham revealed a keystone attribute essential to success in any field—the motivation and willpower to develop every talent he possessed to the fullest. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
152:Soloing is the most beautiful way of climbing; no material constrains, just you and the rock, the sun, nature; a kind of school for courage, willpower and self-confidence. ~ Alain Robert, #NFDB
153:At the end of the day, I don't need to work, and I think it's good that I have the drive and willpower to get up and do something in the morning even though I don't need to. ~ Petra Stunt, #NFDB
154:History teaches us that humans do not change their civilisation after deliberation, or by their own willpower, but in the wake of chaos that they themselves have provoked. ~ Guillaume Faye, #NFDB
155:The first two months were painful and they really tested my manhood because there were times I didn’t want to get up because I was in pain. That willpower has to kick in. ~ Adrian Peterson, #NFDB
156:We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character—they are caused by actual changes in the brain. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
157:Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things. ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
158:Therapy can get you only so far with exorcising your childhood nightmares; after that it's willpower, and you, and people you can trust to hold your hand along the way. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
159:Your imagination is ten times more potent than your willpower. Unleashed, it provides a sense of certainty and tenacious vision that goes far beyond any limitation of the past. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
160:For his book Willpower, psychologist Roy Baumeister analyzed findings from hundreds of experiments to determine why some people can retain focus for hours, while others can’t. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
161:One siupreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy and imagination that ceates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality. ~ Richard Wagner, #NFDB
162:We could go to monasteries. I could show you people who are very wise and they have great willpower, but they're not happy. They lack balance. They take it all too seriously. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
163:We do not grow because of “willpower” or “self-effort,” but because of God’s provision. God offers the help we need (that’s grace), and then we have to respond to that provision. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
164:What you see to be difficult now, is likely to be the easiest thing ever later when you deliberately get your willpower trained over it by repeated attempts! Don't give up! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
165:Often girls feel deeply cared about as small children but then find as we develop willpower and independent thought that the world stops affirming us, that we are seen as unlovable. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
166:Willpower alone is not enough to bring about this change; start by realizing that you cannot do this alone. If you are a person of faith, use that connection to help you change. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
167:Things have to be made to happen in a way you want them to happen. Without management, without the intervention of organized willpower the desired result simply cannot be obtained. ~ Robert Heller, #NFDB
168:But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. ~ Allie Brosh, #NFDB
169:Grace, not willpower, is what ultimately empowers us to live loving lives. Creativity, both in what spawns within the artist and the artifact, can be a vital source of that grace. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
170:I have no outcome I want from it, and I’ve never been in better shape in my life. It helped me realize that the secret to change and growth is not willpower, but positive community. ~ Timothy Ferris, #NFDB
171:People can’t make decisions easily when stressed, are low in willpower or feeling overwhelmed. When you are too tired to make a decision, you tend to just repeat what you usually do. ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
172:We can't change by fancy methods. We can't change by mere willpower. But God's Spirit working in us can help us to "will and to act according to his good purpose" (Philippians 2:13). ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
173:It takes all my willpower not to run like the Flash out of that club, but since it was bravado that's more or less kept me alive in the past few minutes, I must keep up appearances. ~ Jennifer Harlow, #NFDB
174:People are timid. They don't take chances. Naturally, they're bound. They are afraid of the light. They are afraid of their own power. In the land of willpower, anything is possible. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
175:When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
176:Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
177:I think about willpower almost never. I realize for myself, trying to be more disciplined is pretty nebulous and it's often a slippery target. For me, I've just thought about incentives. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
178:When you do see a thing clearly in your mind, the creative Success Mechanism within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort, or “willpower. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
179:willpower takes metabolic power, thanks to the glucose demands of the frontal cortex. This was the finding that when people are hungry, they become less generous in economic games. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
180:Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn't have to strive for anything. A quality of ease spread over us. ~ Charles Baxter, #NFDB
181:That is what marks out a warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but willpower requires patience and commitment. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
182:A beggar walked up to a well-dressed woman shopping on Rodeo Drive and said to her, ‘I haven’t eaten anything in four days.’ She looked at him and said, ‘God, I wish I had your willpower. ~ Kristin Neff, #NFDB
183:When you find yourself dwelling on something negative, consciously use your willpower to remove your mind from that which is negative. Move your mind into the flow of something positive. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
184:Isn't it...dicey? people our parents' age would say, grimacing, when we told them where we lived, and it took all my willpower not to say, Do you mean black, or just poor? Because it was both. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
185:All athletic accomplishments begin with volition; that is, the desire and willpower necessary to succeed. Volition affects more than thoughts and feelings - it affects physical performance. ~ Charles Garfield, #NFDB
186:Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others... it rises from your heart. ~ Junko Tabei, #NFDB
187:I love food, but it is so difficult to enjoy food. It is so difficult to believe I am allowed to enjoy food. Mostly, food is a constant reminder of my body, my lack of willpower, my biggest flaws. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
188:After 15 years of work I have achieved, as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower, the unity of the German nation, and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
189:The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
190:Stuff like looking me over as if you wanna lick every square inch of me and then blushing about it. It's taking every bit of willpower I have and then some not to come over there and kiss you. ~ Michelle Leighton, #NFDB
191:willpower. He recalled very clearly his years of fear, the torment at school, and the superhuman effort he had made to study a profession that required an evil streak completely missing in him. He ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
192:Willpower, though important in its own way, is never enough. In order for you to be truly powerful, you must open up and trust in something beyond yourself—something you cannot prove for certain. ~ Seth Adam Smith, #NFDB
193:perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
194:The popular emphasis on calorie balance reinforces the belief that we have conscious control over our weight, and that obesity represents a personal failure because of ignorance or inadequate willpower. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. Since your self-control will be sapped throughout the day, use it when it’s at full strength on what matters most. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
196:The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
197:The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
198:I think the whole point about self-control, the whole point about willpower, is to help people understand that there are endless self-nudge techniques that can be enormously helpful and are very simple. ~ Walter Mischel, #NFDB
199:Being stuck in negativity is caused by four things: low personal vibration, improper use of willpower, not working harmoniously with waves and cycles, and not being fully present and aware in each moment. ~ Penney Peirce, #NFDB
200:In Zen you practice zazen, mindfulness and other forms of introspection to find out who you are and what you want, to balance your spirit, develop willpower, increase your sense of humor and gain wisdom. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
201:Every enticing item you pass in the window and don’t buy is a crushed impulse, slowly whittling away at your reserve of willpower—making it much more likely that later in the day you will fall for temptation. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
202:Willpower determines success in business, interpersonal relationships, health, whatever it is. All the activities in your life, success and failure in them, are dependent upon your ability to manifest will. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
203:A recent study suggests that 75 per cent of the weight-loss response in obesity is predicted by insulin levels.29 Not willpower. Not caloric intake. Not peer support or peer pressure. Not exercise. Just insulin. ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
204:I don't believe in wishes coming true. But if I do, what would I wish for? Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don't even let myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
205:Let’s recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower but also of chance and early upbringing, and that compassion isn’t a sign of weakness but a mark of civilization. ~ Nicholas D Kristof, #NFDB
206:I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea. ~ Thor Heyerdahl, #NFDB
207:Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm, but also as experiences in the material realm. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
208:I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire willpower, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
209:He does not know the outcome ahead of time, or his confidence would be in himself and God to pull it off, which would then largely be a matter of the willpower of belief. Faith is so much more than strong willpower ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
210:Learning to desire God's will is not something we can accomplish by resolve and willpower. It occurs only when we live so close to God's heart that the rhythm of our own heartbeat comes to reflect the divine pulse ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
211:You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
212:He banished all memories and, with them, the longing for a world that had gifted him those memories. He narrowed his willpower into a knife-edge, razor sharp and formidable. At knifepoint, he kept madness at bay. ~ Shubhangi Swarup, #NFDB
213:In other words, our willpower works like a muscle and it weakens throughout the day, since it’s used constantly. We all have a limit to our willpower, and once we’ve reached the limit, it becomes very difficult to focus. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
214:Every morning, and every night, I resolved to start a new life, but I always procrastinated, acquiescing to my ailing willpower. And Saturday at eleven o’clock at night was not the right moment to make important decisions. ~ C sar Aira, #NFDB
215:Did you notice the phrase by his power in that last Bible verse? This is what makes The Daniel Plan different from other approaches. It is built on trusting in God’s power to help you change, not merely your own willpower. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
216:Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
217:Sometimes, we feel conscious but unable to move our body.
The first thing to do is focus in a prayer, then start to wink frequently.
By this way, slowly but sure our body can be moved totally by our persistent willpower. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
218:Diets, he believes, are a joke. They’re based on a stupid, shame-based notion that losing weight is a matter of willpower and sacrifice, that you’re heavy only because you’re too lazy to starve yourself down to size. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
219:fighting desires—over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
220:We saw what happened the last time you made a solemn vow.”
“That wasn’t my fault. You beguiled me. You stripped me of my strength. You cast a spell on me that whisked away my willpower so you could have your way with me. ~ Nicole Williams,#NFDB
221:What I know is that if you're going to play half-court, you'd better have the greatest executioners of half-court basketball. If you run, you test the stamina and willpower of the other team. That's what I learned as a player. ~ Tom Heinsohn, #NFDB
222:We can’t overcome workaholism if we love money and status too much. We can’t overcome bitterness or slander if we love our reputation too much. It is not just willpower but a reordering of our desires that will bring wisdom. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
223:Sit in front of an object of concentration with the eyes open. Focus on a candle flame, or a yantra, a little dot, something small. Just look at it. Focus on it until there is nothing else in your mind. This develops willpower. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
224:Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better, not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills Over time, [meditators'] brains become finely tuned willpower machines. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
225:Pain, sorrow, anger, these are all powerful emotions. Allowed to rule and left unchecked, they would destroy you. However, through training and willpower you can choose to harness those feelings and use them for something great. ~ Jonathan Yanez, #NFDB
226:It is possible with pure willpower to force the kundalini up the shushumna, through the chakras. You will develop visions of other worlds that will not necessarily stop when you want them to. This is a condition we call insanity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
227:He was drowning in want, his control shattering like glass blown out of a window by a blast concussion. He could almost imagine he heard the shards raining to the ground beneath them. The broken pieces of his willpower. Of his life. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
228:I only have so much willpower, Helen," he whispered. "And since you apparently sleep in the most ridiculously transparent tank top I've ever seen, I'm going to have to ask you to get under the covers before I do something stupid. ~ Josephine Angelini, #NFDB
229:It had taken all Harry’s willpower to uproot himself from the spot and run, leaving the eyeless dementors to glide amongst the Muggles who might not be able to see them, but would assuredly feel the despair they cast wherever they went. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
230:It is good to preserve the name, wealth, and honors you inherit, but it is better in every way if you yourself create a position and a name. The first requires good sense, but the second demands willpower and great virtue. ~ Roman Baldorioty de Castro, #NFDB
231:Imagine if your success in life is determined only by your guts, your hard work, and your willpower, and not by the wealth of your parents. I think it'll be a much more interesting world. I think this could change the way the planet is run. ~ Andrew Ng, #NFDB
232:What happens to someone isn’t a reflection of who they are. Who you are is made up of your personality, willpower, motivations, dreams. And all of those things I didn’t have the first clue about when I picked you up and carried you home. ~ Laury Falter, #NFDB
233:Willpower is what separates us from the animals. It's the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation - do what's right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It's central, in fact, to civilisation. ~ Roy Baumeister, #NFDB
234:He beguiled me almost by surprise into doing wrong, then he got me accustomed to having bad thoughts which I had no will to resist—willpower being the only force capable of driving them back to the infernal darkness from which they emerged. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
235:You’re the worst because you’re an addiction. You have so many secrets that all I want to do is rip them out. You have secrets even you don’t know. It takes all my fucking willpower not to do what he does and hurt you to pry them free.” For ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
236:As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything. ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
237:If ever there's been somebody to hold as an icon of sheer determination and willpower, it's that guy [Stephen Hawking ], let alone any of the things he's done scientifically. I'm sure that's his driving force, but he's a miracle and an aspiration. ~ Kate Bush, #NFDB
238:Push will wear you out. When you’re pushing to do something, you only got so much willpower. But when you’re pulled, when there’s something larger than yourself that you’re here to serve and that you believe you’re made for, that brings energy. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
239:Where there is willpower there is a Band Aid that's eventually going to fall off.
You only need willpower to get what you don't want or you only want to want. By want to want, I mean, something you wish you wanted but don't really. ~ Augusten Burroughs,#NFDB
240:Willpower is the fuel that runs human life; Like a driver in a computer application, Or Operating System in cyber programme, Willpower works life to performances; Life is deadwood; life, robust carrion, Without willpower in bright flame within. ~ Praveen Kumar, #NFDB
241:I will” and “I won’t” power are the two sides of self-control, but they alone don’t constitute willpower. To say no when you need to say no, and yes when you need to say yes, you need a third power: the ability to remember what you really want. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
242:...one part of love is sweet and easy, something we fall into and are swept away by. But the other part is hard: it requires discipline, willpower, and opening your heart again and again to someone with whom you are angry, can't stand, and do not like. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
243:So, if you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. Since your self-control will be sapped throughout the day, use it when it’s at full strength on what matters most. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
244:Still I kept walking. I walked and walked. And from time to time I stopped and said to myself: Wake up, Auxilio. Nobody can endure this. And yet I knew I could endure it. So I baptized my right leg Willpower and my left leg Necessity. And I endured. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
245:You’re crowding me. I need— room.”... What I needed were boundaries. I needed willpower. I needed to be caged up, since yet again I was proving I couldn’t be trusted in Patch’s presence. I should have been bolting for the door, and yet … I wasn’t. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
246:As you saw in chapter 2, in Rotherbart’s description of how we develop, adult humans are capable of directing attention, using willpower, and deciding to overcome a fear. If your envy is strong and you decide you want to do something, you probably can. ~ Elaine N Aron, #NFDB
247:Steps can then be taken to slow down the natural progression before it gets started. It doesn't work to allow all the preliminary intimacies and then hope to stop the progression just short of intercourse. Very few people have the willpower to do that. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
248:The fact that this same basic approach helps such a wide range of willpower challenges, from depression to drug addiction, confirms that these three skills—self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matters most—are the foundation for self-control. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
249:You’re crowding me. I need— room.”...
What I needed were boundaries. I needed willpower. I needed to be caged up, since yet again I was proving I couldn’t be trusted in Patch’s presence. I should have been bolting for the door, and yet … I wasn’t. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
250:But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work. ~ Allie Brosh, #NFDB
251:The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
252:Where God guides, he provides. What he calls you to do, he equips you to do. He doesn’t need your strength and willpower, but he does need your commitment. He wants you to live an abundant life that includes a vibrant faith, a vibrant body, and a vibrant mind. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
253:We know what willpower is, but by some misguided conception, many of us believe we have to be a certain type of person, strong, determined, extroverted, to be able to be willful, to exercise willpower. Not so. We all have it and just don't know how to use it. ~ Rosemary Altea, #NFDB
254:And somehow I had always resisted driving very slowly back and forth in front of his house. Willpower? No. I figured his front gate was equipped with security cameras and I would just be embarrassing myself. And this street was definitely not on the bus line. ~ Jennifer Echols, #NFDB
255:I'm sorry," I say. "I hate feeling like I let you down."
"It's okay," she says. She puts her arm around my neck.
"In fact, I respect it. Celibacy must take a lot of willpower."
I think of all the times I've eaten someone and sworn I'll never do it again. ~ Jack Heath,#NFDB
256:That was the trouble with wizards, they had to make everything look difficult. All you really needed was willpower. And the Brethren had a lot of that. Small-minded and vitriolic willpower, yes, lousy with malignity maybe, but still powerful enough in its way... ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
257:But willpower is necessary only where ability to do is lacking. Learning ... is not the training of willpower but the acquisition of the skill to inhibit parasitic action and the ability to direct clear motivations as a result of self-knowledge. [Introduction] ~ Mosh Feldenkrais, #NFDB
258:Every human being has the same potential. Whatever makes you feel "I am worthless" is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You are deceiving yourself. We all have the power of thought, so what could you possibly be lacking? If you have the willpower, then you can do anything. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
259:I believe tnat life is very generous with us once we have shown the will to take a positive course. It is ery ready to keep on opening doors for us. It is just that sometimes we lose our willpower and courage adn prefer to stay on the familiar, safe side of each door. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
260:Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
261:Life becomes a loving partnership when we realize that God provides the raw substance of life—willpower, thoughts, feelings, mobility, etc.—but we must choose their form. In every beat of our hearts we can hear God say, “I am with you. I love you. Be my partner in life. ~ David Aaron, #NFDB
262:Taoists do not look upon meditation as 'practice,' except in the sense that a doctor 'practices' medicine. They have no design to subjugate or alter the universe by force or willpower, for their art is entirely to go along with the flow of things in an intelligent way. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
263:Traumatized people often keep repeating the same problems & have trouble learning from experience. We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character—they are caused by actual changes in the brain. ~ B van der Kolk, #NFDB
264:The Girauds' child was looking more and more like a problem.
Luke pressed his lips into a thin line. When she'd leaned in the stagecoach blazing with fervor over what was in the arcane books, it had taken all his willpower not to throw a bolt of magic to stop her heart. ~ Ann Gimpel,#NFDB
265:Do not be afraid to exaggerate the role of willpower. It is an exaggeration with a purpose. It leads to a positive self-fulfilling dynamic, and that is all you care about. See this shaping of your attitude as your most important creation in life, and never leave it to chance. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
266:He must have courage, not the physical courage required on a battlefield but the moral courage to make and carry out decisions that might directly counter to the wishes of his superiors. He must have great willpower. and, perhaps above all, he must have the gift of leadership. ~ Alistair MacLean, #NFDB
267:There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
268:Willpower, psychologist Roy Baumeister analyzed findings from hundreds of experiments to determine why some people can retain focus for hours, while others can’t. He discovered that self-control is not genetic or fixed, but rather a skill one can develop and improve with practice.8 ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
269:If family were easy, we could do it in our own fleshly self-propelled willpower. If we could do it on our own, we would not bear a cross. And if we are not bearing a cross, then what we are doing would not matter in the broad sweep of eternity. Family matters. That’s why it is hard. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
270:If you’re serious about controlling your weight, you need the discipline to follow these three rules: 1. Never go on a diet. 2. Never vow to give up chocolate or any other food. 3. Whether you’re judging yourself or judging others, never equate being overweight with having weak willpower. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
271:Science is showing us that there are neurological (brain) factors that contribute to self-control and willpower, along with learning and upbringing. And when these brain systems are functioning improperly or become damaged, normal levels of self-control and willpower are impossible. ~ Russell Barkley, #NFDB
272:WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER Implementing new behaviors Filtering distractions Resisting temptation Suppressing emotion Restraining aggression Suppressing impulses Taking tests Trying to impress others Coping with fear Doing something you don’t enjoy Selecting long-term over short-term rewards ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
273:When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren't all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, "disciplined" people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
274:She whimpered, the sound lost in Mike’s mouth. She was entirely his, completely without willpower or volition. His mouth ate at hers, his shoulders curved in to her like some powerful wall of flesh. He moved his hips against her in short, stabbing movements, hands lifting her hips against his. ~ Lisa Marie Rice, #NFDB
275:Prayerful paying attention is not scrunching up our willpower and tightening our focus, but simply opening our self to what we encounter. This makes it much more an act of release than effort. We release any attempt to control attention and instead allow it to be absorbed by our present experience. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
276:Don’t buy into what the scale says or doesn’t say. Trust the effort you are putting into getting healthy. And keep going! Not only are there changes going on in your body that you can’t see, there are changes going on in your spirit—with your discipline, your courage, and your willpower. Keep going! ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
277:The essence of Ananda is both personal and sociological. Personally for people who seek truth or identities of God, it helps to be with other people who share those ideals. Environment is stronger than willpower, and when you are with people who have high ideals, it helps you to grow in your ideals. ~ Goswami Kriyananda, #NFDB
278:Like so many other recovered alcoholics, I am to this day bewildered that it took so long for me to understand that there was no such animal as 'social drinking' for me; that it had nothing to do with my willpower or self-respect or moral fiber, that it was a simple biochemical intolerance to a drug. ~ Mercedes McCambridge, #NFDB
279:The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
280:Willpower is a myth. The problem with trying to use willpower to achieve and sustain a behavioral change is that it is fueled by emotion. And as we all know, our emotions are, at best, fickle. They come and go. When your emotions start running down -- and they will -- even your best-laid plans will fall flat. ~ Phil McGraw, #NFDB
281:In other words, the best way to win the war against fat is to give up the fight. Turn over control to your body and you will settle at a healthy weight. And regardless of whether you do lose weight, your health and well-being will markedly improve. You will find that biology is much more powerful than willpower. ~ Linda Bacon, #NFDB
282:My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
283:Their weapons did not fail them,” Lu Shi said. “Their soldiers didn’t fail them. Their economy was not in danger of collapse. Only one thing failed them, but it was enough to send the indomitable American military slinking home like a beaten mongrel. Their national willpower failed. They lost the desire to win. ~ Jeff Edwards, #NFDB
284:We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control. In ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
285:The difference in sex does not hinder the ability of being strong on the levels of thinking, giving, having a strong willpower and the ability to take the right decision and the right position after studying all options, once the circumstances that favor creativity and rational thinking are available. ~ Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, #NFDB
286:In any random slaughter, the difference between living and dying rarely has anything to do with willpower, or wisdom, or pluck. It's just a matter of where you're standing. Two inches to the right, and the bus hits you. If your office is on the ninety-second floor instead of the ninetieth, you don't make it out in time. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
287:Freedom is like a house: you build it brick by brick. The first brick you should lay is willpower. This quality inspires you to do what is right in any given moment. It gives you the energy to act with courage. It gives you the control to live the life you have imagined rather than accepting the life that you have. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
288:In order to develop the willpower it takes to sacrifice, you must first realize that spending all your time and energy pursuing material comforts means you will eventually suffer. It's all about positive and negative consequences. It's very important to be aware that there are long-term consequences [for every action]. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
289:Oh, Pandora. Where’s your willpower? You were told not to open that box, you snoopy girl, you typical woman with your insatiable curiosity; now look what you’ve gone and done. When for one thing it was a jar, not a box, and for another—how many times does she have to say it?—nobody said a word about not opening it! ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
290:Willpower is itself a biological phenomenon. You can change your life, and yourself, through effort and discipline—but you have whatever capacity for effort and discipline you have in this moment, and not a scintilla more (or less). You are either lucky in this department or you aren’t—and you cannot make your own luck. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
291:Because self-control requires energy, which means we have less energy available for the next thing we need to do. And that’s why resisting temptation, making hard decisions, or taking initiative all seem to draw from the same well of energy. So willpower isn’t something that we just exercise – it’s something we deplete. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
292:The best way to resist the temptation to give up when times are hard is to pray that you won’t give in to the temptation. It’s wiser and more effective to pray and ask for God’s help as you stand against temptation than to try to exert willpower alone. Work with God, and pray you won’t surrender to the temptation to give up. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
293:Habits, too, have tremendous gravity pull—more than most people realize or would admit. Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
294:I’ve heard that most drowning victims can’t calm down. They have to impose their will against every survival instinct to stop flailing and let themselves feel like they’re drowning. It takes an infinite amount of trust to count on someone else to save you. Raffe must have enormous willpower because he immediately stops splashing. He ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
295:I always say that creating positive change in the world starts with just one person: you. That’s why it is so important to learn to be the right kind of selfish. It’s essential to learn the art of taking care of ourselves so that we can have the energy and the willpower to take care of each other and the world that we live in ~ Lizzie Vel squez, #NFDB
296:No matter what you may have heard or read in the popular media, there is no scientific evidence we have suggesting that a drug, a device, or any amount of psychological willpower can replace sleep. Power naps may momentarily increase basic concentration under conditions of sleep deprivation, as can caffeine up to a certain dose. ~ Matthew Walker, #NFDB
297:Prayer exercises your willpower and gives God authority to work in your life. Prayer relieves the stress of perceived inactivity. Now that God has been given the task, you don’t have to worry about it any longer. God has his people on it. With less stress comes more strength. Prayer transfers the burden to God and lightens your load. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
298:She chews her lip, staring into my eyes. "Okay... Why did you kiss me in Austin?"
