About Willpower

 I've always thought I had no willpower. I was so overweight and I was fighting Binge Eating and I felt like I couldn't do anything right. Willpower was not enough to lose weight and it was not enough to stop the binges. I had given up on myself and my willpower.

And then I read more information about willpower and realized I am actually a person with immense amounts of willpower. The thing I didn't know before is that -willpower gets used up- throughout the day. So if you use a lot of willpower for something in the beginning of the day you will have less during the rest of the day.

But then I realized that I had been using a whole lot of willpower all my life, and that a lot of the stuff I deal with every day costs enormous amounts of willpower. I have CFS and Fibro so I'm always tired and in pain, and that is a huge willpower claimer. Then I deal with chronic lower level depression (Dysthymia) which also requires a lot of willpower to just get out of bed in the morning. I have mental health issues that make me very scared to take risks and react to loud noises or things outside of me (PTSD and axiety) so that takes huge amounts of willpower. And despite that I managed to get myself through school, get two AS degrees, find a job I enjoy with those degrees, deal with my husband who needs a whole lot of caregiving, and more. And I looked at all those things and I realized the image I always had of me having no willpower is so very very wrong!!!

I now try to use as little willpower as possible during the day. I still need to fight urges, pain and fatigue, but I'm learning in Dialectical Behavioral therapy how to make room for those negative emotions without fighting them, and then it takes less energy to have those emotions, if you're not struggling constantly because you don't want them. I will 'save up' willpower by doing things like not going right by the box of donuts if I know they're there but take a different route so I don't see them. I save willpower by making it easier to grab the healthy food than get unhealthy food so the temptation is less and it costs me less willpower.

I still have a long, long way to go with weight loss and many other things I want to achieve, but seeing myself as a person with willpower makes a whole lot of difference! 

Written on Thu Jan 8, 2015