Own Willpower?Didnt your father bug you about will power, and how it separated the boys from the men, and if he was from the computer-age, the girls from the women?
After much research we admit to not discovering a definition for this willpower that was both consistent and conforming to 21st century science.
Today it is considered a myth by many, and like nostalgia for more innocent times, the more we examine it, the less we have.
Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. President said, - We all require pigheaded persistence-and-determination in the face of stubborn resistance and adversity. Willpower is defined as overcoming something or someone.
How about overcoming us?
When one part of us wants to lose ten pounds of ugly fat, and the other part answers Cut your head off!, and reaches for that shiny, delicious chocolate donut, we are getting closer to how willpower plays out.
Descartes
Forget for a moment his Cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am.
What he did in 1620-50 was create a trichotomy (dividing into three), Soul, Body and Mind, what was previously a dichotomy (two branches), just Soul and body. Hes responsible for the separation of mind from body.
Today, the cutting edge scientists never refer to Soul; they cannot find it with fMRIs. They refer to Bicameral Resonance two governing parts of our brain.
Many have trouble pointing out (imaging), the half called Subconscious mind. Psychological literature has no difficulty laughing at the anatomically invisible soul, yet they consistently refer to the invisible - Subconscious as the seat of our emotions and behaviors.
Our conscious mind is easy to find, it is our Temporal, Frontal, Occipital and Parietal brain cortices. Cognitive skills are activated by our prefrontal cortex.
Your left-hemisphere runs logic, reasoning, math, language and music including reading and writing, listening (comprehension), and communicating. Pretty heavy.
What about this? The average college graduate is absolutely convinced, (see: Gallup research), that we are sentient creatures that control our lives through conscious analysis followed by intelligently thought-out behaviors. It is that or we are criminals or demented. It is accepted we are left-hemispheric dominant folks.
Subconscious
Everything in our lives from motivation, to decision-making, to behaviors, are permitted by our subconscious mind or inhibited. Counterintuitive to commonsense it is not our all knowing, all powerful conscious mind that decides ourlifes' decisions.
Healthy minds are led by our subconscious, with a nod to our fellow traveler with the big reputation. One more step feelings follow imagery, meaning cause-and-effect is based on what consistently appears on the movie-screen of our subconscious mind.
If there is no agreement by both minds there is no decision or satisfaction with our conscious, logical, reasonable decision. Dont laugh, but the heart has its reasons.
They call it Cognitive Dissonance conflict between our thinking. Conscious mind does have a veto power of half-a-second, but it is rarely exercised.
Stress and anxiety, even panic occur when logic and reason choose one path romance is an outstanding example and our emotions (heart), is a contrarian.
Right-Brain
Consider using the term right-brain for Subconscious mind, and left-brain for the other half of mind.
Our right-brain specializes in looking at wholes (holistic), is intuitive, subjective, random and synthesizing (combining, putting together). It accesses feeling, searches for patterns, it run parallel-processing, and multi-tasks.
Righty is independent yet interdependent, and communicates with Lefty through your corpus Callosum, Anterior and Hippocampal Commissures.
The most interesting reality about our right-brain is first, that it runs our lives, and second, that it takes its goals and objectives from our conscious mind.
How and when we can consciously give order to righty is often the secret of success in life. It is based on auto-suggestion, affirmations and meditation.
Consider this: both halves work together 100% of the time, but one half is dominant. We live in a left-brained economy, (except during war), which values thinking and doing - based on logic and reasoning. Engineering, computer programming and all forms of science are left-brained skills, while creativity and imagination is best left to our right-brain.
During waking hours we operate in Beta cycles per second, and are left-brain dominant. During twilight-snoozes and sleep-time our Delta (REM) cycles per second are dominant. This is certainly not a partnership of equals our left-brain is constantly attempting to keep input from righty to a minimum.
It treats righty in an adversarial way, more like a child or wife of the 19th century. Be still and be useful, and thankful you are permitted around. Perhaps that is the cause and effect of up to 26% of mental illness in the population according the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Endwords
Proactive-Interactive-Reactive change occurs in us only when we inform and influence our Subconscious (Right-Brain), to permit it. Persistence and determination does not cut it. The law of Reversed Effort consistently reveals that the harder we try (more willpower) the worse the results. When will is in conflict with feeling, our willpower always loses.
Change occurs when our right-brain mental filters and censors are down; our right-brain is conservative and overprotective. Our conscious (left-brain) can initiate new behaviors, but it must be by subtlety and indirectness.
Ask psychologists how easy it is to promote meaningful change in even the smallest way for people who are spending hours weekly at it, at a cost of $350 an hour.
Yes, Virginia, change is possible 5% of alcoholics improve that is not a typo. Dedicated folks stop smoking, and IQ can be raised up to 50%.
Motivation feelings habit-through-repetition are required to modify our existing behaviors.
Speed reading graduates who practice for 15 minutes daily for 21 days with new strategies will triple their reading speed, double their memory. They can read and remember three books, articles and reports in the time their peers can hardly finish even one.
Reading (snailing), is exclusively a left-brain skill, while speed reading combines massive right-brain strategies with core left-brain input.
If you desire a massive competitive-advantage, the ability to operate on the fast-track for your career promotions motivate both hemispheres of your brain for optimal success.
Author of Speed Reading for Professionals, published by Barron's Educational, business partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating 2 million, including the White House staff of four U.S. Presidents.