I laugh softly and she frowns. "Sorry. That one's too easy." My gaze flicks to her mouth and back. "I'd wanted to kiss you ever since Quinton suggested playing spin the bottle, and by that night in your room, I'd run out of willpower to fight it. ~ Tammara Webber,#NFDB
299:Trent had just spent an hour describing what he learned as a kid from his church: how the only way to please God, the same being who created him with a sexuality to begin with, was to not engage with his erotic nature whatsoever. As if the God of the Universe had programmed into creation a passive-aggressive test of our willpower. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
300:Though the traditional response to the failure of semi-starvation diets to produce long-term weight loss has been to blame the fat person for a lack of willpower, Bruch, Rony, and others have argued that this failure is precisely the evidence that tells us positive caloric balance or overeating is not the underlying disorder in obesity. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
301:For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
302:Reduce the effort whenever possible. The use of force is the opposite of awareness; learning does not take place when we are straining. The principle should not be no pain, no gain. Rather, it should be if strain, no gain. Feldenkrais thought the use of willpower (of which he obviously had plenty) was not helpful in developing awareness. ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
303:Challenge yourself by doing things that hurt, on purpose. Have a willpower practice, such as very hard exercise, meditation, endurance, or cold showers. Choose something that makes your brain scream with how hard it is, and try to tolerate it. The goal isn’t just to get used to it. It’s to understand that pain is something you can survive. ~ Julien Smith, #NFDB
304:She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in. ~ Amos Oz, #NFDB
305:And there it was, a snap in his chest, the audible noise of his best intentions cracking in half and cracking again, a chain reaction of thick cracks causing hairline cracks, causing the whole goddamned works, the whole vast machinery of his human willpower, to crumble downward into his abdominal cavity, where it lay pretty much useless. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
306:And then, everyone’s like, Oh, Pandora. Where’s your willpower? You were told not to open that box, you snoopy girl, you typical woman with your insatiable curiosity, now look what you’ve gone and done. When for one thing it was a jar, not a box, and for another, how many times does she have to say it, nobody said a word about not opening it! ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
307:We don't need new discoveries or new inventions to reverse this trend. We have the tools at our disposal to reverse it. All we need is the motivation, the opportunity and the willpower to do what needs to be done. ...With this report, we have a very solid road map that we need to make these goals real, to solve this problem within a generation. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
308:Willpower, it turns out, is more like a reservoir than a river. If we deploy willpower on one decision, we have less self-control available for our next decision. Many of our worst dietary choices, for example, are made in periods of low self-control—at the end of a long day when a big glass of cabernet or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s calls out our name. ~ Donald Sull, #NFDB
309:Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have. ~ Allen Carr, #NFDB
310:He ran his hand into her long, brown hair and then caressed her cheek. She was so beautiful and so broken. He understood broken. He related to it like no other could. He’d spent his life in a constant state of falling to pieces, held together by sheer willpower and luck. Deep down he knew they were right for one another. That two brokens could make a whole. ~ Mandy M Roth, #NFDB
311:Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. “Lift off” takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
312:When pit against other virtues, willpower comes out on top. Self-control is a better predictor of academic success than intelligence (take that, SATs), a stronger determinant of effective leadership than charisma (sorry, Tony Robbins), and more important for marital bliss than empathy (yes, the secret to lasting marriage may be learning how to keep your mouth shut). ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
313:Resolutions mean willpower, willpower means achievement, achievement means success and failure, and the whole sequence means losing an appreciation of the gift. I have learned two sure things in the struggle between my desire for love and the oppression of my attachments. The first is that God is absolutely trustworthy. The second is that resolutions are absolutely not. ~ Gerald G May, #NFDB
314:So what do you do when you've promised yourself that you'll write five hundred words every single day, but you're sick, tired, busy, and can't think of a single thing to write about? Just do a terrible job. Write about how bad you feel or about how you don't want to write. If you can't muster the willpower to do either of those things, just write five hundred random words. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
315:Forget about willpower. It's time for why-power. Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The wisest and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values. You've got to want something, and know why you want it, or you'll end up giving up too easily. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
316:If you wonder why you choose to worship other gods rather than wholeheartedly devote yourself to the Lord you love, examine the thought and desires that captivate your heart. That’s where you’ll fin the answer to every sin and failure in your life. Don’t be deceived into thinking that you need to develop more willpower. We need to develop godly thoughts and desires. ~ Elyse M Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
317:Sage shifted beneath me. I put one of my hands back into his thick hair and left it there, pretending I needed to hold him. It took all my willpower not to start playing with it.
“I guess you don’t do this very often,” I told him, my voice cracking slightly.
I couldn’t see his face but I could feel him smile. “No. Usually my head’s turned the other way around. ~ Karina Halle,#NFDB
318:The life Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It's a life based on transfusion- God's Spirit transfusing my spirit, God's deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way and the only way to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God's will to mine. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
319:Patrick Bateman: I'm on a diet.
Jean: What, you're kidding, right? You look great... so fit... and thin.
Patrick Bateman: Well, you can always be thinner... look better.
Jean: Then maybe we shouldn't go out to dinner. I wouldn't want you to lose your willpower.
Patrick Bateman: That's okay. I'm not very good at controlling it anyway.
Share this quote ~ Bret Easton Ellis,#NFDB
320:Should your willpower prove unequal to the task, I am afraid that what remains of your sanity will be torn away. Your mind itself will be shredded by the maelstrom, leaving you a drooling wreck.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Such a state of being may not be desirable. Of course, should you achieve it, you will not care one way or the other, which you may consider a blessing. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
321:Those who understand others are intelligent
Those who understand themselves are enlightened
Those who overcome others have strength
Those who overcome themselves are powerful
Those who know contentment are wealthy
Those who proceed vigorously have willpower
Those who do not lose their base endure
Those who die but do not perish have longevity ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
322:Instead, we believe that the fault lies in ourselves. We feel we have failed. Some silently criticize us for not adhering to the diet. Others silently think we have no willpower and offer us meaningless platitudes. Sound familiar? The failing isn’t ours. The portion-control caloric-reduction diet is virtually guaranteed to fail. Eating less does not result in lasting weight loss. ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
323:Since procrastination is a message from our natural willpower via low motivation, the cure is changing the environment, or one’s profession, by selecting one in which one does not have to fight one’s impulses. Few can grasp the logical consequence that, instead, one should lead a life in which procrastination is good, as a naturalistic-risk-based form of decision making. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
324:It is not just a person's physical constitution, their intellegence, their education, or even their social conditioning that enables them to withstand hardship. Much more significant is their inner development. And while some may be able to survive through sheer willpower, the ones who suffer the least are those who have a high degree of patience and courage in the face of adversity. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
325:Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
326:When your vision is powerful enough, everything else falls into place: how you live your life, your workouts, what friends you choose to hang out with, how you eat, what you do for fun. Vision is purpose, and when your purpose is clear, so are your life choices. Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. With faith, there is no anxiety, no doubt - just absolute confidence. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
327:I think every man and woman is a star. It's just a matter of realizing and becoming it. It's all a matter of willpower. The world is just how you see it. If you want to have other people tell you how to see it, then you can. But if you want to look at it differently, then it's limitless what you can do. That's why I don't feel the need to be one person. I can be as many people as I like. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
328:That is what marks out the warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but willpower requires patience and commitment. Men and women with immense willpower are generally solitary types and give off a kind of coolness. Many people mistakenly think that (they) are cold (people) when nothing could be further from the truth. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
329:The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes. ~ Marina Abramovic, #NFDB
330:Jesus came into the world with good news, not bad news. He does not call us to a willpower religion that feels only duty and no delight. He calls us to himself and to his Father. Therefore, he calls us to joy. Of course, it is not joy in things. Jesus is not preaching a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel—one of America’s most lamentable exports to the world. It is joy in God and in his Son. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
331:People tend to think they break up because they get tired of the person they've been with---that it's someone's decision, either yours or theirs. But this really isn't true. Periods in our lives end the way seasons change. That's all there is to it. Human willpower can't change that--which means, if you look at it another way, that we might as well enjoy ourselves until that day arrives. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
332:Willpower is not a character trait, it’s a confidence game. According to Dr. Russell Kennedy, one of the valued experts who have informed my understanding, willpower is something we should think of like a muscle, something that has to be exercised, nourished, and rested. Building up your willpower into a heavy-lifting muscle takes training, and that training is for an ultramarathon, not a sprint. So ~ Joe Cross, #NFDB
333:I don't understand the feeling of, the way people speak of writing as though it were, like, some kind of djinn to be summoned or like it's the Loch Ness monster or seeing a shooting star. It's a physical act. It is a thing you do with your muscles and your body and your willpower. Watch, I'll show you: get a piece of paper. Get a pencil. Put the pencil on the paper and write the word 'something.' ~ Matt Fraction, #NFDB
334:The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self-knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or willpower. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
335:So let me put it thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
336:you might institute a ban on any Internet use, or maintain a metric such as words produced per twenty-minute interval to keep your concentration honed. Without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
337:And oh, /that's/ when I jumped him. Such willpower I'd had up to that very moment and it all crumbled. I kissed him, and Lord Almighty, he kissed me and we were both crying.
"This is going to be hard," he said. "This life we're choosing."
"Maybe so," I said, kissing him again, "but I'd prefer hard and wonderful any day over easy and run of the mill." --Dot to Walt on their interracial relationship. ~ Suzanne Brockmann,#NFDB
338:Researchers were surprised to find,” write Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in their fascinating book Willpower, “that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did.… people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work.” In other words, habits eliminate the need for self-control. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
339:Crushing the toddler’s autonomy and purposeful will is the most damaging form of shaming that can be done. When autonomy is crushed, toxic shame is manifested either as total conformity or rebellion against authority. Once willpower, anger and purpose are bound in shame, a child’s selfhood and personal power are severely wounded. His drive for separateness and autonomy are bound by shame. This has been called a “purpose shame bind. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
340:Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia - each one he could have conquered individually - these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical. ~ Hermann Goring, #NFDB
341:I have never—and I mean ever—had a real desire to let otherwise-unaccounted-for money just chill in my bank account unmolested for more than maybe a week and a half. I barely have the willpower to leave other people’s money alone for the short time it’s in my custody. Money that isn’t earmarked for some pressing (transportation/pharmaceutical/credit card balance) need?! Why, yes, I do need fourteen nearly identical blushes, thank you. ~ Samantha Irby, #NFDB
342:Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal
seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention
has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now
greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death
through freezing - a pleasant one. ~ Reinhold Messner,#NFDB
343:Research shows that people who think they have the most willpower are actually the most likely to lose control when tempted.1 For example, smokers who are the most optimistic about their ability to resist temptation are the most likely to relapse four months later, and overoptimistic dieters are the least likely to lose weight. Why? They fail to predict when, where, and why they will give in. They expose themselves to more temptation, ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
344:have never—and I mean ever—had a real desire to let otherwise-unaccounted-for money just chill in my bank account unmolested for more than maybe a week and a half. I barely have the willpower to leave other people’s money alone for the short time it’s in my custody. Money that isn’t earmarked for some pressing (transportation/pharmaceutical/credit card balance) need?! Why, yes, I do need fourteen nearly identical blushes, thank you. When ~ Samantha Irby, #NFDB
345:There is a concept called ego depletion, which is “a person’s diminished capacity to regulate their thoughts, feelings and actions.” Ego depletion impacts our ability to form new habits because our supply of willpower is spread out among all the areas of our lives. Because of this, it’s important to work on only one habit at a time. That way, your store of willpower can be channeled into building that one habit, increasing the odds of success. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
346:• Associated with Habit 3: Put First Things First is the endowment of willpower. At the low end of the continuum is the ineffective, flaky life of floating and coasting, avoiding responsibility and taking the easy way out, exercising little initiative or willpower. And at the top end is a highly disciplined life that focuses heavily on the highly important but not necessarily urgent activities of life. It’s a life of leverage and influence. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
347:Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
348:The rats represent our imprisonment. We are our own jailors, snared by base impulses, caught in a web of pleasure-seeking. The raft is our way out. Often, we will choose to drift downwind as Thor did, moving where instinct dictates. But we will also have to learn the crucial skill of sailing to windward, like David. This means exerting our willpower and overcoming our base impulses. It means learning to fight our way against our natural currents. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
349:Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
350:Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires. This is why the subjects in the Hofmann and Baumeister study had such a hard time fighting desires—over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
351:At Crisis the protagonist's willpower is most severely tested. As we know from life, decisions are far more difficult to make than actions are to take. We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we're surprised by its relative ease. We're left to wonder why we dreaded doing it until we realize that most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
352:Habits, too, have tremendous gravity pull—more than most people realize or would admit. Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. “Lift off” takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
353:One is compulsive overeating. In layman’s terms, an addiction to food. Using food and eating to hide from emotion. To fill a void and cope with stress and the problems that occur in everyday life. Compulsive overeaters are most times fully aware that their eating habits aren’t normal but get little support, other than being told to get some willpower and go on a diet. It’s just as damaging to their self-esteem as telling an anorexic to just eat. ~ Stephanie Evanovich, #NFDB
354:Orr stooped to unlace his shoes. He didn't want to get the Alien's bedspread dirty with his shoes; that would be scarcely a fair return for kindness. Stooping made him dizzy. "I am tired", he said. "I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire willpower, the accumulated strengths of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button."
"You have lived well," the Alien said ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
355:How many of you there still are, girls and boys of various ages, raised by naïve parents in the sixties. How many of you there are, so unhappy, not knowing how to be happy. How I long to take pity on you, how I long to help you. To touch you through the Twilight—gently, with no force at all. To give you just a little confidence in yourself, just a tiny bit of optimism, a gram of willpower, a crumb of irony. To help you, so that you could help others. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko, #NFDB
356:Not only during the ascent but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing—and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is—like death through freezing—a pleasant one. Reinhold Messner The Crystal Horizon I ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
357:Avoid temptation. Very few people could quit smoking without ridding their house of cigarettes. Alcoholics avoid bars to stop drinking. Protect yourself by protecting your environment. Decrease the time when you are exposed to rich foods to avoid testing your “willpower.” One of the best ways to do this is to throw all the rich foods out of the house. Just as important is to replace harmful foods with those used in the McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. ~ John A McDougall, #NFDB
358:If you're disciplining yourself to constantly be at the intersection of many divergent streams of intellectual influence, it's like creating a check and balance set of forces for yourself. You don't need to make independence of thought an act of willpower. You don't need to be like a Marcus Aurelius sort of strong willed high virtue type of person in order to have an independent mind; you have an independent mind my listening to many different people constantly. ~ Venkatesh G Rao, #NFDB
359:Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty that can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push-ups. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
360:Try to physically remove yourself from all food stimuli during a fast. Cooking a meal or even just seeing and smelling food while fasting is almost unbearably difficult. This is not simply a matter of weak willpower. Our cephalic phase responses are fully activated, and to feel those responses without actually eating is like trying to stop a piranha feeding frenzy. This, of course, is the same reason you should not shop for food when hungry, or keep snacks in the pantry. ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
361:What we’ve been taught about dieting is wrong—even what I was taught in medical school more than twenty-five years ago. Harsh deprivation, beating myself up over the waning willpower, daily fights with food and whether to be “good” or “bad” in my nutritional choices—these dieting skirmishes actually left me more stressed; worsened my hormonal imbalances, body shame, and food addiction; and kept me out of a genuine conversation with my body and what it actually needs. ~ Sara Gottfried, #NFDB
362:Suicide is ugly. It’s wreathed in disgrace. It screams to the world that a person’s life ended in failure. Most people don’t even want to hear about it. As a culture, we believe that people who die by suicide are weak, that they lack willpower, that they’ve taken “the coward’s way out.” We believe that they are selfish, and have acted aggressively. If they cared about their families/spouses/work, they would have found a way to think themselves out of the spiral they were in. ~ Sue Klebold, #NFDB
363:The San Francisco police force was deeply implicated in the murders of Moscone and Milk. Dan White was not carrying out SFPD orders that morning in city hall, but he was carrying out the department’s will. He was no longer on the force, but he was one of them: their star ballplayer, their political representative, their brother. He knew all about the cops’ murderous feelings toward the city’s liberal leadership. He felt the same way. They had the will, he had the willpower. ~ David Talbot, #NFDB
364:Every day, without realizing it, we engage in all manner of activities that diminish our willpower. Willpower is depleted when we make decisions to focus our attention, suppress our feelings and impulses, or modify our behavior in pursuit of goals. It’s like taking an ice pick and gouging a hole in our gas line. Before long we have willpower leaking everywhere and none left to do our most important work. So like any other limited but vital resource, willpower must be managed. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
365:What we’ve been taught about dieting is wrong—even what I was taught in medical school more than twenty-five years ago. Harsh deprivation, beating myself up over the waning willpower, daily fights with food and whether to be
“good” or “bad” in my nutritional choices—these dieting skirmishes actually left
me more stressed; worsened my hormonal imbalances, body shame, and food addiction; and kept me out of a genuine conversation with my body and what it actually needs. ~ Sara Gottfried,#NFDB
366:The garden keeps me focused on inspiring thoughts, the lighthouse reminds me that the purpose of life is a life of purpose, the sumo wrestler keeps me centered on continuous self-discovery, while the pink wire cable links me to the wonders of willpower. A day doesn’t pass without me thinking about the fable and considering the principles Yogi Raman taught me.” “And exactly what does the shiny gold stopwatch represent?’ “It is a symbol of our most important commodity — time. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
367:Realizing that meditation is about defocusing, I saw that the next step was to simply choose to defocus the mind from the outset. Focusing takes willpower, but defocusing is about relaxation. The secret is to simply relax into the big picture, which creates the effect of calm alertness — the perfect combination for a martial artist. With this insight, I was free of my need for stargazing, because I could relax into the big picture anytime or anywhere — a giant step forward. ~ Richard L Haight, #NFDB
368:the deep work novice. As I established in the opening to this rule, the ability to rapidly switch your mind from shallow to deep mode doesn’t come naturally. Without practice, such switches can seriously deplete your finite willpower reserves. This habit also requires a sense of confidence in your abilities—a conviction that what you’re doing is important and will succeed. This type of conviction is typically built on a foundation of existing professional accomplishment. Isaacson, ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
369:Mischel refers to this skill as the “strategic allocation of attention,” and he argues that it’s the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that’s wrong. Willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It’s about realizing that if we’re thinking about the marshmallow, we’re going to eat it, which is why we need to look away. ~ John Brockman, #NFDB
370:the tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you. The quality of your life ultimately is shaped by the quality of your choices and decisions, ones that range from the career you choose to pursue to the books you read, the time that you wake up every morning and the thoughts you think during the hours of your days. When you consistently flex your willpower by making those choices that you know are the right ones (rather than the easy ones), you take back control of your life. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
371:when I turn from church history and examine myself, I find that I too am vulnerable to the Temptation. I lack the willpower to resist shortcut solutions to human needs. I lack the patience to allow God to work in a slow, “gentlemanly” way. I want to seize control myself, to compel others to help accomplish the causes I believe in. I am willing to trade away certain freedoms for the guarantee of safety and protection. I am willing to trade away even more for the chance to realize my ambitions. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
372:Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
373:Willpower should be understood to be the strength of the mind, which makes it capable of meeting success or failure with equanimity. It is not synonymous with certain success. Why should one's attempts always be attended by success? Success breeds arrogance and man's spiritual progress is thus arrested. Failure, on the other hand, is beneficial, inasmuch as it opens his eyes to his limitations and prepares him to surrender himself. Self surrender is synonymous with eternal happiness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
374:You wrote this right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.” Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?” Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball? I couldn’t say I was tempted, but I kept her under control. “Since when does drool make you powerful? ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
375:Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness. It ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
376:It's your storm, and the future of us all depends on you now. So who are you? Sage, an orphan boy who cares only for himself? Or the undisciplined, rebellious prince your father sent away? Life has tested your resilience and strength and willpower, and you have succeeded in ways nobody ever thought possible. But the storm has never been worse, and it will either destroy you, or define you. When everything is taken from you, can you still stand before us as Jaron, the Ascendant King of Carthya? ~ Jennifer A Nielsen, #NFDB
377:In general, the values of our culture require that perspectives remain unintegrated—for once it is integrated, a perspective gives us sensitivity rather than leverage; kinship rather than ownership; responsibility rather than power; and an attentiveness to the present rather than to schemata. Our patrifocal culture warns that such sensitivities are hindrances to our willpower—and we learn our lessons early, so that our resistance to the integration we so desperately need is often too subtle to notice. ~ Philip Shepherd, #NFDB
378:Willpower: "This virtue, like moste virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue t obelieve this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisons 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 evaion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
379:He summoned all his willpower and reined it in, promising himself he would drink just as much as he goddam wanted once he had his forty in—a pretty amazing number, when fifty percent of city cops retired after twenty-five and seventy percent after thirty. Only now that he has his forty, alcohol no longer interests him much. He forced himself to get drunk a few times, just to see if he could still do it, and he could, but being drunk turned out to be no better than being sober. Actually it was a little worse. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
380:You wrote this right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.”
Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?”
Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball?
I couldn’t say I was tempted, but I kept her under control.
“Since when does drool make you powerful? ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
381:The problems with willpower are many, but they may hardly be noticed by the person focused narrowly on success. First, there is little economy of means; in systems thinking terms, we act without leverage. We attain our goals, but the effort is enormous and we may find ourselves exhausted and wondering if it was worth it when we have succeeded. Ironically, people hooked on willpower may actually look for obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, and enemies to vanquish--to remind themselves and others of their own prowess. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
382:You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires. This is why the subjects in the Hofmann and Baumeister study had such a hard time fighting desires—over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
383:Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are my source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life. I'm still hoping that perhaps someday I'll learn how to use willpower like a real person, but until that very unlikely day, I will confidently battle toward adequacy, wielding my crude skill set of fear and shame. ~ Allie Brosh, #NFDB
384:The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter. And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be. That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good. ~ Rob Brezsny, #NFDB
385:The trick would be to find which few of them had the potential for raw power, the nearly superhuman stamina, the indomitable willpower, and the intellectual capacity necessary to master the details of technique. And which of them, coupled improbably with all those other qualities, had the most important one: the ability to disregard his own ambitions, to throw his ego over the gunwales, to leave it swirling in the wake of his shell, and to pull, not just for himself, not just for glory, but for the other boys in the boat. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
386:I might have been tempted to hit him square in the jaw had he not taken me by the shoulders and pinned me against the wall. There was hardly any space left between us, just a thin boundary of air, but Patch managed to eliminate it. "Let's be honest, Nora. You've got it bad for me." His eyes held a lot of depth. "And I've got it bad for you." He leaned into me and put his mouth on mine. A lot of him was on me, actually. We touched base at several strategetic locations down our bodies, and it took all my willpower to break away. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
387:She stiffened as she caught sight of Christopher Frost, who was seated near the far end of the table. Their gazes locked, while the ripple of a swallow chased down Amelia’s throat. She seemed mesmerized by the gadjo. It was obvious an attraction still existed between the two. And judging from Frost’s expression, he was more than willing to rekindle their acquaintance. It required a great deal of Cam’s willpower—and he had a considerable supply—not to skewer Christopher Frost with a dining utensil. He wanted her attention. All of it. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
388:I might have been tempted to hit him square in the jaw had he not taken me by the shoulders and pinned me against the wall. There was hardly any space left between us, just a thin boundary of air, but Patch managed to eliminate it.
"Let's be honest, Nora. You've got it bad for me." His eyes held a lot of depth. "And I've got it bad for you." He leaned into me and put his mouth on mine. A lot of him was on me, actually. We touched base at several strategetic locations down our bodies, and it took all my willpower to break away. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
389:Sometimes we identify with the person who wants to lose weight, and sometimes we identify with the person who just wants the cookie. This is what defines a willpower challenge: Part of you wants one thing, and another part of you wants something else. Or your present self wants one thing, but your future self would be better off if you did something else. When these two selves disagree, one version of us has to override the other. The part of you that wants to give in isn’t bad—it simply has a different point of view about what matters most. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
390:The way of salvation is found with humility. Being able to admit that we are recalcitrant glory-hounds. Being able to admit that we need Jesus because we are just like those disciples in our text, fixated on ourselves and our own status and glory. Humility is the divine anti-venom to the poison of pride. And this humility is not something that we can muster up out of our resources and willpower. True humility, the kind of humility described by Christ here, is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a fruit of faith and of the new birth worked in us by God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
391:People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench-press a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it. This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
392:IAGO
Can’t help it? Nonsense! What we are is up to us. Our bodies are like gardens and our willpower is like the gardener. Depending on what we plant—weeds or lettuce, or one kind of herb rather than a variety, the garden will either be barren and useless, or rich and productive. If we didn’t have rational minds to counterbalance our emotions and desires, our bodily urges would take over. We’d end up in ridiculous situations. Thankfully, we have reason to cool our raging lusts. In my opinion, what you call love is just an offshoot of lust. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
393:The abiding American myth of the self-made man comes attached to another article of faith--an insistence, even--that every self-made man can sustain whatever self he has managed o make. A man divided--thwarting or interrupting his own mechanisms of survival--fails to sustain this myth, disrupts our belief in the absolute efficacy of willpower, and in these failures also forfeits his right to our sympathy. or so the logic goes. But I wonder why this fractures elf shouldn't warrant our compassion just as much as the self besieged? Or maybe even more? ~ Leslie Jamison, #NFDB
394:Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.” For me, the most powerful keystone habit has been sleep. Once I changed the amount of sleep I was getting, and started regularly getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, other habits, such as meditation and exercise, became easier. Willpower alone is not enough. As a number of psychological studies have shown, willpower is a resource that gets depleted the more it’s used. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
395:Making these choices, as it turned out, wasn’t about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn’t, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. ~ Liz Murray, #NFDB
396:1. If you continue to hold on to your excuses, what would your life be like five years from now? 2. Who would you be without your excuses? Enter all learning with this new mindset. 3. Remember they are just excuses. It is not the truth. Change them now. 4. What is more important to you: excusing yourself from experiencing your potential or being the best that you can be? 5. Why is it important for you to learn to empower your memory? Think about it and write down as many reasons as you can to create a big WHY. As Darren Hardy says, “We need why power not willpower. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
397:To me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree. ~ Hermann Goring, #NFDB
398:Consider the core of the mind to be a wagon, with willpower to be carried about in it. Push it to a place where there can be failure, and there will be failure. Push it to a place where there can be success, and there will be success. But whether there is success or failure, if one entrusts himself to the straightness of this wagon of the core of the mind, he will attain right-mindedness in either case. Severing oneself from desire and being like a rock or tree, nothing will ever be achieved. Not departing from desire, but realizing a desireless right-mindedness - "this is the Way". ~ Takuan Soho, #NFDB
399:self-control is not genetic or fixed, but rather a skill one can develop and improve with practice.8 Baumeister suggests many strategies for increasing self-control. One of these strategies is to develop a seemingly unrelated habit, such as improving your posture or saying “yes” instead of “yeah” or flossing your teeth every night before bed. This can strengthen your willpower in other areas of your life. Additionally, once the new habit is ingrained and can be completed without much effort or thought, that energy can then be turned to other activities requiring more self-control. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
400:My education, in other words, was a test of my willpower; and I accepted the challenge - to such an extent, indeed, that I think at some level of my teenage consciousness I truly believed that the whole point of going to school was to learn how to focus attention on subject matter that was of no consequence to me. The message I received at Clifton was: education is not primarily about understanding the world; its real purpose is character-building. As a corollary, I inferred that to study anything in which you had a real interest was, if not exactly cheating, certainly missing the point. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
401:She somehow understood she couldn’t change herself on her own. She couldn’t remain in her current environment and just turn her prospects around by force of individual willpower. She would always be subject to the same emotional cues. They would overpower conscious intention. But she could make one decision—to change her environment. And if she could change her environment, she would be subject to a whole different set of cues and unconscious cultural influences. It’s easier to change your environment than to change your insides. Change your environment and then let the new cues do the work. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
402:Because emotion and logic will both reach their limitations. And when one fails, you need to rely on the other. When it just doesn’t make any logical sense to go on, that’s when you use your emotion, your anger, your frustration, your fear, to push further, to push you to say one thing: I don’t stop. When your feelings are screaming that you have had enough, when you think you are going to break emotionally, override that emotion with concrete logic and willpower that says one thing: I don’t stop. Fight weak emotions with the power of logic; fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotion. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
403:Here's a profundity, the best I can do: sometimes you just know… You just know when two people belong together. I had never really experienced that odd happenstance before, but this time, with her, I did. Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn't have to strive for anything. A quality of ease spread over us. Whatever I was, well, that was apparently what she wanted… To this day I don't know exactly what she loves about me and that's because I don't have to know. She just does. It was the entire menu of myself. She ordered all of it. ~ Charles Baxter, #NFDB
404:My jaw dropped. What the hell? “She’s my friend. Of course we haven’t.” Was I the only sane, rational person left on the planet?
“So you didn’t last night either?” Caroline broke in. “Yes!” She punched Ten in the arm. “I win. You lose. Sucka!”
Ten rubbed his arm and scowled at me. “Damn it, what is wrong with you? You seriously turned down the black and red panty set? Dude.” He blew out a low whistle as if he was either impressed or severely disappointed by my willpower.
Unable to take it a second longer, I exploded. “How the fuck do you even know what color of underwear Sarah was wearing last night? ~ Linda Kage,#NFDB
405:For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves 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, #NFDB
406:Raising awareness is praiseworthy — the stigma attached to getting help for mental illness should be wiped away as soon as possible. By the same token, we ought to ensure that normalizing mental illness helps no one, and damages those who truly are mentally ill. The lack of awareness surrounding mental illness comes from two directions: first, those who pretend that mental illness represents a lack of willpower or dedication; second, those who pretend that serious mental illnesses are not mental illnesses at all, but representations of free thought and behavior. Forty years ago, the first group predominated; today, the second does. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
407:History of Medicine: The Biology and Genetics of Obesity — A Century of Inquiries Chin Jou, Ph.D. | 1515 words Volume 370:1874-1877 Number 20 May 15, 2014 The obese lack willpower; they overeat and underexercise — or so believe a majority of Americans. A 2012 online poll of 1143 adults conducted by Reuters and the market research firm Ipsos found that 61% of U.S. adults believed that “personal choices about eating and exercise” were responsible for the obesity epidemic. 1 A majority of Americans, it seems, remain unaware of or unconvinced by scientific research suggesting that “personal choices” may not account for all cases of obesity. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
408:The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
409:WILLPOWER EXPERIMENT: BREATHE YOUR WAY TO SELF-CONTROL You won’t find many quick fixes in this book, but there is one way to immediately boost willpower: Slow your breathing down to four to six breaths per minute. That’s ten to fifteen seconds per breath—slower than you normally breathe, but not difficult with a little bit of practice and patience. Slowing the breath down activates the prefrontal cortex and increases heart rate variability, which helps shift the brain and body from a state of stress to self-control mode. A few minutes of this technique will make you feel calm, in control, and capable of handling cravings or challenges.4 It’s ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
410:hairpin sticking into her scalp, and it took every bit of her willpower not to poke at it. Her dark hair was too long, thick and wavy to be confined into a chic little bun, but it was part of the dress code. And going home with a headache every night was just part of the job. “Ten bucks says if I wait three minutes, then pop that same plate in the microwave for fifteen seconds and take it out to her, she’ll gush over how the sear is so perfect now.” “If I see you microwaving scallops, I’ll make sure the only food you ever get to touch in this city again is fast food.” Lydia rolled her eyes, having heard that threat many times before, and accepted ~ Shannon Stacey, #NFDB
411:Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then—unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin—you’ll soon give up. But you don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
412:Our slow brain is where we do all our conscious and analytic work. It provides us with the tools of logic and reflection. When we engage it, our slow brain operates as a reflective, analytic thinking tool; it can gather data, analyze it, apply the rules of logic, and come to new conclusions. Our slow brain can call on a number of beliefs or rules and use them to guide a decision. It also can override the intuitions of our fast brain, a process we know as willpower. Our slow brain can also learn to identify and ignore erroneous signals from our fast brain, which is how we demonstrate self-awareness and wisdom. Unfortunately, our slow brain isn’t always engaged. ~ Fred Kiel, #NFDB
413:So which country will lead in the broader category of business AI? Today, the United States enjoys a commanding lead (90–10) in this wave, but I believe in five years China will close that gap somewhat (70–30), and the Chinese government has a better shot at putting the power of business AI to good use. The United States has a clear advantage in the most immediate and profitable implementations of the technology: optimizations within banking, insurance, or any industry with lots of structured data that can be mined for better decision-making. Its companies have the raw material and corporate willpower to apply business AI to the problem of maximizing their bottom line. ~ Kai Fu Lee, #NFDB
414:Somewhere among them—those green and untested boys—lay much of the stock from which he would have to select a crew capable of going all the way. The trick would be to find which few of them had the potential for raw power, the nearly superhuman stamina, the indomitable willpower, and the intellectual capacity necessary to master the details of technique. And which of them, coupled improbably with all those other qualities, had the most important one: the ability to disregard his own ambitions, to throw his ego over the gunwales, to leave it swirling in the wake of his shell, and to pull, not just for himself, not just for glory, but for the other boys in the boat. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
415:At first Baumeister and his German collaborators were puzzled. Self-control is supposedly for resisting desires, so why are the people who have more self-control not using it more often? But then an explanation emerged: These people have less need to use willpower because they’re beset by fewer temptations and inner conflicts. They’re better at arranging their lives so that they avoid problem situations. This explanation jibed with the conclusion of another study, by Dutch researchers working with Baumeister, showing that people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work. ~ Roy F Baumeister, #NFDB
416:The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem. ~ Ant nio R Dam sio, #NFDB
417:The Scriptures plainly show that this infirmed woman had tried to lift herself. People who stand on the outside can easily criticize and assume that the infirmed woman lacked effort and fortitude. That is not always the case. Some situations in which we can find ourselves defy willpower. We feel unable to change. The Scriptures say that she “could in no way raise herself up.” That implies that she had employed various means of self-help. Isn’t it amazing how the same people who lift up countless others often cannot lift themselves? This type of person may be a tower of faith and prayer for others, but impotent when it comes to his or her own limitations. That person may be the one whom others rely upon. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
418:I’m not capable of turning you down,” he said on a pained laugh, gaze devouring her breasts. “I’m going to take you to my bed and pleasure the fuck out of you. But the panties stay on. It’s nonnegotiable.”
Her entire system rebelled against his words. How could he touch her, kiss her like this, and refuse to take it all the way? It didn't make sense. Men didn't have that kind of willpower, did they? She certainly didn’t have that kind of willpower. “W-what? Is it too late to give a different answer about why I changed my mind?”
“Yes. But don’t worry, baby.” Before she could
register his intention, he’d swung her up into his arms.
“Even with your panties on, it’ll still be the best sex of your life. ~ Tessa Bailey,#NFDB
419:Some thoughts, possessing a frightening kind of self-awareness, knew to hide deep beneath others, riding unseen the same currents, where they could grow unchallenged, unexposed by any horrified recognition. One could always sense them, of course, but that was not the same as slashing through all the obfuscation, revealing them bared to the harsh light and so seeing them wither into dust. The mind ran its own shell-game, ever amused at its own sleight of hand misdirection – in truth, this was how one tended to live, from moment to moment, with the endless exchange of denials and deference and quick winks in the mirror, even as inner proclamations and avowals thundered with false willpower and posturing conviction. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
420:UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: MEET YOUR TWO MINDS Every willpower challenge is a conflict between two parts of oneself. For your own willpower challenge, describe these competing minds. What does the impulsive version of you want? What does the wiser version of you want? Some people find it useful to give a name to the impulsive mind, like “the cookie monster” to the part of you that always wants instant gratification, “the critic” to the part of you that likes to complain about everyone and everything, or “the procrastinator” to the person who never wants to get started. Giving a name to this version of yourself can help you recognize when it is taking over, and also help you call in your wiser self for some willpower support. THE ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
421:The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. If you suddenly decide, for example, in the middle of a distracted afternoon spent Web browsing, to switch your attention to a cognitively demanding task, you’ll draw heavily from your finite willpower to wrest your attention away from the online shininess. Such attempts will therefore frequently fail. On the other hand, if you deployed smart routines and rituals—perhaps a set time and quiet location used for your deep tasks each afternoon—you’d require much less willpower to start and keep going. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
422:I don’t think it’s merely willpower that makes you able to do something. The world isn’t that simple. To tell the truth, I don’t even think there’s that much correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have a strong will. I think I’ve been able to run for more than twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me. Or at least because I don’t find it all that painful. Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue what they don’t like. Admittedly, something close to will does play a small part in that. But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be good for him. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
423:I don’t think it’s merely willpower that makes you able to do something. The world isn’t that simple. To tell the truth, I don’t even think there’s that much correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have a strong will. I think I’ve been able to run for more than
twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me. Or at least because I don’t find it all that painful. Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue what they don’t like. Admittedly, something close to will does play a small part in that. But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be good for him. ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
424:Our world isn’t about ideology anymore. It’s about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate willpower to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand, movements like the Tea Party more than anything else reflect a widespread longing for simpler times and simple solutions—just throw the U.S. Constitution at the whole mess and everything will be jake. For immigration, build a big fence. Abolish the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education. At times the overt longing for simple answers that you get from Tea Party leaders is so earnest and touching, it almost makes you forget how insane most of them are. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB
425:Furthermore, the world is so complex, and fate so uncertain, that you can never really control other people or the environment effectively enough to be master of your own destiny. Reason is not powerful enough to build intellectual systems or models to allow you to accurately understand the world around you or anticipate what is to come. Your willpower is not strong enough to successfully police your desires. If you really did have that kind of power, then New Year’s resolutions would work. Diets would work. The bookstores wouldn’t be full of self-help books. You’d need just one and that would do the trick. You’d follow its advice, solve the problems of living, and the rest of the genre would become obsolete. The existence of more and more self-help books is proof that they rarely work. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
426:WONDER WITHOUT WILLPOWER
Love’s way becomes a pen sometimes writing g-sounds like gold or r-sounds
like tomorrow in different calligraphy
styles sliding by, darkening the paper
Now it’s held upside down, now beside
the head, now down and on to something
else, figuring. One sentence saves
an illustrious man from disaster, but
fame does not matter to the split tongue
of a pen. Hippocrates knows how the cure
must go. His pen does not. This one
I am calling pen, or sometimes flag,
has no mind. You, the pen, are most sanely
insane. You cannot be spoken of rationally.
