How to Increase Willpower Through Practice

Increase willpower and increase your ability to be powerful in life. The will shows up as follows:

One’s ability to keep focused on a chosen phenomena for extended periods of time. A lack of will is experienced as an inability to stay riveted to your intended subject, as things overwhelm and consume your consciousness. When the will is strong, your object of focus remains with you for longer, and with fewer disruptions.
Ones ability to sacrifice immediate payoff for longer term achievements. When the will is strong one has the power to forgo the temptation of the easy path for the sake of more worthwhile pursuits
One’s ability to persist onward despite the presence of suffering.

The way we live our lives and the results we achieve are determined in large part by factor.

We can think of it as the ability to maintain and follow through on intentions despite interference and challenge.

We can also think of it as the ability to do and not do things.

Fortunately for us, we can cultivate will and extend its capacity.

The following are suggestions for practices that can help you increase willpower. By confronting the apparent limit of your will, and pushing yourself slightly beyond it, you begin to adapt to higher levels of power. Your will grows like a muscle.

The suggested practices all exist to serve a function other than specifically training the will, but are perfect for the job as they present a sufficient degree and diversity of challenge to the individual. As the practice begins to challenge you, know that this is where you begin to grow.

Practices

Meditation- When sitting for extended periods of time, you body and mind inevitably desire to be elsewhere. The mind wants to wander, and the body wants to move. When we experience this and persist anyway, we are training our will and gaining power over ourselves.
Bonus: Try this 1-hour strong determination meditation

Cold Showers- Cold showers are shocking and slightly horrible. Each time you do this you are learning to push your limits, commit, undergo uncomfortable experiences. All for the sake of wellbeing.
Bonus: Learn the benefits of cold showers

No fap- Aka no masturbation. Resisting sexual impulse is a powerful training of the will. The unused energy will feed back into the will power.
Bonus: Benefits of no fap explained energetically

Fasting- By not giving in to your sense of hunger you are becoming comfortable with unresolved desire. Desiring something (food) often means we divert energy into obtaining it, rather than staying with the dictates of the will. When we desire something but do not act on the desire, we are getting free of its influence.
Bonus: Important tips for fasting correctly.

Exercise- exercise gives us an opportunity to push our limits.
Bonus: Run a PR mile time 🙂

Stretching- stretching is a powerful practice, maintaining it will train you ability to prolong.
Bonus: Yoga is life-changing. Check out this teacher with tons of free classes.

Mastering something- overcoming the challenges involved with mastery.
Bonus: Read Mastery by Robert Greene.

Grow. Strengthen. Improve.

You can transform your ability to create, be, and do what you actually want to do.

This type of work is required if you wish to become a truly autonomous and fully actualized person. Higher levels of development and power do not come of themselves, they require deliberate efforts at cultivation.

By engaging practices that increase willpower, you are creating the potential for power. This power comes from your ability to do things (duh) and not do things. You are also more likely to become free, which can also be defined as the ability to do and not do. (link to freedom v.s power).

This work empowers your contemplative and other ‘spiritual’ pursuits as well as your endeavors in ‘life’.