quotations about willpower
Willpower is not going to be enough. You need some type of program.
CHRIS URAN
"From prescription pills to heroin addiction: How a Racine man was able to break the cycle", Fox 6 Now, January 27, 2016
Oatmeal for breakfast. Salad for lunch. Chicken and veggies for dinner--and a bag of chips, some ice cream, a glass of wine, and two cookies for a midnight snack. If this sounds like a typical day, you're not alone. It's a classic example of depleting willpower. Research suggests that willpower may actually be a finite resource, rather than something over which you always have complete control. Studies have shown that people who make one virtuous choice find it harder to choose right when faced with the next decision--as if willpower ran out.
JAMIE DUCHARME
"Is This Phenomenon Ruining Your Healthy Diet?", Boston Magazine, March 15, 2017
Willpower can produce short-term change, but it creates constant internal stress because you haven't dealt with the root cause.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose-Driven Life
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
ROBERT MCKEE
Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Willpower is likely the most important keystone habit there is. Willpower has more of an impact on individual success than intelligence, talent or education level.
P. JAMES HOLLAND
The Power of Habit
To assert your willpower is simply to make up your mind that you want something, and then refuse to be put off. In short, think about what you want and hold to that thought. Believe in it as a reality, regardless of what may appear to be true. This is willpower in action, and anyone can do it.
PHILLIP COOPER
Secrets of Creative Visualization
One notable study showed a seemingly miraculous way to restore willpower: by consuming sugar. The study claimed that participants who had sipped sugar-sweetened lemonade demonstrated increased self-control and stamina on difficult tasks.
NIR EYAL
"The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You", Huffington Post, November 22, 2016
A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Willpower, or lack thereof, has been blamed for failed diets, missed fitness goals, credit card debt, and other regrettable behavior since the third century B.C., when the ancient Greeks began to study self-control as a means of overcoming destructive behavior.
DARIA MEOLI
"7 Things You Didn't Know About Your Own Willpower", Shape, January 26, 2017
There's a lot of psychological disagreement about whether or not willpower is a limited resource. For many years, psychologists believed that self-control was finite, and could be "depleted" after you use too much of it. The classic study supporting this point of view found that students who'd had to resist eating chocolate-chip cookies did much worse on a self-control test afterwards than those who didn't have to resist the cookies beforehand. But we're increasingly discovering that our perceptions of willpower may shape our self-control more than anything else. Various studies have discovered that if people believe that their willpower is limited, they'll exercise it less often -- they make fewer New Year's resolutions, for instance, or take a break after a task that involves a lot of self-control and show less self-control afterwards. If they believe that willpower is infinite, though, they'll just keep showing it, no matter how many other bits of self-control they've exercised that day.
JR THORPE
"Why Are Some People Good At Saving Money? And What Can We Learn From Them?", Bustle, March 28, 2017
The higher life begins for us ... when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Strong willpower is always driven by a strong underlying purpose. A reason to put in the necessary effort and take action. Reasons are the fuel behind the dream!
CANAAN MASHONGANYIKA
It's Do-able!: Power to Unleash Your Dream
Deal with the dread by addressing it. As soon as you get up as this is when willpower is at its peak. So send the email you've been avoiding, do the task you've been procrastinating on, go to the gym, Do whatever it is in the knowledge that you will feel relieved afterwards and therefore lighter for the rest of the day.
SARAH BERRY
"Five scientifically proven morning rituals to make you happier every day", Stuff, January 15, 2016
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
You Own the Power
Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
attributed, Effortless Willpower
Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; Influences circle him on all sides, and yet must he answer for his actions: For the being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will, But a slave to selfish passions is the wavering creature of circumstance.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
If you have a will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure!
LEE LABRADA
FaceBook post, May 13, 2011
Will without power is like children playing at soldiers.
ALEXANDER FLOHR
The Rovers, or The Double Arrangement
We tend to think that habits like eating junk food are a matter of willpower--too little willpower, too much sugar and fat in our diets. But the more we learn about the malleability of the brain, the more we know that "willpower" is a far too easy explanation for what's really going on. The truth is that habits change how our brains work. What begins as a behavior morphs into changes in brain circuitry, and with repetition and time those changes strengthen and endure.
DAVID DISALVO
"Why Breaking Habits Is Even Harder Than We Think", Forbes, January 24, 2016