Will power is so overrated.

When  I need to change something, I don’t go looking for some (as yet undiscovered)  storehouse of will power. That’s just wheel-spinning, time-wasting.  Most days I can’t even spell will power.  Instead, I ask myself, how badly do you want this?  I  have  to want to want to before I begin.

After years of trying to harness will power, I find I don’t stick to positive change just because  I should.   Pitiful – considering there’s so much room here for improvement.

I think about change and think about it, talk about it and talk about it, and still I know that until there is desire, no amount of will power will help.  I only accomplish change when the deep-down want creeps in and sticks around for a while.

I once quit smoking for a boyfriend.  That didn’t last.  Went to the gym to impress someone there with my firm body. Hah.  My toned muscles lasted about a minute after he left the class.  (Obviously this behavior was when I was very young and impressionable.) 

Then one day, years later, I really wanted to be a non-smoker, so I stopped.  It was harder without a cheering section, but I wanted to be a person who didn’t buy cigarettes, didn’t carry them around, didn’t bum them from other people.  And that worked.  I’m nicotine-free about twenty years and counting.

Now to the body image thing.  I am looking in the mirror and seeing a whole bunch of stuff that needs changing.  I’ve made changes before, but when the urge left, so did the positive results. This time I want change to last.  So I ask myself, are you really ready?  Do you really want to?  Some days, I don’t even want to want to. But I can feel it in the air – that day is getting closer – the day when I will do it. 

With a history of  both extremely NON-successful habit changes and a few major successful changes (quitting smoking) I know I won’t even try until there is a stirring of desire.  It’s desire and not will power that precedes action in my case. 

So here are my three steps.  Boy how I wish I could claim something more logical, more mature, more focused.  Nope.  That would be the definition of will power.  Instead, here’s what works for me.

Step One:  I have to want to want to.

Step Two:  Then I move to actually wanting  to.

Step Three:  Begin!

Or not.  The or not factor is always the variable.

Ó Anita Garner 2009