Cultivate willpower

Big events require big preparation. Consider running a marathon. Training for a marathon requires commitment, dedication and consistency. Your willpower is tested, and sometimes you come up short. Do you know why?

The reason you don’t get up in the morning to go for a run is, simple enough, because you don’t want it badly enough. The secret to having strong willpower? You have to want it more than you don’t want it.

It’s hard, in most cases, to force yourself to want something. Especially when the benefit you get from not running (extra sleep, anyone?) is immediate, versus some benefit down the road after completing a marathon.

How then, do we align ourselves to want what’s good for us?

The first thing to note: if you don’t train for a long-distance race, no one will yell at you or put you down. Your financial and social status will not change. The only consequence is doing poorly in a race that’s still quite a way away, if you even run at all.

When there are no consequences to our doing nothing, it is very easy to decide to do nothing. In that case, we need to introduce consequence. We do this by reframing the decision (i.e. to train) as one of right and wrong.

We are all moral creatures. We all have a code. When we see something as a choice between good and bad, right and wrong, it’s hard for most people to knowingly pick the bad or wrong decision.

The question of getting up in the morning to train now becomes one of right and wrong. We do it because it is the right thing to do. The consequence of not getting up: making the wrong choice, the bad choice. It’s bad for you and a disappointment for anyone that ever believed in you.

It’s important to choose to do the right thing now. The more we put it off the more difficult it is to get back to making the right choices, the good choices.

You might wonder if this isn’t a little dramatic? Here’s a little food for thought: you have one life (as far as anyone knows), a finite amount of time, and a lot of uncertainty surrounding that life. Tragedies happen. Circumstances change. People get busier, older. Injuries happen; recoveries take time. Why put off any longer being the person that you want to be? Believe me, you won’t be any better prepared than you are now. It only gets harder.

For me, it’s as clear as night and day. The right choice will lead me to a better future. The wrong choice will keep me where I am, and the world will pass on by.

If this doesn’t jive with your moral code, making this about right and wrong may not be right for you. For this to work you need to know what you want out of life. You need to be honest with yourself. This works for me because I want as much juice as I can squeeze out of life. How much juice do you want?

Or you could keep sleeping. Maybe you’ll get up tomorrow.