Opposites are drawn into your presence but
not to be resolved. You are not whole
or ever complete. You are the wonder
without willpower going where you want. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
427:Making decisions is exhausting. Anyone who has ever configured a laptop online or researched a long trip – flight, hotels, activities, restaurants, weather – knows this well: after all the comparing, considering and choosing, you are exhausted. Science calls this decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is perilous: as a consumer, you become more susceptible to advertising messages and impulse buys. As a decision-maker, you are more prone to erotic seduction. Willpower is like a battery. After a while it runs out and needs to be recharged. How do you do this? By taking a break, relaxing and eating something. Willpower plummets to zero if your blood sugar falls too low. IKEA knows this only too well. On the trek through its maze-like display areas and towering warehouse shelves, decision fatigue sets in. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
428:While some blame our collective tech addiction on personal failings, like weak willpower, Harris points a finger at the software itself. That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Harris calls a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.” “You could say that it’s my responsibility” to exert self-control when it comes to digital usage, he explains, “but that’s not acknowledging that there’s a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain.” In short, we’ve lost control of our relationship with technology because technology has become better at controlling us. ~ Bianca Bosker, #NFDB
429:Poor, poor Pandora. Zeus sends her off to marry Epimetheus, a not especially bright man she’s never even met, along with a mysterious covered jar. Nobody tells Pandora a word about the jar. Nobody tells her not to open the jar. Naturally, she opens the jar. What else has she got to do? How was she to know that all those dreadful ills would go whooshing out to plague mankind forevermore, and that the only thing left in the jar would be hope? Why wasn’t there a warning label? And then everyone’s like, Oh, Pandora. Where’s your willpower? You were told not to open that box, you snoopy girl, you typical woman with your insatiable curiosity; now look what you’ve gone and done. When for one thing it was a jar, not a box, and for another—how many times does she have to say it?—nobody said a word about not opening it! ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
430:Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed? Or do you keep clutching your old ways of life with one hand while with the other you beg people to for help you change?
Conversion is certainly not something you can bring about yourself. It is not a question of willpower. You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way. You know that inner voice. You turn to it often. But after you have heard with clarity what you are asked to do, you start raising questions, fabricating objections,, and seeking everyone else's opinion. Thus you become entangles in countless often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and ideas and lose touch with the God in you. And you end up dependent on all the people you have gathered around you.
Excerpt from:The Inner Voice of Love From Anguish to Freedom by Henry Nouwen ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
431:Research from these new disciplines has revealed that trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant. We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. These changes explain why traumatized individuals become hypervigilant to threat at the expense of spontaneously engaging in their day-to-day lives. They also help us understand why traumatized people so often keep repeating the same problems and have such trouble learning from experience. We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character—they are caused by actual changes in the brain. This ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
432:I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really have to buckle down to it, as you do with all forms of exercise. It's simply a question of willpower. Anyone who's got the balls to stand there and tell me that a handjob isn't exercise just doesn't know what he's talking about. I almost had a heart-attack during number three. I take all kinds of other exercise too. I walk up and down the stairs. I climb into cabs and restaurant booths. I hike to the Butcher's Arms and the London Apprentice. I cough a lot. I throw up pretty frequently, which really takes it out of you. I sneeze, and hit the tub and the can. I get in and out of bed, often several times a day. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
433:Let me go."
Holding her with gentle implacability, he loomed nearer. His answer was a whisper upon her tingling lips. "Oh, no, Sidonie. Never ask me to let you go. Not yet. Not before we've discovered paradise."
"Stop it." Her heart thumped so hard she thought it might burst.
"I would if I could."
She tensed against his grip. "Balderdash. You're just playing with me."
"Most definitely, tesoro. But your dilemma is your own fault. You're so irresistible and I find myself unable to... resist."
"Command your willpower, Mr. Merrick. Defeat this weakness."
"I try, dear lady. I try."
"I'll bite you," she said savagely, although she didn't move.
"I'll bite you too before I'm done." His gaze sharpened upon her lips, making her heart hammer a panicked warning. "Eat you like a ripe peach, all juice and sweetness. And lick my lips afterward. ~ Anna Campbell,#NFDB
434:Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands—hands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands. ~ Cathleen Falsani, #NFDB
435: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. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
436:our relationships with God go through similar phases sometimes. We aren’t comfortable with each other. The conversation doesn’t flow as well. We aren’t sure we can trust as before — or we aren’t sure we can be trusted as before. At those tough times, I have learned that there is a lot to be said for just hanging in there. For keeping on going to church. For saying your prayers. For keeping the communication lines open. For sustaining your relationship on pure, stubborn commitment when all the warm feelings of affection seem gone forever. That kind of willpower, I am learning, is one of the purest forms of faith — a kind of faith you just don’t develop until you are forced to, when your relationship with God seems to have gone bad. Sometimes faith means believing that doubt is just a stage, a rotten mood that will pass, and that in time, by the grace of God, you will get over it, and be old friends again in a new, deeper way. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
437:Before your breaths pick up pace and our bodies are aching because everything we're feeling is just making us want more and more and more of each other...until I'm afraid I'll beg you not to ask me to slow down. So instead, I regrettably tear my mouth from yours and force myself away from your bed and you life up unto your elbows and look at me, disappointed, because you kind of wished I would have kept going, but at the same time you're relieved I didn't, because you know you would have given in. So instead of giving in, we just stare. We watch each other silently as my heart rate begins to slow down and your breaths are easier to catch and the insatiable need is still there, but our minds are clearer now that I'm not pressed against you anymore. I turn around and walk to your window and leave without even saying goodbye, because we both know if either of us speaks...it'll be the collective demise of our willpower and we'll cave. We'll cave so hard. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
438:Rewards encourage repeat behavior, but did you know that they also restore our willpower? Cognitive scientist Art Markman says, “When you stand in front of that buffet table filled with desserts, seek out a friend and have a fun conversation.” 39 It may seem like a puzzling suggestion, but rewards of all kinds may be a viable way to restore your willpower. Based on Baumeister's “ego depletion” concept, multiple studies have concluded that people can overcome ego depletion by restoring glucose.40 Some scientists, however, wanted to put another willpower restoration theory to the test: rewards. Their theory was that perhaps it is the reward from eating sugar that restores willpower.41 Sugar is known to activate the reward centers in the brain. They started with typical exercises to deplete willpower. Then, one group swished a solution sweetened with artificial sweetener and spit it out (artificial sweeteners do not activate the brain’s reward centers). The ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
439:There is something about the gaunt faces and sharply angled bodies of anorexic girls that at once attracts and repulses me. I wonder what holds their bodies together. I envy the way their flesh is stretched taut against their brittle bones. I envy the way their clothes hang listlessly from their bodies, as if they aren’t even being worn but, rather, floating—a veritable vestment halo rewarding their thinness. The reporter speaks with disdain about the rigorous exercise regimens these girls put themselves through, the starvation, the obsession with their bodies. And still, I am envious because these girls have willpower. They have the commitment to do what it takes to have the bodies they want. I ignore their thinning hair, rotting teeth, internal organs dissolving into mushy nothing. I prefer, instead, to obsess over their bodies the way others obsess over mine. I tell myself that soon, I am going to be that girl who eats a saltine cracker and says she’s full. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
440:My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered... A small ugly boy born to be a king... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone. ~ Ben Bova, #NFDB
441:you responsible for your willpower or lack thereof. It puts the onus on you to master the ability to unlearn old lies. It binds us with the opposite requirements of self-hatred, but it’s still binding us. When we tell each other to love your body and with the implication that if you don’t, you just need to try harder, we’re not necessarily empowering anyone; we’re just regurgitating logic we learned from weight loss and from diet culture. Liberation is freedom from all outside expectations, even our own. Liberation is not having to love your body all the time. Liberation is not asking permission to be included in society’s ideal of beauty. Liberation is bucking the concept of beauty as currency altogether. Liberation is recognizing the systemic issues that surround us and acknowledging that perhaps we’re not able to fix them all on our own. Liberation is personally giving ourselves permission to live life. Liberation is slowly learning how to become the best version of our whole selves—body included, yes. ~ Jes Baker, #NFDB
442:The brain makes up l/50th of our body mass but consumes a staggering 1/5th of the calories we burn for energy. If your brain were a car, in terms of gas mileage, it’d be a Hummer. Most of our conscious activity is happening in our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for focus, handling short-term memory, solving problems, and moderating impulse control. It’s at the heart of what makes us human and the center for our executive control and willpower.
The “last in, first out” theory is very much at work inside our head. The most recent parts of our brain to develop are the first to suffer if there is a shortage of resources. Older, more developed areas of the brain, such as those that regulate breathing and our nervous responses, get first helpings from our blood stream and are virtually unaffected if we decide to skip a meal. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, feels the impact. Unfortunately, being relatively young in terms of human development, it’s the runt of the litter come feeding time. ~ Gary Keller,#NFDB
443:At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
444:We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end war; For we know that You have made the world in a way That man must find his own path to peace Within himself and with his neighbor. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end starvation; For you have already given us the resources With which to feed the entire world If we would only use them wisely. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, To root out prejudice, For You have already given us eyes With which to see the good in all men If we would only use them rightly. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end despair, For You have already given us the power To clear away slums and to give hope If we would only use our power justly. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end disease, For you have already given us great minds with which To search out cures and healing, If we would only use them constructively. Therefore we pray to You instead, O God, For strength, determination, and willpower, To do instead of just to pray, To become instead of merely to wish. Jack Riemer, Likrat Shabbat ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
445:The most effective way to overcome both procrastination and reluctance and resistance to practicing is to just do it. Nothing works as quickly or effectively as diligence. The simple act of consistently sitting down and placing your attention on the meditation object, day after day, is the essential first step from which everything else in the Ten Stages flows. Then, once seated, you must train yourself, gently and without self-judgment, to actually meditate rather than engage in some more entertaining mental activity. Notice that I said “train yourself,” not “force” or “discipline yourself.” Force, guilt, and willpower won’t produce a sustainable practice, not least because of the negative emotions they stir up. Training yourself means working on your motivation and intentions until the simple acts of sitting down and meditating follow naturally. Then, you repeat those activities every day until they turn into habits. Once you start practicing regularly, you will be surprised by how quickly meditation becomes easier and more gratifying. ~ Culadasa John Yates, #NFDB
446:I let my sword slip to the ground, and for the second time I stood unarmed in the presence of werewolves.
Kresh put his lips to my forehead, and my skin burned beneath his kiss. When his hands repositioned to take me by the waist, my breathing—already shallow—ceased entirely. Then his lips fell on mine and I was suddenly everything he claimed me to be—his mate, his wife, his world.
The taste of him seemed mysteriously new and old at the same time. Every bit of tension eased as if internally I had come home again, and yet a sense of foreignness made our connection a sweet venture. My breast was afire as he continued to grasp my hips, keeping me close. I burned for him as if vampire venom were coursing through every inch of me.
The man was a constellation of suns in my desire, unlike Thaddeus who hardly equaled a speck of stardust. The thought of that coward reminded me of grim news. It took every bit of willpower I possessed to tear my lips away from what they craved, and yet I remained a submissive puddle in this werewolf’s arms. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
447:This is central to understanding the nature of motivation, as well as its failures (e.g., during depression, where there is inhibition of dopamine signaling thanks to stress, or in anxiety, where such inhibition is caused by projections from the amygdala).100 It also tells us about the source of the frontocortical power behind willpower. In a task where one chooses between an immediate and a (larger) delayed reward, contemplating the immediate reward activates limbic targets of dopamine (i.e., the mesolimbic pathway), whereas contemplating the delayed reward activates frontocortical targets (i.e., the mesocortical pathway). The greater the activation of the latter, the more likely there’ll be gratification postponement. These studies involved scenarios of a short burst of work soon followed by reward.101 What about when the work required is prolonged, and reward is substantially delayed? In that scenario there is a secondary rise of dopamine, a gradual increase that fuels the sustained work; the extent of the dopamine ramp-up is a function of the length of the delay and the anticipated size of the reward: ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
448:I’ve learned that for every condition in our lives, there’s a need for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have it. The symptom is only an outer effect. We must go within to dissolve the mental cause. This is why willpower and discipline don’t work. They’re only battling the outer effect. It’s like cutting down the weed instead of getting the root out. So before you begin the New Thought Pattern affirmations, work on the willingness to release the need for the cigarettes, the headache, the excess weight, or whatever. When the need is gone, the outer effect must die. No plant can live if the root is cut away. The mental thought patterns that cause the most dis-ease in the body are criticism, anger, resentment, and guilt. For instance, criticism indulged in long enough will often lead to dis-eases such as arthritis. Anger turns into things that boil, burn, and infect the body. Resentment long held festers and eats away at the self and ultimately can lead to tumors and cancer. Guilt always seeks punishment and leads to pain. It’s so much easier to release these negative thinking patterns from our minds when we’re healthy than to try to dig them out when we’re in a state of panic and under the threat of the surgeon’s knife. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
449:But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
450:Many of us draw lines which we intend never to cross.
But life tests our resolve, mercilessly at times, and a foot budges, nudged past that thinly-drawn line. So we draw another, resolving never to cross this one. Days grow dark and fog creeps in to blind our view, clouding the reason for the line’s existence from our minds. We draw another mark, ashamed that the last was crossed with less coaxing than we imagined it would require. Shadows and doubts give further need to draw a new line, and then another and another.
Lines, I think, are too slim and obscure to be dependable deterrents for behavior. Too often, too easily, people stumble into places they later regret entering. What, then, keeps some individuals from crossing those narrow lines?
It is the power of values.
For if a person possessing values were to step one foot outside their line, they would be forced to release hands with those inflexible values and consciously abandon them. But their values are persuasive, keeping a tight grip, warding off the luring temptations beckoning one to test the line. Thus values maintained keep a person safely away from areas they dare not travel, steering a life between the lines, enhancing willpower and shaping mighty strength of character. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
451:Obesity, eating disorders, and chemical dependency on food are three distinct and very different diseases -- and demonstrate different behaviors around food. We can categorize the corresponding behaviours of these conditions as problems that occur within the normal eating, emotional eating, and food addiction spectrums.
Obesity is entirely a physical problem: a result of eating too many calories while expending too few... Normal eaters simply eat too much... Normal eaters represent a large proportion of the obese. They can regulate their obesity by learning how to change the circumstances that foster poor willpower: better sleep, stress management, improving social skills, and changing a toxic good environment are only a few of the modifications that can be made...
Certainly, people suffering from eating disorders and food addiction can also be obese, but their primary condition is not obesity. In their cases, obesity is just another symptom of their emotional disturbance or their food addiction. The underlying emotional trauma that drives the bulimic to stuff himself needs to be addressed first before the physical aspects of obesity can be seriously addressed; likewise, the sugar that is propelling the addictive overeater needs to be removed first before tackling any weight issues. ~ Vera Tarman,#NFDB
452:You underestimate me, Layla. I’ll make it happen.” She gave him a wary look. “How?” “I’m not giving away my secrets.” His eyes lit mischievously. “But I’m willing to bet on it: suitable sleigh, right here, by midnight tonight.” Now she was suspicious. “You know someone who has one.” “No, I don’t. Scout’s honor. Now are you taking the bet or not?” She turned her face from him, her eyes narrowing on him. “What kind of bet?” “Name your price.” She stared at the house, thinking. “If you don’t find one, you have to . . .” Her gaze climbed to the roof. “Do the roofline.” She smiled big. He looked up, squinting against the light, then back to her. “Fine. I’m not losing anyway.” He pulled his keys from his coat pocket. “Time’s a wasting.” With one last smile over his shoulder he headed for his truck. “Wait, what about you?” He turned in the snow, giving her a strange look. Then he slowly started toward her. It took all her willpower to keep her boots planted as he came within inches of her. “If I win . . . ,” he said, those blue eyes warming her clear down to her toes, “I get to kiss you.” His lips twitched as his eyes slid down to her mouth and back up where they held her hostage. Layla swallowed hard. With a final look, he traced his steps to his truck, only turning once he reached the door. “And, Layla . . . ,” he said with a smug grin, “I will win. ~ Denise Hunter, #NFDB
453:What did he give you?' I asked Rosie.
'A birthday present,' Rosie replied. 'He said not to open it until December 8.'
'You're not going to listen to him, are you?' I asked.
'Of course I am,' Rosie said. 'What would be the point of opening it today?'
I could not imagine such willpower ... 'Don't be disappointed,' I said, 'if there's something less than a diamond ring in that box.'
'Oh, I *know* what's in the box,' Rosie replied. 'I told him what I wanted.'
'Oh, my God, Rosie,' I exclaimed. 'You're impossible.' But my curiosity triumphed over my disapproval. 'What is it?'
'It's not a diamond ring,' she said smugly. 'It's a turquoise ring. Turquoise is my birthstone.'
'You're a con artist, Rosie,' I said, feeling equal parts of admiration and dismay. 'Do you think it's very nice of you to wheedle Mr. Jensen into buying you a turquoise ring?'
'He asked me what I wanted and I told him,' Rosie replied. 'I really don't see what's wrong with that. He didn't have to buy it if he didn't want to.'
'Maybe it isn't a turquoise ring at all,' I said. 'Maybe it's two pumpkin seeds.'
'Maybe it is,' Rosie agreed. 'We won't know until my birthday.' She ran off then to Mrs. Dunleigh and Buster, kneeling down beside the poor asthmatic creature and petting him as passionately as if he were the prize dog in the Westminster Kennel Club show. ~ Barbara Cohen,#NFDB
454:Thou shalt give thy all in the struggle to unify the entire society with the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung. Thou shalt honor the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung with all thy loyalty. Thou shalt make absolute the authority of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung. Thou shalt make the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary ideology thy faith and make his instructions thy creed. Thou shalt adhere strictly to the principle of unconditional obedience in carrying out the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung’s instructions. Thou shalt strengthen the entire party’s ideology and willpower and revolutionary unity, centering on the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung. Thou shalt learn from the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung and adopt the Communist look, revolutionary work methods, and people-oriented work style. Thou shalt value the political life thou wast given by the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung, and loyally repay his great trust and thoughtfulness with heightened political awareness and skill. Thou shalt establish strong organizational regulations so that the entire party, nation, and military move as one under the one and only leadership of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung. Thou shalt pass down the great achievement of the revolution by the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung from generation to generation, inheriting and completing it even unto the very end. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
455:Consider a 2012 study, led by psychologists Wilhelm Hofmann and Roy Baumeister, that outfitted 205 adults with beepers that activated at randomly selected times (this is the experience sampling method discussed in Part 1). When the beeper sounded, the subject was asked to pause for a moment to reflect on desires that he or she was currently feeling or had felt in the last thirty minutes, and then answer a set of questions about these desires. After a week, the researchers had gathered more than 7,500 samples. Here’s the short version of what they found: People fight desires all day long. As Baumeister summarized in his subsequent book, Willpower (co-authored with the science writer John Tierney): “Desire turned out to be the norm, not the exception.” The five most common desires these subjects fought include, not surprisingly, eating, sleeping, and sex. But the top five list also included desires for “taking a break from [hard] work… checking e-mail and social networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music, or watching television.” The lure of the Internet and television proved especially strong: The subjects succeeded in resisting these particularly addictive distractions only around half the time. These results are bad news for this rule’s goal of helping you cultivate a deep work habit. They tell us that you can expect to be bombarded with the desire to do anything but work deeply throughout the day, ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
456:I Am Not Your Guru Inspirational Quotes
1. “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.”
2. “Every day, work harder on yourself than anything else. ‘Cause if you become more intelligent, more valuable, more skilled, you can add more value to other people.”
3. “If I could uncover what beliefs and values control me, I can literally redesign me.”
4. “Our entire life changes in a moment.”
5. “Your biggest problem is you think you shouldn’t have them. ‘Cause problems are what make us grow. Problems are what sculpt our soul. Problems are what make us become more.”
6. “If we can realize that life is always happening for us, not to us… game over, all the pain and suffering disappears.”
7. “Push will wear you out. When you’re pushing to do something, you only got so much willpower. But when you’re pulled, when there’s something larger than yourself that you’re here to serve and that you believe you’re made for, that brings energy.”
8. “Heal the boy and the man will appear.”
9. “You get what you tolerate.”
10. “Questions control what you focus on. What you focus on is what you feel. What you feel is your experience of life.”
11. “If you sit at the table of success too long, you’re going to get bored. Progress equals happiness. If you’re growing in anything, financially, spiritually, emotionally, in your relationship, in your body, you’re going to feel better in your life. That’s what we’re made for.”
