Willpower high – that’s what most of us go through in the first week of the new year. After all, where there is a will, there is a way!
The problem is when the time comes to choose the right way; the will goes missing 🙂
Non-stop use of willpower can lead to more stress:
Relying solely on willpower to help you achieve your goals can give your mental and physical system a load of stress. Imagine using willpower every single day to wake up early, using will power for eating healthy, using will power for proactively communicating with team & boss, using willpower to exercise and using willpower to make time for your own self and using willpower to go to bed on time. Wake up the next day and repeat.
Did this not sound stressful? It did right. That’s what using willpower in every single activity does to us–it stresses us out. The result is we give up in a few days and revert to the old ways, those ways which we are trying to change, those ways which we know are not helping us, those ways which are frustrating us.
If only there was a way where we could change the old ways without stressing us out.
There is… Let’s explore it, shall we?
Strategy: Building systematic habits.
Strategizing requires you to set aside some time and think about your end goal and ways to achieve it. It’s about designing a strategy that incorporates your strengths and weaknesses and then bringing it into action on a regular basis.
When you strategize, you are fuelling yourself with belief. Once you believe in what you are doing, you need to rely little on willpower constanty. Yes, an odd day here and there may call for your willpower but then it will not stress you and instead encourage you.
For example, don’t use your willpower daily to wake up early, build a strategy – eat light at night, get into bed earlier than usual, stay away from blue light – whatever works for you and you know what works for you. Find your strategy and action it. If you use all your willpower in waking up early, very little is going to remain to get other things done. Building effective habits via an efficient strategy will energise you.
Okay, okay I hear you, you still need to have a will to pursue your strategy but then I claim if you believe in your strategy, the willingness to action it comes easily. You don’t have to use willpower. You can conserve your energy to do more meaningful things.
One crucial element for any strategy to work: If you want it, you don’t have to will it!
One crucial element for any strategy to work is to want the thing you are strategizing for.
If you don’t want to achieve the goal, no strategy or willpower will help you. Not wanting your goal is an open invitation to unlimited excuses and procrastination.
If you are unsure about how to do this, reach out to me – it’s my full-time job to help you strategize to achieve your goals with an actionable strategy.