In our last email, we discussed the importance of consciously choosing your actions to develop your willpower and attain freedom.
This seemingly small practice compels you to take responsibility and strengthens your will.
Your will isn’t built through exercises alone. While exercises can raise awareness of certain aspects, genuine progress happens in your everyday life.
Yes, the true work is done during those boring, mundane tasks we all have to do. If you ever feel like your life lacks excitement or is too repetitive, that’s fine. You don’t need to have a busy life to develop your Will.
Whatever you routinely do, that shall be your practice.
Your Will practice could be as simple as brushing your teeth or vacuuming your apartment.
How can that be a Will practice?
By consciously deciding to do it and executing it with awareness.
Let’s consider a typical, mundane scenario: vacuuming your apartment.
Perhaps before starting, you feel compelled to do it because the place is already quite dirty, and you dislike living in such conditions. Notice how pain is forcing you to act. It’s not a conscious decision but an impulse to avoid the discomfort of a messy home.
Or maybe it’s Saturday morning, and vacuuming is just part of your routine. So it’s an automatic mindless action you do while listening to a podcast.
Or perhaps your partner asked you to do it, and to avoid conflict, you comply. Once again, it’s pain and discomfort pushing you into action.
None of these actions are truly willed or consciously decided. They’re driven by internal impulses, conflict, and mindless habits.
But… could it be any different? Certainly, you still need to do it or at the very least hire someone to do it – but, for the sake of example, let’s assume you can’t and it must be you.
Instead, notice that impulse in your body, notice how it’s forcing your action. And notice the internal conflict among different parts of yourself. Can you become aware of the internal representation of those different aspects of yourself? How are they manifested in your body and energy?
Only when you truly acknowledge them, when you can feel fully the different impulses – become aware – and let them take their course, then can they be finally integrated inside of you and you can take a conscious, decisive, and willful action free of their emotional charge.
Otherwise, you will simply be driven by a painful impulse, a mindless habit, or a desire.
The main challenge is avoiding turning this into a mental debate or rationalization. There’s no benefit in deluding yourself. That’s why it’s crucial to connect all of this with your body and energy. Otherwise, it’s too easy to deceive yourself.
This is the work that we do in the course:
>>> Will Mastery