12. “We’re meant to grow so we have something to give. You can’t give something you really don’t have. ~ Tony Robbins,#NFDB
457:With a single, delicious thrust, he was inside her, and she belatedly realized that there was no pain, no discomfort as there had been the first time, but only a rich, welcome fullness that made her feel utterly complete.
He stopped, seated to the hilt. "Are you all right, lovely?"
"Yes, I'm quite wonderful," she said, her tone a mix of pleasure and awe. She shifted beneath him, and he groaned, moving against her several times before retreating until nothing but the very tip of him remained inside her, and she thought the loss of him might make her mad.
"Gabriel," she sighed. "Please."
He rewarded her, filling her again, pushing her further, higher, shifting and moving until the angle of his movements was perfect, and she cried out.
He stopped, whispering in her ear teasingly, "Careful, Empress... you'll get us caught." Her eyes widened at his words, and he smiled. "It makes it even better, doesn't it... the threat of discovery?"
As if to test her willpower, his fingers stroked just above where they were joined, skillfully playing in the nest of curls, finding the tight bud of pleasure there and stroking it until she was biting her lower lip to keep silent. And then he was moving again, building the sweet friction between them, coaxing her into abandon while whispering heated reminders to stay quiet. She couldn't stop herself, and he captured her mouth in a soul-stealing kiss to keep her from calling out as she shattered beneath him, pulsing around him, giving him a taste of heaven.
And when she tore her lips from his to whisper "I love you," over and over like a litany, he was lost, too, barely controlling his own cries of pleasure as he spilled inside of her. ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB
458:Skills Unlocked: How to Build Heroic Character Strengths If you want to make a change for the better or achieve a tough goal, don’t worry about motivation. Instead, focus on increasing your self-efficacy: confidence in your ability to solve your own problems and achieve your goals. The fastest and most reliable way to increase your self-efficacy is to learn how to play a new game. Any kind of game will do, because all games require you to learn new skills and tackle tough goals. The level of dopamine in your brain influences your ability to build self-efficacy. The more you have, the more determined you feel, and the less likely you are to give up. You’ll learn faster, too—because high dopamine levels improve your attention and help you process feedback more effectively. Keep in mind that video games have been shown to boost dopamine levels as much as intravenous amphetamines. Whenever you want to boost your dopamine levels, play a game—or make a prediction. Predictions prime your brain to pay closer attention and to anticipate a reward. (Playing “worst-case scenario bingo” is an excellent way to combine these two techniques!) You can also build self-efficacy vicariously by watching an avatar that looks like you accomplish feats in a virtual world. Whenever possible, customize video game avatars to look like you. Every time your avatar does something awesome, you’ll get a vicarious boost to your willpower and determination. Remember, self-efficacy doesn’t just help you. It can inspire you to help others. The more powerful you feel, the more likely you are to rise to the heroic occasion. So the next time you feel superpowerful, take a moment to ask yourself how you can use your powers for good. ~ Jane McGonigal, #NFDB
459:Blue Eyes, you will drink?”
Loretta waved him away. A long silence settled over them. Then Hunter grasped her chin and forced her to look at him.
“Habbe we-ich-ket, seeking death, it is not wisdom.” He wedged the canteen between his knees and caught her hand, placing it on his muscular upper arm. “Ein mah-heepicut, it is yours. No harm will come to you walking in my footsteps. You will trust this Comanche, eh? It is a promise I make for you.”
Loretta stared into his indigo eyes, aware of the leashed power beneath her fingertips. For an instant she believed he truly meant it, that he would protect her, always. Then her gaze shifted to the scar on his cheek, to his heathen medallion, to the images carved into the leather of his wristband. Half-breed or no, she couldn’t trust this man.
He sighed and released her hand to take a long, slow drink, calculated, she was sure, to make her yearn for one herself. He wiped his mouth and said, “We will see, eh? It is a hard path to walk, going thirsty in the sun. You will yield.”
With that, he corked the gourd and set it beside her in the shade so she could help herself if her willpower wavered. Rocking back on his heels, he ran a finger along her cheekbone. “I must protect you from the sun, eh? So you do not burn.”
Scooping a handful of dirt, he mixed it with a little water from the canteen to make a mud paste. It felt wonderfully cool when he smoothed it on her face. After he finished he sat back and studied her again, his dark eyes gleaming with that silent laughter that irritated her so. She must look like a blue-eyed bugaboo with her face streaked brown and her hair flying every which way. Well, he was no prize, either. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
460:Why’d you let me think he was running from me. From Sawyer?” I asked, watching her face for any sign of remorse.
“’Cause it was better that way. You ain’t never gonna be nothing but a wall standing between those boys, and right now they need each other. More than ever. I might not be an ideal parent, but I love my boy. I know he needs his brother. You’re sweet and honest. I like you. I really do. You’re nothing like I assumed. But you ain’t good for them boys. They need you out of their lives so they can move on and find a way to deal with this.”
She was right. I would always be the one thing standing between them ever mending their fences. I loved Beau. I loved him enough to let him go.
“You’re right,” I replied.
Honey reached over and patted my arm affectionately. “You’re a good girl with a really big heart. Your mama raised you right. I’m thankful Beau has your love. It makes me feel good inside to know someone like you could love him. Thank you.”
I stood up and wrapped my arms around Honey’s shoulders. She stiffened then relaxed, and her arms slowly came around me. I wondered if anyone had ever hugged her. I squeezed her one good time before letting go.
“Thank you for putting up with me this week,” I said with emotion clogging my throat. Her hazel eyes were misty as she gave me a sad smile.
“I enjoyed the company.”
Before I became a blubbering mess, I gave her a small wave and turned to head toward the door.
“He’s back in town. Just so you know. I gave him your letters.”
I squeezed the brass knob and stared at the old wooden door. I had to let him go. Asking where he was and how long he’d been back would only hurt more. With every ounce of willpower in my body, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. It was time I went home. ~ Abbi Glines,#NFDB
461:The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self-knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or willpower. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels. • Associated with Habit 1: Be Proactive is the endowment of self-knowledge or self-awareness—an ability to choose your response (response-ability). At the low end of the continuum are the ineffective people who transfer responsibility by blaming other people, events, or the environment—anything or anybody “out there” so that they are not responsible for results. If I blame you, in effect I have empowered you. I have given my power to your weakness. Then I can create evidence that supports my perception that you are the problem. At the upper end of the continuum toward increasing effectiveness is self-awareness: “I know my tendencies, I know the scripts or programs that are in me, but I am not those scripts. I can rewrite my scripts.” You are aware that you are the creative force of your life. You are not the victim of conditions or conditioning. You can choose your response to any situation, to any person. Between what happens to you and your response is a degree of freedom. And the more you exercise that freedom, the larger it will become. As you work in your circle of influence and exercise that freedom, gradually you will stop being a “hot reactor” (meaning there’s little separation between stimulus and response) and start being a cool, responsible chooser—no matter what your genetic makeup, no matter how you were raised, no matter what your childhood experiences were or what the environment is. In your freedom to choose your response lies the power to achieve growth and happiness. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
462:They know we're here." He turns to Galen. "What do you think?"
Galen scratches the back of his neck. "It's a trap."
Toraf rolls his eyes. "Oh, you think so?" He shakes his head. "I'm asking if you think Musa is in on it."
Galen is not very familiar with Musa. He's only talked to her a handful of times, and that was when he was very young. Still, out of all the Archives who seemed to support Jagen and his monumental act of treason, Musa's face does not come to mind. "Would she be?"
Toraf shrugs. Woden scowls. “With much respect, Highness, Musa is an Archive. She will not forsake her vows to remain neutral.”
It takes all of Galen’s willpower to bite his tongue. Woden is still naïve enough to believe that all the Archives are of a pure and unbiased mind. That they do not get tangled up in emotions such as greed, ambition, and envy. Did Woden attend the same tribunal I did?
Toraf slaps Woden on the back. “Then you don’t mind going first?”
The Poseidon Tracker visibly swallows. “Oh. Of course not. I’m happy to-“
“Oh, let’s get on with this,” Galen says, snatching the spear from Woden’s unsuspecting grasp. This seems to embarrass the young Tracker. Galen doesn’t have time for embarrassment.
“Yes, let’s,” Toraf says. “Before the humans get those disgusting wrinkles on their skin.” He nudges Woden. “It’s probably the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen lots of things.”
It’s the first time Galen realizes that Woden’s nervous demeanor and over-respectful attitude is not out of reverence for his own Royal status, but out of reverence for Toraf. It seems Toraf has a fan. And why wouldn’t he? He’s the best Tracker in the history of both territories. Any Tracker should feel humbled in his presence.
Galen is not any Tracker. He grunts. “Shut up, idiot. Get behind me.”
Toraf speeds ahead. “No, you get behind me, minnow.”
Despite their grand words, they creep to the door together. ~ Anna Banks,#NFDB
463:Step 6. Ensure That Your Environment Supports Your Goals Some people subscribe to the philosophy that if the cure doesn’t hurt, it can’t be working. When it comes to permanent changes in diet and lifestyle, the opposite philosophy is the best: The less painful the program, the more likely it is to succeed. Take steps to make your new life easier. Modify your daily behavior so that your surroundings work for you, not against you. Have the right pots, pans, and utensils to cook with; have the right spices, herbs, and seasonings to make your meals delicious; have your cookbooks handy and review them often to make your dishes lively and appealing. Make sure you give yourself the time to shop for food and cook your meals. Change your life to support your health. Don’t sacrifice your health for worthless conveniences. Avoid temptation. Very few people could quit smoking without ridding their house of cigarettes. Alcoholics avoid bars to stop drinking. Protect yourself by protecting your environment. Decrease the time when you are exposed to rich foods to avoid testing your “willpower.” One of the best ways to do this is to throw all the rich foods out of the house. Just as important is to replace harmful foods with those used in the McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. If many of your meals are eaten away from home, make the situations meet your needs. Go to restaurants that offer at least one delicious, nutritious item. Ask the waiter to remove the butter and olive oil from the table. Accept invitations to dinner from friends who eat and live healthfully. Bring healthful foods with you whenever possible. Keep those people close who support your efforts and do not try to sabotage you. Ask family and friends to stop giving you boxes of candy and cakes as gifts. Instead suggest flowers, a card, or a fruit basket. Tell your mother that if she really loves you she’ll feed you properly, forgoing her traditional beef stroganoff. ~ John A McDougall, #NFDB
464:Good morning,” she said, smiling as she slid over beside me and straddled the stick shift. All worries of Sawyer fled my mind.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I replied, and leaned over to kiss her. She immediately sighed and moved closer to me, running her fingers through my hair. It took all my self-control to pull back.
“Don’t you want to get out of here first?” I asked.
She pouted as if I’d just taken away her favorite toy and sat back, crossing her arms over her chest.
“How’re you feeling today?” I asked, pulling out onto the road. Her dimple winked at me. It took extreme willpower to keep driving and not pull over so I could kiss that sweet spot.
“I’m fine…I mean, better than fine. I’m--” She paused, and I glanced down to see her cheeks flush a pretty, bright pink. I couldn’t keep from chuckling at the innocent blush on her face. Reaching down, I gently pulled one of the small hands she was wringing nervously in her lap and threaded my fingers through hers while the first stirrings of possessiveness came over me.
“Are you sore?” I asked. I’d heard virgins were normally sore afterward, but Ashton had been the first virgin I’d ever been with.
She started to shake her head, but then her blush deepened. “Maybe a little.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, feeling a tug of protectiveness to go with the healthy heaping of possessiveness rearing up inside me. She was turning my insides into a war zone.
She gazed up at me and smiled shyly. “I’m not.”
God, I loved her. She wrapped her arms around mine and laid her head on my shoulder. It was one of the few times I hated my stick shift. I’d prefer to remain just like this without having to move my arm.
“Tell me you put on sunblock,” I said, glancing down at her lightly tanned skin. The sun on the beach was intense for even the best tanner. She giggled and nodded her head. All was right with the world. Once I pulled out onto the highway, heading south, I tucked my hand between her thighs and enjoyed the ride. ~ Abbi Glines,#NFDB
465:STEVE CARELL IS NICE BUT IT IS SCARY
It has been said many times, but it is true: Steve Carell is a very nice guy. His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell’s final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful “Hey, you think you have that shot yet?”
I’ve always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. The one notable thing about Steve’s niceness is that he is also very smart, and that kind of niceness has always made me nervous. When smart people are nice, it’s always terrifying, because I know they’re taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things. Steve could never be as funny as he is, or as darkly observational an actor, without having an extremely acute sense of human flaws. As a result, I’m always trying to impress him, in the hope that he’ll go home and tell his wife, Nancy, “Mindy was so funny and cool on set today. She just gets it.”
Getting Steve to talk shit was one of the most difficult seven-year challenges, but I was determined to do it. A circle of actors could be in a fun, excoriating conversation about, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and you’d shoot Steve an encouraging look that said, “Hey, come over here; we’ve made a space for you! We’re trashing Dominique Strauss-Kahn to build cast rapport!” and the best he might offer is “Wow. If all they say about him is true, that is nuts,” and then politely excuse himself to go to his trailer. That’s it. That’s all you’d get. Can you believe that? He just would not engage. That is some willpower there. I, on the other hand, hear someone briefly mentioning Rainn, and I’ll immediately launch into “Oh my god, Rainn’s so horrible.” But Carell is just one of those infuriating, classy Jane Austen guys. Later I would privately theorize that he never involved himself in gossip because—and I am 99 percent sure of this—he is secretly Perez Hilton. ~ Mindy Kaling,#NFDB
466:Making these choices [to attend school instead of skipping], as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me.
One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line.
Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school. ~ Liz Murray,#NFDB
467:When we lose a righteous person who is dear to us, we have the wonderful opportunity to honor that person by incorporating the best principles from his or her life into ours. What were his gifts? What were her talents? A desire to serve, a happy outlook on life, generosity with material possessions, an even greater generosity in having a heart that included everyone? Following the example of a loved one, we can love the Lord, make covenants with the Lord, and keep them faithfully. We too can seek to understand the Savior's great mission of atonement, redemption, and salvation. We too can seek to become worthy followers of the Son of God. And we too can anticipate that when the time comes for us to step through the veil of mortality, leaving our failing and pain-filled bodies behind, we will see the loving smile and feel the welcoming embrace, not only of our Heavenly Parents and of the Savior, but also of our loved ones who will greet us in full vigor, full remembrance, and full love. When we are in the valley of the shadow, it is a time of questions without answers. We ask, "How can I bear this? Why did such a good woman have to die? Why aren't my prayers being answered?" In this life, we will not receive answers to many questions of "why"—partly because the limitations of mortality prevent us from understanding the full plan. But I testify to you that the answer of faith is a powerful one, even in the most difficult of circumstances, because it does not depend on us—on our strength to endure, on our willpower, on the depth of our intellectual understanding, or on the resources we can accumulate. No, it depends on God, whose strength is omnipotence, whose understanding is that of eternity, and who has the will to walk beside us in love, sharing our burden. He could part the Red Sea before us or calm the angry storm that besets us, but these would be small miracles for the God of nature. Instead, he chooses to do something harder: He wants to transform human nature into divine nature. And thus, when our Red Sea blocks our way and when the storm threatens to overwhelm us, he enters the water with us, holding us in the hands of love, supporting us with the arms of mercy. When we emerge from the valley of the shadow, we will see that he was there with us all the time. ~ Chieko N Okazaki, #NFDB
468:sparrows" (Luke 12:7). When we lose a righteous person who is dear to us, we have the wonderful opportunity to honor that person by incorporating the best principles from his or her life into ours. What were his gifts? What were her talents? A desire to serve, a happy outlook on life, generosity with material possessions, an even greater generosity in having a heart that included everyone? Following the example of a loved one, we can love the Lord, make covenants with the Lord, and keep them faithfully. We too can seek to understand the Savior's great mission of atonement, redemption, and salvation. We too can seek to become worthy followers of the Son of God. And we too can anticipate that when the time comes for us to step through the veil of mortality, leaving our failing and pain-filled bodies behind, we will see the loving smile and feel the welcoming embrace, not only of our Heavenly Parents and of the Savior, but also of our loved ones who will greet us in full vigor, full remembrance, and full love. When we are in the valley of the shadow, it is a time of questions without answers. We ask, "How can I bear this? Why did such a good woman have to die? Why aren't my prayers being answered?" In this life, we will not receive answers to many questions of "why"—partly because the limitations of mortality prevent us from understanding the full plan. But I testify to you that the answer of faith is a powerful one, even in the most difficult of circumstances, because it does not depend on us—on our strength to endure, on our willpower, on the depth of our intellectual understanding, or on the resources we can accumulate. No, it depends on God, whose strength is omnipotence, whose understanding is that of eternity, and who has the will to walk beside us in love, sharing our burden. He could part the Red Sea before us or calm the angry storm that besets us, but these would be small miracles for the God of nature. Instead, he chooses to do something harder: He wants to transform human nature into divine nature. And thus, when our Red Sea blocks our way and when the storm threatens to overwhelm us, he enters the water with us, holding us in the hands of love, supporting us with the arms of mercy. When we emerge from the valley of the shadow, we will see that he was there with us all the time. ~ Chieko N Okazaki, #NFDB
469:Here’s how to get started: 1. Sit still and stay put . Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground, or sit cross-legged on a cushion. Sit up straight and rest your hands in your lap. It’s important not to fidget when you meditate—that’s the physical foundation of self-control. If you notice the instinct to scratch an itch, adjust your arms, or cross and uncross your legs, see if you can feel the urge but not follow it. This simple act of staying still is part of what makes meditation willpower training effective. You’re learning not to automatically follow every single impulse that your brain and body produce. 2. Turn your attention to the breath. Close your eyes or, if you are worried about falling asleep, focus your gaze at a single spot (like a blank wall, not the Home Shopping Network). Begin to notice your breathing. Silently say in your mind “inhale” as you breathe in and “exhale” as you breathe out. When you notice your mind wandering (and it will), just bring it back to the breath. This practice of coming back to the breath, again and again, kicks the prefrontal cortex into high gear and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain . 3. Notice how it feels to breathe, and notice how the mind wanders. After a few minutes, drop the labels “inhale/exhale.” Try focusing on just the feeling of breathing. You might notice the sensations of the breath flowing in and out of your nose and mouth. You might sense the belly or chest expanding as you breathe in, and deflating as you breathe out. Your mind might wander a bit more without the labeling. Just as before, when you notice yourself thinking about something else, bring your attention back to the breath. If you need help refocusing, bring yourself back to the breath by saying “inhale” and “exhale” for a few rounds. This part of the practice trains self-awareness along with self-control. Start with five minutes a day. When this becomes a habit, try ten to fifteen minutes a day. If that starts to feel like a burden, bring it back down to five. A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow. It may help you to pick a specific time that you will meditate every day, like right before your morning shower. If this is impossible, staying flexible will help you fit it in when you can. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
470:The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. —RUMI INTRODUCTION Welcome to Willpower 101 Whenever I mention that I teach a course on willpower, the nearly universal response is, “Oh, that’s what I need.” Now more than ever, people realize that willpower—the ability to control their attention, emotions, and desires—influences their physical health, financial security, relationships, and professional success. We all know this. We know we’re supposed to be in control of every aspect of our lives, from what we eat to what we do, say, and buy. And yet, most people feel like willpower failures—in control one moment but overwhelmed and out of control the next. According to the American Psychological Association, Americans name lack of willpower as the number-one reason they struggle to meet their goals. Many feel guilty about letting themselves and others down. Others feel at the mercy of their thoughts, emotions, and cravings, their lives dictated by impulses rather than conscious choices. Even the best-controlled feel a kind of exhaustion at keeping it all together and wonder if life is supposed to be such a struggle. As a health psychologist and educator for the Stanford School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program, my job is to help people manage stress and make healthy choices. After years of watching people struggle to change their thoughts, emotions, bodies, and habits, I realized that much of what people believed about willpower was sabotaging their success and creating unnecessary stress. Although scientific research had much to say that could help them, it was clear that these insights had not yet become part of public understanding. Instead, people continued to rely on worn-out strategies for self-control. I saw again and again that the strategies most people use weren’t just ineffective—they actually backfired, leading to self-sabotage and losing control. This led me to create “The Science of Willpower,” a class offered to the public through Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program. The course brings together the newest insights about self-control from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain how we can break old habits and create healthy habits, conquer procrastination, find our focus, and manage stress. It illuminates why we give in to temptation and how we can find the strength to resist. It demonstrates the importance of understanding the limits of self-control, ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
471:We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens. ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
472:He was beautiful.
Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge.
He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring.
Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes.
Good-he wasn’t looking at me.
I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him…
…and saw a picture of me, fast asleep.
It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn’t look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me?
Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still.
“You can keep pretending to be asleep if you’d like, but I don’t see a career for you as an actress,” he teased.
