Do you struggle to stay focused or complete tasks? Do you ever feel tired, lazy, unmotivated, or lack drive? Ah, I know the feeling. When I have no willpower, it feels like life suddenly becomes a 50-pound weight I’m constantly carrying around.
Does it always have to be like that? Do we have to become victims of this thing we call “willpower”? Or is there another way to approach our goals that is actually easy and effortless?
Let’s talk about why trying to rely on willpower to succeed in life can actually have the opposite effect, and discover the one thing that truly gives you energy to push through every obstacle!
Why Do I Have No Willpower?
We’ve all been there. You’re working late nights trying to finish a project for school or work and you’re pushing your brain to its absolute limit. At some point, you’re just throwing nonsense at the project because you can’t even think anymore.
How about this scenario? You’ve been really good about staying on your diet. You’ve gone a solid two months without a single cheat meal. You’ve also lost 10 pounds! However, you just can’t take it anymore and you feel your willpower starting to give out. Ultimately, you fail at your diet.
Maybe you’ve tried to quit your bad habits: biting your nails, smoking, or binging YouTube videos… (that might be mine!). You resist and use all your mental fortitude to avoid it, only to eventually cave and fall right back into the same habit.
If these sound like things you’ve struggled with, you’re not alone. In fact, I can almost guarantee every human on this planet has struggled to maintain their willpower only to fail time and time again.
Here’s why using willpower is a losing strategy in the long run:
Willpower is finite
Willpower is a finite resource. You can think of willpower as our “animal energy.” Like all animals, we need to recharge through sleep, sustenance, and self-care.
Pushing your willpower to its absolute human limits will eventually lead to burnout. Some will even use stimulants and drugs to push it even further to the detriment of their long-term health.
If we want to accomplish goals in our life, we must understand that willpower has its limits.
Willpower makes you feel guilty
Have you ever tried to work on a project that you just had zero interest in doing at that moment? How did you feel when you kept procrastinating and stopped working on that project? You probably felt guilty.
When you have no willpower, you feel guilty, like you should have more in order to get things done. So, you force yourself and the work turns out terrible.
When I’m working on creative projects, I’ve learned to stop the moment I feel turned off from the activity. I trust that I’ll have more energy the next day. Forcing it with willpower only leads to more guilt, worse results, and wasted time.
This guilt is a spiritual trap. It prevents you from any sort of growth internally, ultimately leading to a lack of success externally.
Willpower leads to laziness
After you burnout and feel guilty, the next thing that ensues is laziness. When you rely on willpower to do things, everything feels like a chore; like trying to push the heaviest boulder uphill.
When you know you have to force yourself to take a certain action, being lazy starts to sound a lot more appealing. After burning out on willpower a few times, it’s easy to just throw in the towel and turn on the TV.
Willpower ignores long-term wins
Because willpower is a finite energy, it can only really help in the short term—and even then, it often falls short for the reasons I mentioned above. What willpower usually tries to do is push through tasks you don’t actually want to do. It’s like saying, “Let me just get this over with so I can move on to something I actually enjoy.”
This is a losing mentality. To think that you can have this mentality day in and day out and produce lasting results is foolish. You’re essentially building a house of cards that will eventually fall due to poor-quality work.
Willpower blocks Your intuition
What is your intuition? It is an innate knowingness that everyone has and can tap into; yet, everyone is clouded by noisy thoughts. Your intuition can only be accessed when thoughts are not present.
The next time you are in a frantic state using your willpower to get something done, observe what your mind is doing. You’ll find your thoughts are running wild and there is a drivenness that is hard to calm down.
It is only through this calming down and releasing of thoughts that you can tap into your intuition, and just “get” what it is you have to do. Thoughts cloud judgment while intuition knows the truth of a matter.
Your true Superpower is Passion
If you don’t rely on willpower to get things done, then what can you rely on? That would be passion! But, what is passion? It’s so generic and cliché. You always hear, “Follow your passion. Passion fuels purpose. Chase your passion, not a paycheck.”
Passion is where your interests, talents, and contributions to the world align.
If you realize your passion, then effort is no longer necessary. That 50-pound weight you feel like you’re carrying around all the time now starts to feel like a feather pillow.
