Are you willing to change? Are you willing to give up on your behavioral patterns that don’t serve you any more? Are you willing to fight that illness that has altered your life? Are you willing to rise from failure?
We are faced with innumerable challenges and obstacles on a day-to-day basis, that is what life is about, but the life-changing factor between thinking and doing is the will to take that extra step, go the extra mile to live the life you desire.
Let’s take an example – there is a sick person who is strong-headed. He or she wants to get better soon and start living his normal life. He has a powerful will to get better, so the mind and the body work towards improving his health, and he will get better soon.
Now there is another person who is unwell, his mind is weak, and the illness gets the better of him, he keeps saying, “I am unwell, I am not feeling good.” He lacks the will to move on in his life, and so he takes longer to get better. It’s based on the principle of energy flows where attention goes.
Importance of Will
“In the tiny child we find, to begin with, nothing but expressions of the will; he responds to whatever happens to him with a movement of his will, with a stamping of his limbs, with laughing, cooing or screaming. The will is the first thing that faces us in the tiny child as his waking life.
But the will is also revealed in the tiny child in quite another form. It is revealed in its most wonderful manifestation as an active, creative power, a formative, shaping force. The will-working both as a divine and natural power-gives form to the organism.” ~ Caroline Von Heydebrand from a article published in the Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 7, 1932
Will is a very important quality to nurture and engage. Let me give you another example – babies have a very strong will, to move their legs, hands, to turn on their stomach, to crawl, to stand, and then finally to walk – it is a pure example of will. To move from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane is a big task for these small beings, if they didn’t have the will, it wouldn’t be possible for them to take this mammoth task.
Even for adults, life circumstances, situations affect our will. A personal trauma or a loss would pull us down. It becomes a test of our will to rise up from that situation.
Shaolin monks and Himalayan yogis brave extreme conditions and temperatures with equanimity for a single reason: to strengthen their willpower.
Spiritual exercise to strengthen the will
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I personally have done this exercise and found a difference in my willpower. It had improved tremendously, and I also gained mental clarity. This article has inspired me to do the exercise again. It may seem easy to do the exercise, but it is not so easy to maintain for a period of four weeks, because in the second or third week you might feel bored to do it, or become complacent, you have to generate that enthusiasm in yourself to complete the exercise. This just makes it more effective.
Give it a short, do this exercise for a month and feel the difference.
How we limit our own willpower
Here’s an interesting video that talks about how we put ourselves into boxes that limit our own capabilities, knowing or unknowingly. Once we break free from the box we can achieve anything we desire with will and focus claims Marie Van den Broeck
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The Ties That Bind