My eyes sprang open. Sage’s head was again bent over his etching, but a grin played on his face as he worked.
“You knew?” I asked, mortified.
Sage put a finger to his lips, glancing toward Ben. “About two minutes before you woke up, I knew,” he whispered. “Your breathing hanged.” He bent back over the drawing, then impishly asked, “Pleasant dreams?”
My heart stopped, and I felt myself blush bright crimson as I remembered our encounter in the bottom of the rowboat. I sent a quick prayer to whoever or whatever might be listening that I hadn’t re-enacted any of it in my sleep, then said as nonchalantly as possible, “I don’t know, I can’t remember what I dreamed about. Why?”
He swapped out the rock in his hand for one with a thinner edge and worked for another moment. “No reason…just heard my name.”
I hoped the dim moonlight shadowed the worst of my blush. “Your name,” I reiterated. “That’s…interesting. They say dreams sort out things that happen when we’re awake.”
“Hmm. Did you sort anything out?” he asked.
“Like I said, I can’t remember.”
I knew he didn’t believe me. Time to change the subject. I nodded to the etching. “Can I come look? ~ Hilary Duff,#NFDB
473:WILLPOWER EXPERIMENT: FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL, BUT DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK When an upsetting thought comes to mind, try the technique that Goldin teaches his subjects. Instead of instantly trying to distract yourself from it, let yourself notice the thought. Oftentimes, our most disturbing thoughts are familiar—the same worry, the same self-criticism, the same memory. “What if something goes wrong?” “I can’t believe I did that. I’m so stupid.” “If only that hadn’t happened. What could I have done differently?” These thoughts pop up like a song that gets stuck in our heads, seemingly out of nowhere, but then is impossible to get rid of. Let yourself notice whether the upsetting thought is an old, familiar tune—that’s your first clue that it is not critically important information you need to believe. Then shift your attention to what you are feeling in your body. Notice if there is any tension present, or changes to your heart rate or breathing. Notice if you feel it in your gut, your chest, your throat, or anywhere else in your body. Once you’ve observed the thought and feelings, shift your attention to your breathing. Notice how it feels to breathe in and breathe out. Sometimes the upsetting thought and feelings naturally dissipate when you do this. Other times, they will keep interrupting your attention to your breath. If this happens, imagine the thought and feelings like clouds passing through your mind and body. Keep breathing, and imagine the clouds dissolving or floating by. Imagine your breath as a wind that dissolves and moves the clouds effortlessly. You don’t need to make the thought go away; just stay with the feeling of your breath. Notice that this technique is not the same thing as believing or ruminating over a thought. The opposite of thought suppression is accepting the presence of the thought—not believing it. You’re accepting that thoughts come and go, and that you can’t always control what thoughts come to mind. You don’t have to automatically accept the content of the thought. In other words, you might say to yourself, “Oh well, there’s that thought again—worries happen. That’s just the way the mind works, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” You’re not saying to yourself, “Oh well, I guess it’s true. I am a terrible person and terrible things are going to happen to me, and I guess I need to accept it.” This same practice can be used for any distracting thought or upsetting emotion, including anger, jealousy, anxiety, or shame. After trying this technique a few times, compare it with the results you get from trying to push away upsetting thoughts and emotions. Which is more effective at giving you peace of mind? A ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
474:THE COUNCIL WAS NOTHING LIKE Jason imagined. For one thing, it was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Somebody had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage. Jason looked around the room and tried to remember everyone’s name. Thankfully, Leo and Piper were sitting next to him—it was their first meeting as senior counselors. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis’s nostrils. Travis Stoll from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will Solace from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. The counselor from Hecate cabin, Lou Ellen something-or-other, was playing “got-your-nose” with Miranda Gardiner from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda’s nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back. Jason had hoped Thalia would show. She’d promised, after all—but she was nowhere to be seen. Chiron had told him not to worry about it. Thalia often got sidetracked fighting monsters or running quests for Artemis, and she would probably arrive soon. But still, Jason worried. Rachel Dare, the oracle, sat next to Chiron at the head of the table. She was wearing her Clarion Academy school uniform dress, which seemed a bit odd, but she smiled at Jason. Annabeth didn’t look so relaxed. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. As soon as Jason walked in, she fixed him with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of him by sheer willpower. “Let’s come to order,” Chiron said. “Lou Ellen, please give Miranda her nose back. Travis, if you’d kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper, and Leo have returned successfully…more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in.” Everyone looked at Jason. He cleared his throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details he forgot. It only took a few minutes, but it seemed like longer with everyone watching him. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, Jason knew the story must have sounded pretty wild. He ended with Hera’s visit right before the meeting. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
475:Emma ripped the sticky note off the bathroom mirror and threw it in the trash.
Sean didn’t have to worry about her rubbing the back of his neck again anytime soon. And he certainly didn’t have to worry about her wanting to get naked. Not with him.
If they were a real couple, she’d throw his pillow onto the couch and let his feet dangle over the edge for a change. It was pathetic how fast he’d come up with a lame excuse to run away just because he’d kissed her.
It was just a kiss. A great kiss, yes, but still just a kiss. She hadn’t asked him to marry her—to really marry her, of course—or told him she wanted to have his baby. A hot, steamy, toe-curling, bone-melting kiss between two single adults was nothing to run from.
But now he’d made a big deal out of it and everything was going to be even more awkward than it had been for the past few days.
She’d been curled up on the couch, fuming, for almost an hour when she heard Sean’s truck pull in to the driveway. It was another ten minutes before he crept into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Since she was facing the back of the couch, she didn’t have to make much of an effort to ignore him.
He was in the shower so long she must have fallen asleep to the drone of running water, because the next thing Emma knew, her alarm was going off and it was time to face another day in the hell she’d created.
But first she had to face Sean. She got first crack at the bathroom, and when she came out, he was sitting on the side of the bed, fully clothed. Thank goodness.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “We should talk about last night.”
“How’s Kevin?”
“He’s good. And I meant before that.”
“You should have stayed for the end of the movie. It was good.”
“Dammit, Emma, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, you mean the practice kiss?” She clipped her cell phone onto her front pocket. “We’re getting better at it. That was almost convincing.”
“Practice kiss?” He stood, probably so he could look down at her, but she was tall enough it didn’t make much of an impact. “Almost convincing?”
“Yeah,” she said, though she turned her back on him, heading toward the door to avoid eye contact, because that was no practice kiss and it could have convinced even the CIA’s finest.
He was muttering when she left the room, but she shut the door on him and went downstairs. She didn’t want to talk about it. And she didn’t want to think about the fact he wasn’t happy she called it a practice kiss.
That meant he considered it a real kiss. And not only a real kiss, but one that had shaken him up. The only reason kissing a woman should bother a man like him was if he was trying to fight being attracted to her.
Hopefully, he’d win, she thought as she headed toward the kitchen, because she was waging that battle herself and didn’t appear to be headed for a victory. Maybe he had enough willpower and self-control for both of them. ~ Shannon Stacey,#NFDB
476:He’d stopped talking about bonding her to him forever and had apparently decided to concentrate on being charming instead. Liv never would have believed that such an intensely alpha male could be light and playful but she had been seeing an entirely different side of Baird lately. Aside from the sushi class, he’d also taken her to an alien petting zoo where she was able to see and touch animals that were native to the three home worlds of the Kindred and they’d been twice to the Kindred version of a movie theater where the seats were wired to make the viewer feel whatever was happening on the screen. He’d also taken her to a musical performance where the musicians played giant drums bigger than themselves and tiny flutes smaller than her pinky finger. The music had been surprisingly beautiful—the melodies sweet and haunting and Liv had been moved. But it was the evenings they spent alone together in the suite that made Liv really believe she was in danger of feeling too much. Baird cooked for her—sometimes strange but delicious alien dishes and once Earth food, when she’d taught him how to make cheeseburgers. They ate in the dim, romantic light of some candle-like glow sticks he’d placed on the table and there was always very good wine or the potent fireflower juice to go with the meal. Liv was very careful not to over-imbibe because she needed every ounce of willpower she had to remember why she was holding out. For dessert Baird always made sure there was some kind of chocolate because he’d learned from his dreams how much she loved it. Liv had been thinking lately that she might really be in trouble if she didn’t get away from him soon. If all he’d had going for him was his muscular good looks she could have resisted easily enough. But he was thoughtful too and endlessly interested in her—asking her all kinds of questions about her past and friends and family as well as people he’d seen while they were “dream-sharing” as he called it. Liv found herself talking to him like an old friend, actually feeling comfortable with him instead of being constantly on her guard. She knew that Baird was actively wooing her, doing everything he could to earn her affection, but even knowing that couldn’t stop her from liking him. She had never been so ardently pursued in her life and she was finding that she actually liked it. Baird had taken her more places and paid her more attention in the past week than Mitch had for their entire relationship. It was intoxicating to always be the center of the big warrior’s attention, to know that he was focused exclusively on her needs and wants. But attention and attraction aside, there was another factor that was making Liv desperate to get away. Just as he had predicted, the physical attraction she felt for Baird seemed to be growing exponentially. She only had to be in the same room with him for a minute or two, breathing in his warm, spicy scent, and she was instantly ready to jump his bones. The need was growing every day and Liv didn’t know how much longer she could fight it. ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
477:There have been ample opportunities since 1945 to show that material superiority in war is not enough if the will to fight is lacking. In Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan the balance of economic and military strength lay overwhelmingly on the side of France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but the will to win was slowly eroded. Troops became demoralised and brutalised. Even a political solution was abandoned. In all three cases the greater power withdrew. The Second World War was an altogether different conflict, but the will to win was every bit as important - indeed it was more so. The contest was popularly perceived to be about issues of life and death of whole communities rather than for their fighting forces alone. They were issues, wrote one American observer in 1939, 'worth dying for'. If, he continued, 'the will-to-destruction triumphs, our resolution to preserve civilisation must become more implacable...our courage must mount'.
Words like 'will' and 'courage' are difficult for historians to use as instruments of cold analysis. They cannot be quantified; they are elusive of definition; they are products of a moral language that is regarded sceptically today, even tainted by its association with fascist rhetoric. German and Japanese leaders believed that the spiritual strength of their soldiers and workers in some indefinable way compensate for their technical inferiority. When asked after the war why Japan lost, one senior naval officer replied that the Japanese 'were short on spirit, the military spirit was weak...' and put this explanation ahead of any material cause. Within Germany, belief that spiritual strength or willpower was worth more than generous supplies of weapons was not confined to Hitler by any means, though it was certainly a central element in the way he looked at the world.
The irony was that Hitler's ambition to impose his will on others did perhaps more than anything to ensure that his enemies' will to win burned brighter still. The Allies were united by nothing so much as a fundamental desire to smash Hitlerism and Japanese militarism and to use any weapon to achieve it. The primal drive for victory at all costs nourished Allied fighting power and assuaged the thirst for vengeance. They fought not only because the sum of their resources added up to victory, but because they wanted to win and were certain that their cause was just.
The Allies won the Second World War because they turned their economic strength into effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effective will to win. The mobilisation of national resources in this broad sense never worked perfectly, but worked well enough to prevail. Materially rich, but divided, demoralised, and poorly led, the Allied coalition would have lost the war, however exaggerated Axis ambitions, however flawed their moral outlook. The war made exceptional demands on the Allied peoples. Half a century later the level of cruelty, destruction and sacrifice that it engendered is hard to comprehend, let alone recapture. Fifty years of security and prosperity have opened up a gulf between our own age and the age of crisis and violence that propelled the world into war. Though from today's perspective Allied victory might seem somehow inevitable, the conflict was poised on a knife-edge in the middle years of the war. This period must surely rank as the most significant turning point in the history of the modern age. ~ Richard Overy,#NFDB
478:DHARANA
NOW that we have learnt to observe the mind, so that we know how it works to some extent, and have begun to understand the elements of control, we may try the result of gathering together all the powers of the mind, and attempting to focus them on a single point.
We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun. The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba, change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise, fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceivable change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disappearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concentrating his mind in the very smallest degree. Perhaps a student may go for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he does, the obstinacy of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably give up. As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.
For the first week it may seem rather amusing, and you may even imagine you are progressing; but as the practice teaches you what you are doing, you will apparently get worse and worse. Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#NFDB
479:Do you know about the spoons? Because you should. The Spoon Theory was created by a friend of mine, Christine Miserandino, to explain the limits you have when you live with chronic illness. Most healthy people have a seemingly infinite number of spoons at their disposal, each one representing the energy needed to do a task. You get up in the morning. That’s a spoon. You take a shower. That’s a spoon. You work, and play, and clean, and love, and hate, and that’s lots of damn spoons … but if you are young and healthy you still have spoons left over as you fall asleep and wait for the new supply of spoons to be delivered in the morning. But if you are sick or in pain, your exhaustion changes you and the number of spoons you have. Autoimmune disease or chronic pain like I have with my arthritis cuts down on your spoons. Depression or anxiety takes away even more. Maybe you only have six spoons to use that day. Sometimes you have even fewer. And you look at the things you need to do and realize that you don’t have enough spoons to do them all. If you clean the house you won’t have any spoons left to exercise. You can visit a friend but you won’t have enough spoons to drive yourself back home. You can accomplish everything a normal person does for hours but then you hit a wall and fall into bed thinking, “I wish I could stop breathing for an hour because it’s exhausting, all this inhaling and exhaling.” And then your husband sees you lying on the bed and raises his eyebrow seductively and you say, “No. I can’t have sex with you today because there aren’t enough spoons,” and he looks at you strangely because that sounds kinky, and not in a good way. And you know you should explain the Spoon Theory so he won’t get mad but you don’t have the energy to explain properly because you used your last spoon of the morning picking up his dry cleaning so instead you just defensively yell: “I SPENT ALL MY SPOONS ON YOUR LAUNDRY,” and he says, “What the … You can’t pay for dry cleaning with spoons. What is wrong with you?” Now you’re mad because this is his fault too but you’re too tired to fight out loud and so you have the argument in your mind, but it doesn’t go well because you’re too tired to defend yourself even in your head, and the critical internal voices take over and you’re too tired not to believe them. Then you get more depressed and the next day you wake up with even fewer spoons and so you try to make spoons out of caffeine and willpower but that never really works. The only thing that does work is realizing that your lack of spoons is not your fault, and to remind yourself of that fact over and over as you compare your fucked-up life to everyone else’s just-as-fucked-up-but-not-as-noticeably-to-outsiders lives. Really, the only people you should be comparing yourself to would be people who make you feel better by comparison. For instance, people who are in comas, because those people have no spoons at all and you don’t see anyone judging them. Personally, I always compare myself to Galileo because everyone knows he’s fantastic, but he has no spoons at all because he’s dead. So technically I’m better than Galileo because all I’ve done is take a shower and already I’ve accomplished more than him today. If we were having a competition I’d have beaten him in daily accomplishments every damn day of my life. But I’m not gloating because Galileo can’t control his current spoon supply any more than I can, and if Galileo couldn’t figure out how to keep his dwindling spoon supply I think it’s pretty unfair of me to judge myself for mine. I’ve learned to use my spoons wisely. To say no. To push myself, but not too hard. To try to enjoy the amazingness of life while teetering at the edge of terror and fatigue. ~ Jenny Lawson, #NFDB
480:Well, I saved you today, didn’t I? Just like I saved you before. You walked out of the Bastion free, without a scratch, and if any Cokyrian but me had caught you with that dagger, you might be drawn and quartered by now.”
“You didn’t save me from that butcher,” I said irritably. “But you’re right. About today, I mean.” I could sense his satisfaction, which irritated me all the more. “So accept my thanks, but stay away from me. We’re not friends, you know.”
I was nearing my neighborhood and didn’t want anyone to see me with him. He stepped in front of me, forcing me to stop.
“We’re not friends yet. But you’ve thought about it. And you just thanked me.”
“Are you delusional?”
“No. You just said thank you to the faceless Cokyrian soldier who arrested you.”
“Don’t you ever stop?” I demanded, trying in vain to move around him.
“I haven’t even started.”
“What does that mean?”
There was silence as Saadi glanced up and down the street. “I want to know where you got that dagger. Or at least what story you told.”
“Why don’t you ask Commander Narian? The two of you seemed fairly close.”
“Quit making jokes.”
“I haven’t made a single one.”
“Well?”
“It was my father’s,” I said, clinging to the lie Queen Alera had provided, whether by mistake or not.
“Oh.” This seemed to take Saadi aback.
“And now, because of you, I don’t have it anymore.” I knew I was pressing my luck, but I wanted to make him feel bad.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, seeming sincere enough.
Thinking I had maybe, finally, succeeded in getting him to leave me alone, I stepped around him.
“Shaselle?”
I stopped again, without the slightest idea why.
“Your father--what was he like?”
The question shocked me; I also wasn’t sure I could answer it without crying. But Saadi appeared so genuinely interested that I couldn’t disregard him.
“You have no right to ask me that,” I answered out of principle. “But for your information, he was the strongest, bravest, kindest and best-humored man I ever knew. And none of it was because he took what was handed to him.”
For the second time, I attempted a dramatic departure.
“Shaselle?”
“What now?” I incredulously exclaimed.
“Do you have plans tomorrow?”
“What?”
“I have a day off duty. We could--”
“No!” I shouted. “What is this? You expect me to spend a day with you, a Cokyrian--a Cokyrian I can’t stand?”
“Yes,” he affirmed, despite my outburst.
I laughed in disbelief. “I won’t. This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. Enjoy your time off duty with your own kind.”
Turning, I sprinted down the street, and though he called after me yet again, I ignored him. As I neared my house, I glanced behind once or twice to assure myself he wasn’t following. He was nowhere in sight.
I reached the security of my home just in time for dinner, and just in time to cut off Mother’s growing displeasure--the first step in her progression to anger. I smiled at her, hurried to wash, and was a perfect lady throughout the meal. Afterward I retired to my room, picking a book from my shelf to occupy me until my eyes drooped. Instead of words on pages, however, I kept seeing Saadi’s face--his clear blue eyes, that irritating hair, those freckles across his nose that made me lose willpower.
What if I had offended him earlier? He had only asked to spend time with me, and I had mocked him. But he was Cokyrian. It was ludicrous for him to be pursuing my company. It was dangerous for me to be in his. And that, I suddenly realized, was part of the reason I very much wanted to be with him. Saadi aggravated me, confused me, scared me, and yet I could no longer deny that he intrigued me in a way no one else ever had. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
481:In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow.
If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.
…
After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years.
…
Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come.
In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.
…
Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different. ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
482:How to Meditate
Deep meditation is a mental procedure that utilizes the nature of the mind to systematically bring the mind to rest. If the mind is given the opportunity, it will go to rest with no effort. That is how the mind works.
Indeed, effort is opposed to the natural process of deep meditation. The mind always seeks the path of least resistance to express itself. Most of the time this is by making more and more thoughts. But it is also possible to create a situation in the mind that turns the path of least resistance into one leading to fewer and fewer thoughts. And, very soon, no thoughts at all. This is done by using a particular thought in a particular way. The thought is called a mantra.
For our practice of deep meditation, we will use the thought - I AM. This will be our mantra.
It is for the sound that we will use I AM, not for the meaning of it.
The meaning has an obvious significance in English, and I AM has a religious meaning in the English Bible as well. But we will not use I AM for the meaning - only for the sound. We can also spell it AYAM. No meaning there, is there? Only the sound. That is what we want. If your first language is not English, you may spell the sound phonetically in your own language if you wish. No matter how we spell it, it will be the same sound. The power of the sound ...I AM... is great when thought inside. But only if we use a particular procedure. Knowing this procedure is the key to successful meditation. It is very simple. So simple that we will devote many pages here to discussing how to keep it simple, because we all have a tendency to make things more complicated. Maintaining simplicity is the key to right meditation.
Here is the procedure of deep meditation: While sitting comfortably with eyes closed, we'll just relax. We will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. We just let them go by without minding them. After about a minute, we gently introduce the mantra, ...I AM...
We think the mantra in a repetition very easily inside. The speed of repetition may vary, and we do not mind it. We do not intone the mantra out loud. We do not deliberately locate the mantra in any particular part of the body. Whenever we realize we are not thinking the mantra inside anymore, we come back to it easily. This may happen many times in a sitting, or only once or twice. It doesn't matter. We follow this procedure of easily coming back to the mantra when we realize we are off it for the predetermined time of our meditation session. That's it.
Very simple.
Typically, the way we will find ourselves off the mantra will be in a stream of other thoughts. This is normal. The mind is a thought machine, remember? Making thoughts is what it does. But, if we are meditating, as soon as we realize we are off into a stream of thoughts, no matter how mundane or profound, we just easily go back to the mantra.
Like that. We don't make a struggle of it. The idea is not that we have to be on the mantra all the time. That is not the objective. The objective is to easily go back to it when we realize we are off it. We just favor the mantra with our attention when we notice we are not thinking it. If we are back into a stream of other thoughts five seconds later, we don't try and force the thoughts out. Thoughts are a normal part of the deep meditation process. We just ease back to the mantra again. We favor it.
Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.
As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.
When and Where to Meditate
How long and how often do we meditate? For most people, twenty minutes is the best duration for a meditation session. It is done twice per day, once before the morning meal and day's activity, and then again before the evening meal and evening's activity.
Try to avoid meditating right after eating or right before bed.
Before meal and activity is the ideal time. It will be most effective and refreshing then. Deep meditation is a preparation for activity, and our results over time will be best if we are active between our meditation sessions. Also, meditation is not a substitute for sleep. The ideal situation is a good balance between meditation, daily activity and normal sleep at night. If we do this, our inner experience will grow naturally over time, and our outer life will become enriched by our growing inner silence.
A word on how to sit in meditation: The first priority is comfort. It is not desirable to sit in a way that distracts us from the easy procedure of meditation. So sitting in a comfortable chair with back support is a good way to meditate. Later on, or if we are already familiar, there can be an advantage to sitting with legs crossed, also with back support. But always with comfort and least distraction being the priority. If, for whatever reason, crossed legs are not feasible for us, we will do just fine meditating in our comfortable chair. There will be no loss of the benefits.
Due to commitments we may have, the ideal routine of meditation sessions will not always be possible. That is okay. Do the best you can and do not stress over it. Due to circumstances beyond our control, sometimes the only time we will have to meditate will be right after a meal, or even later in the evening near bedtime. If meditating at these times causes a little disruption in our system, we will know it soon enough and make the necessary adjustments. The main thing is that we do our best to do two meditations every day, even if it is only a short session between our commitments. Later on, we will look at the options we have to make adjustments to address varying outer circumstances, as well as inner experiences that can come up.
Before we go on, you should try a meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit where you are not likely to be interrupted and do a short meditation, say ten minutes, and see how it goes. It is a toe in the water.
Make sure to take a couple of minutes at the end sitting easily without doing the procedure of meditation. Then open your eyes slowly. Then read on here.
As you will see, the simple procedure of deep meditation and it's resulting experiences will raise some questions. We will cover many of them here.
So, now we will move into the practical aspects of deep meditation - your own experiences and initial symptoms of the growth of your own inner silence. ~ Yogani, Deep Meditation,#NFDB
17 Integral Yoga
3 Yoga
3 Occultism
1 Science
1 Hinduism
1 Christianity
13 Satprem
10 The Mother
9 Sri Aurobindo
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 Franz Bardon
3 The Synthesis Of Yoga
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 Record of Yoga
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 06
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How can one increase single-mindedness and Willpower? They are so necessary for doing anything.
Through regular, persevering, obstinate, unflagging exercise - I
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me tell you about a recent occurrence. E. had sent a telegram saying that she had a perforated intestine (but it must have been something else because they operated on her only after several days, and when you are not operated on immediately in such cases, you die). Anyway, it was very serious and she was on the threshold of death that much is certain. She wrote me a letter the day before the operation (what is interesting is that now she doesnt even remember what she wrote). It was a magnificent letter saying that she was conscious of the Divine Presence and of the Divine Plan. Tomorrow they will operate on me, she said. And I am entirely aware that this operation has ALREADY been done, that it is a fact accomplished by the Divine Will; otherwise it could be a fatal ordeal. And she said she was conscious of the supreme Wills action, in a perfect peace. It was a magnificent letter. And the whole thing went off almost miraculously; she recovered in such a miraculous way that the surgeon himself said, I must congratulate you, to which she replied, How surprising! You did the operation! Yes, he said, we did the operation, but it is your body that willed to be healed, and I congratulate you for your bodys Willpower. Of course she wrote to me that she knew who had been there to see that all went well. And this feeling of the thing being already accomplished is a beginning of the consciousness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, where one is simultaneously both here and there. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have managed to be entirely there, but what he has called the realization is to be both there and here simultaneously.
Of course, one might wonder what the meaning of everything here is, if it has all been already accomplished above, on an occult plane, and we are merely re-enacting it.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It depends. Each thing has its method. But the primary method is to want it, to make a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they function thats a lengthy process. You choose one sense (or several), perhaps the one for which you have the greatest initial aptitude, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. Its similar to doing exercises for developing muscles. You can even manage to create Willpower in yourself.
For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?
0 1965-04-28, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As long as you dont have the power to do everything, that is, as long as you dont have the supreme Power, you know nothing. And the supreme Power is Let me make myself clearer (Mother smiles). Someone is dying from cancer in America. I said to that someone that what would happen would be the best for his soul; I said it at a time when the so-called human knowledge still imagined it could cure him. He has lost his speech, but not consciousness neither hearing nor consciousness (its a cancer of the brain). The doctor (most eminent, of course, the best you could find) says he only lives on through sheer Willpower and HE doesnt want to live! (Yet he lives on, life goes on.) He doesnt want to live, he wants to die. But of course he cant say so, he cant speak anymore. And the doctor, on his part, in his ignorance, bewildered by the phenomenon, says its through his will that he lives on.
I received all this news this morning; for several hours I have been living through the consciousnesses with this problem: the fact that he is still living. And there is always (for consciousnesses such as those) Death with a big question markwhat is it exactly? What happens exactly [when one dies]? What is the change in consciousness? Is there a change in consciousness? What happens? Because my work (the promise I gave) consists in making him, before he leaves his body, conscious of the eternal Truth. So for at least three hours this morning I was confronted with this problem (thats why I was completely withdrawn when I came), and I said to myself, But until one is the master of life and death, one knows nothing!
0 1965-12-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, he walks about through sheer Willpower. I know that. I know, because as a rule youre finished, you cant move anymore.
(silence)
0 1967-02-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the point of view of consciousness, the beings I saw1 for instance, when they wanted to be covered in a certain way (you know, clothed), they did it through Willpower; from the point of view of consciousness, thats certainly incomparable, theres no possible comparison, but
Of course, one can clo the oneself in a marvellous way.
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, the correspondence has become something fantastic! Twenty-four, twenty-six, thirty, sometimes forty letters a day. So naturally, try as I may When its just a line, its all right, but I can barely reply to eight or ten a day: I have only an hour and a half, thats not muchnot even that much! No, no, the hour is too much: I have half an hour! But I extend it: I have from 7 to 7:30 in the evening, but every day I extend it till 8. Dinner is supposedly at 7: 30, I take it at 8. Supposedly too, I go to bed at 9:30 and get up at 4:30, but when I went to bed last night it was almost 1110:30 is frequent, which means an hour late. So from time to time I get up late. You understand, between about 1 and 2 A.M. (around 12:30, 1, or 2), I complete the first stage of concentration to give the body a good rest; after that I start working, and before working, a little concentration so that whatever the work, I should be back at 4:30; but sometimes its later sometimes its 4:45. Then, afterwards, I have a certain time in the morning for washing and dressing, and thats when there have been really interesting experiences: with a certain concentration (which has nothing to do with Willpower or anything of the kind: its a concentration, a certain type of concentration and making contact with the Presence and the sense of the relativity, the very considerable relativity of material time), with an intensity of concentration, you can do the same thing much faster. I eventually found out that simply by concentration you can reduce the time by more than half. And you do things in exactly the same way, but they dont take timehow? Well, the secrets havent been revealed yet. But the phenomenon exists.
The same principle is at work (its not a principle, its a way of doing or a way of being), is at work for all things: with fatigue, the onset of illness, that is, the cause of the illness (the internal disorder or the receptivity to the disorder from outside), it works also in the same way. If you add to it the intensity of faith or adoration, then its much easier, but it works in the same way. So what exactly takes place? To the inner perception, the perception of the consciousness, it is a sort of principle of disordera principle, almost a taste for disorder, I dont know, its between a habit and a preference for disorderwhich gets replaced by yes (to be as general as possible), by a vibration of harmony. But that vibration of harmony is full of light, of sweetness, of warmth, intensity, and so wonderfully CALM! So when that takes the place of the other, then all that belongs to the world of disorder is dissolved. AND the rigidity of time disappears.2 Time perhaps we could say (its just a way of speaking), we could say that time is replaced by a succession (Mother remains absorbed for a long time).
0 1971-02-10, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not coming very fast. Its all right, the leg is almost betteralmost, theres still a tiny little something in the foot, but its nothing at all. But the eyesight is not too clear. Its bettereverything is improving, but very, very slowly. And Willpower seems to have nothing to do with it. Its something entirely beyond my controlwhat is it exactly? I dont know.
It must depend on the rest of the world, perhaps?
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For man, the foremost realization for man is understanding things. For the Supermind, realization means Power (Mother stretches out her arms in a sovereign gesture), the creative Willpower.
But naturally, it would be quite disastrous if human intellectual capacities, mental capacities, were to gain control of that powerit would be terrifying! It would cause terrible havoc. Hence the need to consent in all humility to become imbecile before being able to acquire it.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Whenever there is repeated persistence in one given direction with reference to any chosen point of attention, we will see that some sort of success results. If a laboratory scientist is to analyse the structure of an atom, he will analyse a particular atom repeatedly by bombarding it with various kinds of light rays, but he will not go on changing the atoms today this atom, tomorrow that atom, today a hydrogen atom, tomorrow some other thing. That will not lead to success. A particular object will be taken up for consideration, observation and analysis, and a repeated attempt will be made to go deep into its structure until its mystery is revealed. So for this, great leisure is necessary, persistence is necessary, energy and Willpower are necessary, and there is no need to mention that we must be free from all other outward distractions. When one takes to the practice of yoga, there should be no distraction of any pronounced nature. Minor distractions may be there, but serious distractions which will divert our attention markedly from the point of attention should not be there.
A fixed place, a fixed time, and a fixed method of concentration are called for. In one of the aphorisms of the sutras of Patanjali, which is very relevant to this point, it is said that the practise should be for a long period: sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14). If we want to establish ourselves in yoga, some conditions are to be fulfilled. One condition he mentions is that the practice should be for a protracted period I said at least five years, and not less than five years. It should be repeatedly done every day, without missing even a single day. Even if we have a temperature, fever or a headache, we should not miss it, because these are obstacles. The more we try to exert our will in the practice of concentration, the more will the body also try to revolt. It will create all kinds of complications we will have indigestion, we will have a stomachache, we will have a headache, we will have fever all sorts of things will come. As a matter of fact, it is specifically mentioned in the Yoga Sutras that we will fall sick. It will be an obstacle, and we should not think, "Today I am sick; I will not meditate." That is what it wants, and then it has succeeded. So, first of all, a little guarded way of living may be called for to see, as far as possible, that we do not become so ill that we cannot even sit for a few minutes of meditation. By a regulation of diet and living in a climate that is not too extreme, etc., one can be somewhat free from the anxiety of falling ill to the extent that it would prevent us from doing anything at all in the spiritual field.
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
knowledge. Inasmuch as the Willpower of contemporary man is
not in itself more vigorous or unswerving than that of a Plato or
--
tion to proceed from the Willpower of mankind, a wholly human
12 THE FUTURE OF MAN
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little Willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. "Lift off" takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension.
Like any natural force, gravity pull can work with us or against us. The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we want to go. But it is also gravity pull that keeps our world together, that keeps the planets in their orbits and our universe in order. It is a powerful force, and if we use it effectively, we can use the gravity pull of habit to create the cohesiveness and order necessary to establish effectiveness in our lives.
1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The variety of detail that is provided to the mind in the scriptures has an intention not to pamper or cajole the mind, but to treat the mind of its illness of distraction and attachment to external objects. The aim is highly spiritual. Sometimes it is held that japa of a mantra also is a part of svadhyaya. That is a more concentrated form of it, requiring greater Willpower. It is not easy to do japa. We may study a book like the Srimad Bhagavata with an amount of concentration, but japa is a more difficult process because there we do not have variety. It is a single point at which the mind is made to move, with a single thought almost, with a single epithet or attribute to contemplate upon. It is almost like meditation, and is a higher step than the study of scriptures. Adepts in yoga often tell us that the chanting of a mantra like pranava is tantamount to svadhyaya.
The point is that if you cannot do anything else, at least do this much. Take to regular study so that your day is filled with divine thoughts, philosophical ideas and moods which are spiritual in some way or the other. You may closet yourself in your study for hours together and browse through these profound texts, whatever be the nature of their presentation, because all these philosophical and spiritual presentations through the scriptures and the writings of other masters have one aim namely, the analysis of the structure of things, and enabling the mind to know the inner reality behind this structure. There is a threefold prong provided by Patanjali in this connection wherein he points out that self-control the control of the senses, austerity, or tapas together with svadhyaya, or study of sacred scriptures, will consummate in the adoration of God as the All-reality.
1.05 - Dharana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
7:Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your Willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
8:The student is supposed to count the number of times that his thought wanders; this he can do on his fingers or on a string of beads.
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
secondly, it does not really prevent anything it merely represses. The vital is a force of its own, entirely independent of our rational or moral arguments. If we try to overpower it or ill-treat it by radical asceticism or discipline, the slightest letup can bring on an open rebellion and it knows how to take revenge with interest. Or, if we have enough Willpower to impose our mental or moral rules upon it, we may prevail, but at the cost of drying up the life-force in ourselves, because 56
The Life Divine, 18:48
1.07 - The Magic Wand, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
After some time load the wand again in the same manner, and every time you repeat the cerem.ony you must increase the intensity of your imagination. Never forget that your whole spiritual will is embodied in the wand. It is important that you limit the time and if possible, also the space of the power concentrated in the wand; that is, concentrate your Willpower into the wand with the idea that as long as it will exist it will represent all your will, all your power, and remain effective. A wand charged in this way will remain effective till you die, or should it be your special wish, even beyond your physical death, that is, it will remain a 47 magic wand. It may even last for centuries, and its influence may even increase with time, providing you have charged it with the wish that its power should grow from one day to the next. The effectiveness of the wand will first work on the mental sphere, then, after some time and repeated charging, on the astral sphere, and finally even on the physical world. The time required until a wand, first effective on the mental world, becomes effective in the physical world depends on the magician's maturity, training and power of imagination, and also on what he is striving for. The magician who is well acquainted with quabbalah will know that to bring about a realization from the mental sphere into the physical world, usually about 462 repetitions are necessary; by then the influence from the mental sphere takes shape, that is becomes condensed in the physical world. This, however, does not mean that the magician may not be able to bring about the same kind of success earlier than this. As already pointed out, the magic wand's power of realisation depends on the intention and purpose for which it has been made and charged. One could query whether the rod needs to be charged at all, since the magician's will should suffice. The magician, however, will not always be in a position to expand his mental exertion in the manner necessary for the transfer of one's will. There will be situations which will exhaust even the best magician, who then would be incapable of concentrating to his fullest power of expansion.
However, a skillfully charged magic wand will also have its effect at moments when the magician is not using his will-power, but is just concentrating his thoughts on the realization of his wish, using his magic wand for this purpose. There is, of course, in this case a slight danger that a blasphemous person may get hold of the magic wand in order to realize his own desires, which, if it happened, would go on the cost of the magician and his rodvoltage. Therefore a magician will always do well not to tell any person, not even his best friend, for which purpose, in which respect, and in which manner he has charged his magic wand.
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Does this mean that we have not progressed? We certainly have not progressed as we imagine. We are not any more human than the Theban or the Athenian, no more advanced than they despite all our machines. As Sri Aurobindo put it, Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism.18 We think we have mastered, but we have mastered nothing at all! Our machines are a testimony to our impotence, a huge prosthesis to correct our incapacity to see far, hear far, penetrate the heart of things and understand instantly and directly. We do not know any better now than ten thousand years ago how to modify matter through Willpower (perhaps we even knew it better then), how to illuminate with consciousness and understand through vision. Under all our apparatus, we are less advanced than the animal with its sixth sense and the pygmy of Central Africa. Our machines see better than we, feel better than we, count better than we, and perhaps they will end up living better than we. Matter escapes us completely. It takes a simple power failure for us to revert to the caveman. For progress is not improving the existing world or discovering new procedures: it is a change of consciousness and vision.
But at least we have progressed in one direction, which is not the one we think. We have completed the cycle of the ape; we have pushed to its ultimate consequence the simple little gesture that tied a vine to a branch to make a bow; we have inflated and overinflated the mental balloon to its breaking point. And Nature's design is accomplished, which was not just to take stock of the world, but to lead the whole species to the zero point, to that supreme juncture where there is not a single jungle left to explore, not one sea to plumb, not one Himalaya, when soon not even an acre of ground will be left for our concrete and steel structures, when even the gods have been squeezed dry of all their juices and collect dust on the shelves of our libraries, when life collapses under its own weight and leaves us again, like ancient man under the stars, alone, face to face with the mystery of the earth, to find the name of things, their power of being, the true vibration that dwells in us and links us to the world: the naked mystery of this unsullied moment, the original music of things, which is perhaps their ultimate truth and ultimate power, an original vision that is a new birth of the world, and perhaps the promise of its transformation. This is the end of the mental world. We are before naked matter. We are at the time of the great Invention.
1.09 - Sleep and Death, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
in particular that the more conscious we are on earth, or the higher we are capable of rising on the scale of consciousness and approaching the Origin, the closer we bring the earth to the Origin by annuling the distorting determinisms of the intermediary planes. This can have important consequences not only in an individual sense, for mastering and transforming our own life, but also in global terms, for the transformation of the world. A great deal has been written about determinism versus individual freedom, but the problem is too often seen from the wrong perspective. It is not a question of freedom versus determinism, but of freedom and many determinisms. We are subject, Sri Aurobindo says, to a series of superimposed determinisms physical, vital, mental and higher and the determinism of each plane can change or cancel the determinism of the plane immediately below it. For instance, good health and a given life-span in a person can be modified by the vital determinism of "his" passions or various psychological disorders, which in turn can be modified by the mental determinism of his Willpower and his ideal, which can then be modified by the greater law of the psychic, and so on. Freedom means to move to a higher plane. And the same applies to the earth, because the very same forces drive the individual and the collective. As individual meeting points of all these determinisms in matter, if we are capable of rising to a higher plane, we automatically help change all the lower determinisms and give the earth access to a greater freedom,
until the day when, with the help of the pioneers of evolution, we can lift ourselves to a supramental plane, which will change the present destiny of the world as the Mind once changed its destiny around the Tertiary Era. And in the end if there is an end perhaps the earth will attain the supreme Determinism, which is supreme Freedom and perfect accomplishment. Through our work on consciousness, each of us contri butes to resisting the fatalities that assail our world, and acts as a leavening agent for the earth's freedom and divinization. Indeed,
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
This is, again, Sankhya philosophy. We have seen from the same philosophy that from the lowest form up to intelligence all is nature; beyond nature are Purushas (souls), which have no qualities. Then how does the soul appear to be happy or unhappy? By reflection. If a red flower is put near a piece of pure crystal, the crystal appears to be red, similarly the appearances of happiness or unhappiness of the soul are but reflections. The soul itself has no colouring. The soul is separate from nature. Nature is one thing, soul another, eternally separate. The Sankhyas say that intelligence is a compound, that it grows and wanes, that it changes, just as the body changes, and that its nature is nearly the same as that of the body. As a finger-nail is to the body, so is body to intelligence. The nail is a part of the body, but it can be pared off hundreds of times, and the body will still last. Similarly, the intelligence lasts aeons, while this body can be "pared off," thrown off. Yet intelligence cannot be immortal because it changes growing and waning. Anything that changes cannot be immortal. Certainly intelligence is manufactured, and that very fact shows us that there must be something beyond that. It cannot be free, everything connected with matter is in nature, and, therefore, bound for ever. Who is free? The free must certainly be beyond cause and effect. If you say that the idea of freedom is a delusion, I shall say that the idea of bondage is also a delusion. Two facts come into our consciousness, and stand or fall with each other. These are our notions of bondage and freedom. If we want to go through a wall, and our head bumps against that wall, we see we are limited by that wall. At the same time we find a Willpower, and think we can direct our will everywhere. At every step these contradictory ideas come to us. We have to believe that we are free, yet at every moment we find we are not free. If one idea is a delusion, the other is also a delusion, and if one is true, the other also is true, because both stand upon the same basis consciousness. The Yogi says, both are true; that we are bound so far as intelligence goes, that we are free so far as the soul is concerned. It is the real nature of man, the soul, the Purusha, which is beyond all law of causation. Its freedom is percolating through layers of matter in various forms, intelligence, mind, etc. It is its light which is shining through all. Intelligence has no light of its own. Each organ has a particular centre in the brain; it is not that all the organs have one centre; each organ is separate. Why do all perceptions harmonise? Where do they get their unity? If it were in the brain, it would be necessary for all the organs, the eyes, the nose, the ears, etc., to have one centre only, while we know for certain that there are different centres for each. Both a man can see and hear at the same time, so a unity must be there at the back of intelligence. Intelligence is connected with the brain, but behind intelligence even stands the Purusha, the unit, where all different sensations and perceptions join and become one. The soul itself is the centre where all the different perceptions converge and become unified. That soul is free, and it is its freedom that tells you every moment that you are free. But you mistake, and mingle that freedom every moment with intelligence and mind. You try to attribute that freedom to the intelligence, and immediately find that intelligence is not free; you attri bute that freedom to the body, and immediately nature tells you that you are again mistaken. That is why there is this mingled sense of freedom and bondage at the same time. The Yogi analyses both what is free and what is bound, and his ignorance vanishes. He finds that the Purusha is free, is the essence of that knowledge which, coming through the Buddhi, becomes intelligence, and, as such, is bound.