Here’s why passion is the key to long-term success:
Passion is Inexhaustible
Passion doesn’t run on adrenaline or motivation—it runs on something deeper. I’m not saying you’ll never feel tired. You will. But passion is a steady energy source. It doesn’t crash like willpower. It is consistent, reliable, and powerful.
Even as I write this, I’ve been feeling low for days. However, I still sat down to blog. Not because I had the energy, but because not doing it would have felt worse. When you’re connected to what you care about, passion keeps pulling you forward, even when you’re not feeling 100%.
To self-express, wholeheartedly, is the best driving force.
See: Taking Imperfect Action Is Better Than Inaction
Passion Is where true creativity lies
I actually didn’t understand creativity for the longest time. I thought being creative was when I did arts and crafts as a kid, and believe me my school art projects were horrendous.
True creativity is something everyone has. It is your talents and gifts. When you get in tune with what you like to express, your mind starts to generate more and more ideas on how to expand on that talent.
Your gifts can be expressed through a creative outlet; passion is the energy source you tap into as you begin to expand and master it.
Passion Gives You Long-Term Gains
Passion, unlike willpower, shows up everyday and does consistent work. It doesn’t ask for anything, yet is capable of doing anything and everything. Your passion is really only limited to the limits you want to place on it.
When I see beautiful architecture, I always think about the person who first imagined it. Before it was manifested in the world, it started as just an idea in someone’s mind. That, to me, is incredible! You start to see the truth of the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It began with a spark of passion and was brought to life through consistent effort, day after day. That’s what makes it such an incredible human accomplishment.
Don’t underestimate a lifetime of passionate work; it will surprise you what one person, driven by passion, can accomplish.
Passion Makes Everyday Human tasks Seem Menial
If you want to succeed in your 9-to-5 career, start a business. If you want to find an amazing significant other, start a business. If you want to have a fit, athletic physique, start a business. If you want to grow spiritually and learn life’s most valuable lessons, start a business.
Related: Why Cash Management Is Important For Entrepreneurial Success
I say to start a business because when you create something that uses your passion, every other aspect of your life will seem infinitely easier. That passionate energy you can pour into your business begins to trickle into other aspects of your life, making things you once thought were stressful seem like a joke.
I remember struggling during a 9-to-5 job, feeling down that this is how the rest of my life is going to go; dealing with frustrating people and corporate politics. When I finally decided I couldn’t just let my passions fall by the wayside and should see where that would take me, it woke up something within me.
All of a sudden, my 9-to-5 job felt easy, I didn’t care if I got fired, I didn’t take people lashing out at me so personally, I just became non-attached to it all. In fact, my work performance increased and I felt as if I was producing more with very little effort.
Passion Increases As Your consciousness Evolves
Passion already exists; it’s something you discover within yourself when you get in tune with your soul and purpose for your existence. Once you align with it, it’s actually hard to stop it from snowballing itself. It takes on a life of its own. I have nights where I wake up and have to write down all these great ideas because that energy source can’t just be shut off.
The more you grow spiritually and your consciousness evolves, the more your passion and creativity increase. This makes accomplishing things effortless. What took all the strength of your might and will, now, is actually a really enjoyable process that doesn’t even feel like work.
Focusing on internal growth automatically leads to outward growth.
The Battle Within: Why Your Resistance Is Right
Most of the time, when I have no willpower, I get angry with myself and I want to fight back. I want to force my mind and body to do things it’s trying so hard to not do. It’s like my body and mind are just trying to relax.
When I sat with this resistance, something came up: “Maybe this is a sign from my soul that there is a better way to do this?” It’s as if the resistance was really a compass guiding me to the right solution.
These resistances were not something I needed to push my will through; they were a sign that I was getting farther away from the truth and I had to rethink my strategy if I wanted to succeed in all aspects of my life.
I listened to that resistance and it led me to the same place every time—within. As I focused on my internal growth, it was like I unlocked hidden treasures that had been buried my whole life.
These treasures contained all the positive aspects of myself: courage, determination, creativity, love, peace, joy, open-mindedness, and ambition.
These aren’t just unique to me; they are within everybody waiting to be discovered. Once you align with these attributes, you’ll see that what were once impossible tasks now become effortless to accomplish.
Related Reading: I Have No Hobbies And It’s Actually The Key To My Fulfillment