Often, the last 10% of a journey demand 90% of the effort.
Will-power is a quiet quality. You get to learn about its presence by the impact of the results it gets. People with exceptional will-power are often amongst the quietest, shyest, least assuming and blessed with deep humility; a rare quality born of a way of life of constantly pushing the envelope of one’s vision, tolerances and capabilities.
Will-power is the heartbeat of your endeavour. The will to listen; the will to be patient; the will to persevere; the will to know how to wait; the will to be free; the will to set others free; the will to be constructive; the will to live; the will to love; the will to walk the extra mile and then some; the will to overcome seemingly impassable barriers; the will to say ‘no’; the will to care…
Look closely into any challenging project or successful company to quickly discover that they are driven by the will-power of individuals. So is your life and the process of unlocking your potential and possibilities which are vastly greater than you may realize: Are you in the driving seat?
Will-power is a quantum quality: The resonance of those tiny super-efforts that you make in insisting, persisting, persevering, pushing against resistance, trying again and again, not giving up, seeing through a commitment to yourself – the unseen impact of its many echoes is far reaching. In the words of the Roman general in the movie ‘Gladiator’: “What we do in this life echoes in eternity”.
Arguably of the enormous range of qualities that a human may develop, will-power is the most universal and influential. Nothing of significance can be achieved without it. When you say ‘no’ and keep to it, in spite of everything around you that suggests ‘yes’ or when to say ‘yes’ in spite of everything around you that says ‘ no’, these inner actions generate a powerful resonance that can move mountains – bit by bit, a tiny step followed by a tiny step.
Whenever you engage in a meaningful action, there is always a point of resistance, an unseen threshold that needs stepping through. It is the point where those with weak will-power bounce off. Do you love the experience of pushing through it or does it have its way with you? Beyond this unseen barrier lies in waiting a pristine, magnificent world – the blue oceans of the human possibility.
Will-power can be developed inside of any given moment in your life. Like the master strategist, you want to choose your battles wisely. Choose moments that challenge you with a winning opportunity – for yourself and others – and next to that put in place practices aimed at developing your will-power.
Example for the first above: You are listening to someone trying to say something important to them and you experience impatience and that impulse to react and cut across what they are saying, either by speaking or thinking it. Your mind wonders away and you are half-listening. You are bouncing off your own inner thresholds. At that point, you summon whatever needs to be summoned to really listen and be there for the process, for what it needs and you give it whatever it takes inside of that moment. You just crossed that unseen threshold into that other world and you know it by your response, which is quite different to the one that was about to escape you before you crossed that threshold.
Example for a will-power developing practice: You are tired and all you want is to throw yourself under the duvet and lose yourself in deep sleep. At that point, you keep yourself up and awake with a 10-minutes envisioning exercise, where you tell yourself what you want to achieve tomorrow – or in the next few days – and envision what a successful result will look like. Done with the right attitude, this extra effort generates an impact at conscious and semi-conscious levels – in you and in other people’s lives.
Many of the people that you will ever meet demonstrate copy-cat behavior patterns of a mass conformity herd mentality, together with its many flavours. To be one of the few who have their own mind, to be a self-led catalyst of progress, you need to consciously and persistently develop your focused will-power.
These are times of fantastic opportunities, the like of which have never existed. Will yourself to become the promise and full potential of you. The price: Many tiny super efforts, in the journey of creating new futures.
In simile with evolution, real change is achieved with many tiny steps…
David Gommé
World Copyright 2012 © David Gommé