1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
For there is an even greater Secret. We face this enormous universe bristling with difficulties and problems and negations and obstacles everything is a sort of constant impossibility to be overcome by dint of intelligence, Willpower, material or spiritual muscles. But, by so doing, we are on equal terms with the caterpillar, on equal terms with the fear-stricken gnome in its death hole. And, because we believe in difficulty, we are compelled to believe in our muscles of steel or not which always collapse. And we believe in death, we believe in evil, we believe in suffering, as the mole believes in the virtues of its tunnels. But by our morbid belief, our age-old belief, our gray elf-look, we have hardened the difficulty, armed it with a host of instruments and remedies that inflated it even more, planted it more firmly in its implacable groove. The world is enveloped in a formidable elfin illusion. It is in the grip a of formidable Death, which is but our fear of immortality. It is being torn apart by a formidable suffering, which is our refusal of joy and sunshine. Yet everything is here, every possible miracle, in the great open sunlight, every dreamed and undreamed possibility, every simple, spontaneous and natural mastery, every simple power of the Great Harmony. It asks only to pour over the world, flow through our channels and our bodies. All it asks is that we open the passageway. If we let that lightness, that divine ease, that solar smile, flood for a second our little aggregate of flesh, everything melts, obstacles dissolve, illnesses vanish, circumstances are straightened out as if by miracle, the darkness is illumined, the wall collapses as though they never existed. And once again, it is not even a miracle; it is simplicity reestablished, reality restored. It is the point of harmony here contacting Harmony everywhere and spontaneously, automatically, instantly bringing (or restoring) harmony there, in that gesture, that circumstance, that word, that particular conjunction of events and everything is a marvel of conjunction because everything flows from the Law. The walls never were; the obstacles never were; evil, suffering and death never were. But we had that look of evil, that look of suffering and death, that look of the imprisoned elf. The world is as we see it, as we want it. There is another Look within us which can transfigure everything. My children, said She who continued Sri Aurobindo's work, you all live in an enormous sea of vibrations and you don't even realize it! Because you are not receptive. There is such a resistance in you that if something manages to penetrate, three quarters of what enters is violently thrown out because of an incapacity to contain it.... Take simply the example of the consciousness of Forces, such as the force of love, the force of comprehension, the force of creation (it is the same for all of them: the force of protection, the force of growth, the force of progress, all of them), just take Consciousness, the consciousness that covers everything, permeates everything, that is everywhere and in everything it is almost felt as something trying to impose itself violently on the being, which balks!... Whereas if you were open and simply breathed that's all, just breathed you would brea the in Consciousness, Light, Comprehension, Force, Love and all the rest.29 Everything is there under our eyes, the total marvel of the world, just waiting for our consent, our look of faith in beauty, in freedom, in the supreme possibility that is knocking at our doors, pounding on the walls of our intelligence, suffering and pettiness. This is the supreme change of power, which is knocking at the world's doors and hammering away at nations, churches and Sorbonnes, hammering at human consciousness and all our geometric and well-thought-out certainties. And if once, only once, man's consciousness opens up to one ray of that living miracle, if the consciousness of a single nation among all our blind nations opens up to one spark of that Grace, then this implacable civilization walled up in its science and laws, in an elf of terror and suffering this enormous structure in which we have been born and which seems so inescapable, so indestructible and triumphant in its heavy miracles of steel and uranium, this clever prison in which we go in circles will crumble as rust. Then we will be man at last, or superman rather. We will have joy, natural oneness, freedom without walls and power without tricks. Then we will realize that all this suffering, these walls and difficulties which besiege our life were only the spur of the Sun of Truth, an original restriction to increase our strength, our need for space and our power of truth, a veil of illusion to protect our eyes from too strong a light, a dark passage from the instinctive spontaneity of the animal to the conscious spontaneity of the superman and that in the end everything is simple, unbelievably simple, like Truth itself, and unbelievably easy, like the very Joy that conceived these worlds. For, in truth, the path of the gods is a sunlit path on which difficulties lose all reality.30
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
At Chandernagore, Sri Aurobindo had reached the last levels of the physical subconscient. He was before a wall: No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy, I wish it were. It is rather with the opposite end of things.243 Knowing the kind of resistance and violent reactions one meets when barely touching the mental and vital subconscient, the snakepit, one can image the difficulty of that descent. The farther one descends, the higher the consciousness required, the stronger the light, since one can only descend as low as one has ascended. And if one understands that consciousness is a force, as tangible as an electric current, one can imagine the traumas and ordeals the overmental power and light can cause as they pour like a cataract into the quagmire of the physical subconscient an assault of ether and of fire.21 There are tremendous difficulties, and even dangers, in this to which we will return when discussing the transformation. As long as we are merely involved with mental or vital resistances, our moral lies, we need only to cultivate Willpower and patience, but when we descend lower we must face the lies of the body, as the Mother says, namely, diseases and death. This is why Sri Aurobindo and Mother insisted upon a sound physical base for their disciples: Work from both ends; do not neglect one for the other.
As he reached the extreme overmental frontiers, where "great colored waves" fade into white confines, Sri Aurobindo simultaneously touched the black rock at the bottom:
1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Therefore every scholar is warned not to take up any such contacts and not to make himself dependent on any being. The manner in which a necromancer calls a being from the astral plane rests on two methods. One method is spiritistic: the being is asked to reveal itself by help of mediums; that is by mediumistic writing or by mediums put into a state of trance. This method requires great perseverance until the being is able to take up a direct contact and to appear to the necromancer. The other method is that of evocation: the necromancer takes up contact with the being by help of a picture of the spirit's previous incarnation or by enlivening such a picture until finally the being steps out of it like an elementary, taking on its previous shape. A necromancer does not usually succeed at once, but if he goes on with his work persistently he might, depending on his maturity, development, Willpower and imagination, force the being to appear to him visibly.
A necromancer can hardly differentiatewhe ther, in such a case, his power of imagination plays the main role, or if he has created an elementary, or if the visible connection with the being has in fact taken place. But a narrow-minded necromancer does not care who has brought about the connection or what has actually caused the disired effect, if it has been his power of imagination (phantasy), or if repeated stressing of his nerves has created an elementary or if the being evoked really has appeared from the astral world.
1951-04-05 - Illusion and interest in action - The action of the divine Grace and the ego - Concentration, aspiration, will, inner silence - Value of a story or a language - Truth - diversity in the world, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
During the 1929 talk someone asked what should be done to effect the cure of an illness, whether one should exercise ones Willpower or only live in the confidence that it will be done or rely entirely on the divine Power. Mother replied:
All these are so many ways of doing the same thing.
4.15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the other hand, the turn of the nature may be to the predominance of the will-force and the capacities which make for strength, energy, courage, leadership, protection, rule, victory in every kind of battle, a creative and formative action, the Willpower which lays its hold on the material of life and on the wills of other men and compels the environment into the shapes which the shakti within us seeks to impose on life or acts powerfully according to the work to be done to maintain what is in being or to destroy it and make clear the paths of the world or to bring out into definite shape what is to be. This may be there in lesser or greater power or form and according to its grade and force we have successively the mere fighter or man of action, the man of self-imposing active will and personality and the ruler, conqueror, leader of a cause, creator, founder in whatever field of the active formation of life. The various imperfections of the soul and mind produce many imperfections and perversities of this type, -- the man of mere brute force of will, the worshipper of power without any other ideal or higher purpose, the selfish, dominant personality, the aggressive violent rajasic man, the grandiose egoist, the Titan, Asura, Rakshasa. But the soul-powers to which this type of nature opens on its higher grades are as necessary as those of the Brahmana to the perfection of our human nature. The high fearlessness which no danger or difficulty can daunt and which feels its power equal to meet and face and bear whatever assault of man or fortune or adverse gods, the dynamic audacity and daring which shrinks from no adventare or enterprise as beyond the powers of a human soul free from disabling weakness and fear, the love of honour which would scale the heights of the highest nobility of man and stoop to nothing little, base, vulgar or weak, but maintains untainted the ideal of high courage, chivalry, truth, straightforwardness, sacrifice of the lower to the higher self, helpfulness to men, unflinching resistance to injustice and oppression, self-control and mastery, noble leading, warriorhood and captainship of the journey and the battle, the high self-confidence of power, capacity, character and courage indispensable to the man of action, -- these are the things that build the make of the Kshatriya. To carry these things to their highest degree and give them a certain divine fullness, purity and grandeur is the perfection of those who have this Swabhava and follow this Dharma.
A third turn is one that brings out into relief the practical arranging intelligence and the instinct of life to produce, exchange, possess, enjoy, contrive, put things in order and balance, spend itself and get and give and take, work out to the best advantage the active relations of existence. In its outward action it is this power that appears as the skilful devising intelligence, the legal, professional, commercial, industrial, economical, practical and scientific, mechanical, technical and utilitarian mind. This nature is accompanied at the normal level of its fullness by a general temperament which is at once grasping and generous, prone to amass and treasure, to enjoy, show and use, bent upon efficient exploitation of the world or its surroundings, but well capable too of practical philanthropy, humanity, ordered benevolence, orderly and ethical by rule but without any high distinction of the finer ethical spirit, a mind of the middle levels, not straining towards the heights, not great to break and create noble moulds of life, but marked by capacity, adaptation and measure The powers, limitations and perversions of this type are familiar to us on a large scale, because this is the very spirit which has made our modern commercial and industrial civilisation. But if we look at 'the greater inner capacities and soul-values, we shall find that here also there are things that enter into the completeness of human perfection. The Power that thus outwardly expresses itself on our present lower levels is one that can throw itself out in the great utilities of life and at its freest and widest makes, not for oneness and identity which is the highest reach of knowledge or the mastery and spiritual kingship which is the highest reach of strength, but still for something which is also essential to the wholeness of existence, equal mutuality and the exchange of soul with soul arid life with life. Its powers are, first, a skill, kausala, which fashions and obeys law, recognises the uses and limits of relations, adapts itself to settled and developing movements, produces and perfects the outer technique of creation and action and life, assures possession and proceeds from possession to growth, is watchful over order and careful in progress and makes the most of the material of existence and its means and ends; then a power of self-spending skilful in lavishness and skilful in economy, which recognises the great law of interchange and amasses in order to throw out in a large return, increasing the currents of interchange and the fruitfulness of existence; a power of giving and ample creative liberality, mutual helpfulness and utility to others which becomes the source in an open soul of just beneficence, humanitarianism, altruism of a practical kind; finally, a power of enjoyment, a productive, possessive, active opulence luxurious of the prolific Ananda of existence. A largeness of mutuality, a generous fullness of the relations of life, a lavish self-spending and return and ample interchange between existence and existence, a full enjoyment and use of the rhythm and balance of fruitful and productive life are the perfection of those who have this Swabhava and follow this Dharma.
4.16 - The Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The ordinary power by which we govern the pranic energy is that of the embodied mind. But when we get clear above the physical mind, we can get too above the pranic force to the consciousness of a pure mental energy which is a higher formulation of the shakti. There we are aware of a universal mind consciousness closely associated with this energy in, around and above us, -- above, that is to say, the level of our ordinary mind status, -- giving all the substance and shaping all the forms of our will and knowledge and of the psychic element in our impulses and emotions. This mind force can be made to act upon the pranic energy and can impose upon it the influence, colour, shape, character, direction of our ideas, our knowledge, our more enlightened volition and thus more effectively bring our life and vital being into harmony with our higher powers of being, ideals and spiritual aspirations. In our ordinary state these two, the mental and the pranic being and energies, are very much mixed up and run into each other, and we are not able clearly to distinguish them or get a full hold of the one on the other and so control effectively the lower by the higher and more understanding principle. But when we take our station above the physical mind, we are able then to separate clearly the two forms of energy, the two levels of our being, disentangle their action and act with a clearer and more potent self-knowledge and an enlightened and a purer Willpower. Nevertheless the control is not complete, spontaneous, sovereign so long as we work with the mind as our chief guiding and controlling force. The mental energy we find to be itself derivative, a lower and limiting power of the conscious spirit which acts only by isolated and combined seeings, imperfect and incomplete half-lights which we take for full and adequate light, and with a disparity between the idea and knowledge and the effective will-power. And we are aware soon of a far higher power of the Spirit and its shakti concealed or above, superconscient to mind or partially acting through the mind, of which all this is an inferior derivation.
The Purusha and prakriti are on the mental level as in the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native principle of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its prakriti and there is then a division of our being between a consciousness that observes and can reserve its will-power and an energy full of the substance of consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge, will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soul by its mental nature. For ordinarily we are driven and carried along in the stream of our own and the universal active energy partly floundering in its waves, partly maintaining and seeming to guide or at least propel ourselves by a collected thought and an effort of the mental will muscle; but now there is a part of ourselves, nearest to the pure essence of self, which is free from the stream, can quietly observe and to a certain extent decide its immediate movement and course and to a greater extent its ultimate direction. The Purusha can at last act upon the prakriti from half apart, from behind or from above her as a presiding person or presence, adhyaksa, by the power of sanction and control inherent in the spirit.
DM 2 - How to Meditate, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron Willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.
As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.
LUX.07 - ENCHANTMENT, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
In trying to develop the will, the most fatal pitfall is to confuse will with the chauvinism of the ego. Will is not Willpower, virility, obstinancy, or hardness. Will is unity of desire.
Will expresses itself best against no resistance when its action passes unnoticed. Only when the mind is in a state of multiple desire do we witness the idiot agonizations of will-power. Pitting oneself against various oaths, abstentions, and tests is merely to set up conflicts in the mind. The will always manifests as the victory of the strongest desire, yet the ego reacts with disgust if its chosen desire fails.
r1913 09 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The siddhi has now firm standing in knowledge, in spite of lapses & lacunae, and the guiding Script can be invested in a definite form. The guiding Script orders & indicates, it does not predict. Its movement must be entirely liberated from the shadow of control by the minds vigilance, suggestive & distrustful, which still subsists in the environmental outlook. The trikaldrishti has been reconstituted and needs only a greater illumination & decisive[ness] to get rid of the one positive defect that still clogs it from perfection, false distribution of stress by the masquerading of mental will-suggestions in the guise of knowledge-perceptions. That once cured, the range of practical knowledge will automatically increase. The Willpower is as yet unable to act without a Prakritic resistance in the physical akasha. This habit of resistance must steadily be overborne and eliminated. It is especially active when continuous & detailed movements are dictated by the Willpower to external objects, but this resistance has been overborne before and must now be overborne habitually. Finally, the actuality of the lipi, rupa & samadhi must prevail over the blind and inert, but stubborn refusal of the physical ether. This is the immediate work that yet remains in the third chatusthaya.
In the fourth, it is now evident that what is being prepared by the apparent reaction towards asiddhi of continuity in the kamananda, is the ability of the body to bear the high intensity of maithunananda without emission and its distribution as ananda throughout the body. A stronger force of natural health and a more perfect habit of assimilation is being prepared by the suspension of the imperfect siddhi in arogya. Similar movements account for the long obstruction or renewed obstruction in utthapana & saundarya as in the samadhi and the adesha-siddhi. These movements must be helped by the will to work out more rapidly.
r1913 12 31, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday utthapana was resumedutthapana of the neck for half an hour without effort or difficulty and with only an ineffective & moderate an-anima. Today there came utthapana of both legs in the medial position for quarter of an hour, with difficulty because of defect of mahima which finally induced abandonment, although there were signs that the asiddhi would diminish if the attempt were prolonged. Afterwards the left leg was supported in the horizontal position (reclining on the side) for an hour by a perfectly sufficient laghima & mahima & at the end could have been maintained for an indefinitely longer period. The pain of the sinews peculiar to this position was recurrent, but had no longer its old force; nevertheless it prevented the maintenance in a single position straight or crooked, change of position giving relief. Except when the mahima is withheld, the utthapana now can always be maintained owing to the great accomplished force of laghima in the body. An-anima is now the only substantial opponent. It is noticeable that physical tapasya has been greatly diminished & seems on the point of abandonment in favour of pure Tapas of Willpower. The utthapana of the back & loins has, however, still to be tried; hitherto it has only once succeeded. The time for the horizontal position of the legs has not before been equalled, but the alteration of the method & the disappearance of true opposition is now the real siddhi, time only a test of its completeness or a circumstance. Vepathu remains, but it is now seen as the sign of a helpful agent which increases mahima & diminishes both muscular stress & muscular pain and strain; it is the sign of the pranashakti at work improving an unfit adhara.
In the afternoon there was a strong effort to reidealise the whole consciousness as well as the activity which succeeded with the thought but only partially with the trikaldrishti. In the evening there was, after a short struggle in which the trikaldrishti was almost unerring but the tapas only partially & defensively effective, an unprecedented sequent faultlessness of the effective will and, with one or two slight deflections, of the perceptive knowledge, but all this was in the manasa ketu and not in the daivya. So far it was a success for the manasa element which seeks to use the vijnana for its own development while refusing to the vijnana the possession & enjoyment of the system. The results however failed to give satisfaction to the Jiva or to the system which now demands vijnana and rejects the manasa perceptions whether true or false. This virati is the security that the attempt of the lower to use & dominate the higher cannot eventually succeed.
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
NIRODBARAN: Is it possible to create Manasaputra ("mind-child") by Willpower?
SRI AUROBINDO: Anything is possible under proper conditions.
--- Overview of noun willpower
The noun willpower has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (1) self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will ::: (the trait of resolutely controlling your own behavior)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun willpower
1 sense of willpower
Sense 1
self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will
=> resoluteness, firmness, firmness of purpose, resolve, resolution
=> trait
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun willpower
1 sense of willpower
Sense 1
self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will
=> nerves
=> presence of mind
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun willpower
1 sense of willpower
Sense 1
self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will
=> resoluteness, firmness, firmness of purpose, resolve, resolution
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun willpower
1 sense of willpower
Sense 1
self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will
-> resoluteness, firmness, firmness of purpose, resolve, resolution
=> self-control, self-possession, possession, willpower, will power, self-command, self-will
=> steadiness
=> sturdiness
=> stiffness
=> stubbornness, bullheadedness, obstinacy, obstinance, pigheadedness, self-will
=> single-mindedness
=> adamance, obduracy, unyieldingness
=> decisiveness, decision
=> determination, purpose
=> steadfastness
--- Grep of noun willpower
willpower
Wikipedia - Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
Wikipedia - Willpower (will.i.am album) -- 2013 studio album by will.i.am
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10865206-the-willpower-instinct
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https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Willpower
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https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Willpower_(Blades)
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Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen -- -- ufotable -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Demons Historical Shounen Supernatural -- Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen -- After a string of mysterious disappearances begin to plague a train, the Demon Slayer Corps' multiple attempts to remedy the problem prove fruitless. To prevent further casualties, the flame pillar, Kyoujurou Rengoku, takes it upon himself to eliminate the threat. Accompanying him are some of the Corps' most promising new blood: Tanjirou Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Inosuke Hashibira, who all hope to witness the fiery feats of this model demon slayer firsthand. -- -- Unbeknownst to them, the demonic forces responsible for the disappearances have already put their sinister plan in motion. Under this demonic presence, the group must muster every ounce of their willpower and draw their swords to save all two hundred passengers onboard. Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen delves into the deepest corners of Tanjirou's mind, putting his resolve and commitment to duty to the test. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - Oct 16, 2020 -- 400,828 8.72
Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen -- -- ufotable -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Demons Historical Shounen Supernatural -- Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen -- After a string of mysterious disappearances begin to plague a train, the Demon Slayer Corps' multiple attempts to remedy the problem prove fruitless. To prevent further casualties, the flame pillar, Kyoujurou Rengoku, takes it upon himself to eliminate the threat. Accompanying him are some of the Corps' most promising new blood: Tanjirou Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Inosuke Hashibira, who all hope to witness the fiery feats of this model demon slayer firsthand. -- -- Unbeknownst to them, the demonic forces responsible for the disappearances have already put their sinister plan in motion. Under this demonic presence, the group must muster every ounce of their willpower and draw their swords to save all two hundred passengers onboard. Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen delves into the deepest corners of Tanjirou's mind, putting his resolve and commitment to duty to the test. -- -- Movie - Oct 16, 2020 -- 400,828 8.72
Hey Willpower
Willpower
Willpower paradox
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
Willpower (will.i.am album)
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