WILLPOWER QUOTES II
quotations about willpower
Bad habits are hard to break -- and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once. The human pre-frontal cortex is like a muscle. It has to be trained. If you joined a local gym, you would never dream of starting out lifting a 300-pound barbell on your first session. You'd start with a 2-pound weight for a 2-minute session, working up slowly to heavier weights and longer periods of endurance. Trying to keep a New Year's resolution to quit smoking or lose a bunch of weight, is expecting your pre-frontal cortex to pick up the equivalent of a 300-pound barbell on the first attempt -- and to keep doing it for hours on end. It's not possible.
MARY HUNT
"Everyday Cheapskate: Sticking to New Year's resolution requires baby steps", Twin Cities Pioneer Press, January 23, 2016
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
There is only one will -- the Universal Will. In order to make anything happen on this plane, one must align one's self with the Universal Spirit.
DOUGLAS DAVIS
"Willpower", beliefnet, March 17, 2017
Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
A willing heart adds feather to the heel,
And makes the clown a winged Mercury.
JOANNA BAILLIE
De Montfort
For I am--or I was--one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all--a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named--but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes."
KELLY MCGONIGAL
The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
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
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
Willpower is another important ingredient in self-control. Sticking to one's plan is hard work. Without the willpower to bring about changes, the best laid plans and all the monitoring in the world will not be good enough.
SHAHRAM HESHMAT
Eating Behavior and Obesity
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
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Hermann und Dorothea
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
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
letter, 1791
If, like me, you made resolutions, they're probably mostly broken by now. Trouble is, the ones we make are hard to keep. I know only too well the only way of achieving my resolve to lose 30 pounds of ugly fat is to cut off my head. Dieting won't do it. No willpower is the problem. Maybe we should give ourselves a break and go for easier resolutions, like abstaining from all green vegetables, and only choking down unhealthy, fat-making, fodder.
PATRICK O'GARA
"The Donald, The Hillary, and resolutions", The Blade, January 11, 2016
The higher life begins for us ... when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
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
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
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
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