Do You Have the Willpower to Rise to the Top?

Exercising your willpower is all about maximizing your true potential. It is about giving all your undertakings your best shot because everything you do represents you. It is about dodging the daily worry, fear, instigators, and invaders (internal or external) that threaten to detour you off the path to your destination. Most of all, it is about shifting out of park and switching on your personal power. It is about paying the price of a bus ride, because the endless stretch of highway on the other side is well worth the trip!

Willpower! The word is so potent that it is worthy of explanation. According to Webster’s New Dictionary and Thesaurus, will is the "attitude, choice, command, decision, desire, determination, prerogative, resolution, resolve, wish"; whereas power is the "ability to do anything; capacity for producing an effect."

The two words together, will and power, indicate an applied attitude, productive choice, the ability to do anything at your command. There is nothing mysterious, magical, remote, or exclusive about willpower. It is simply the capacity we each have, every day, to make the most of our innate and developed talents in achieving our desires. It is a loud knock at the door of your being that shouts, "One more round!"

The human experience consists of one event after another and another and just one more; Therefore, being energized and willing to face the next project, or difficulty is essential. You can be assured that the next test or opportunity is just a few steps behind. Stand ready with a supply of willpower and an ongoing commitment to make a solid effort. Remember the words of Robert Frost, "The best way out is always through."

We all have the responsibility to pay attention to the messages we send ourselves.Sometimes, without being conscious of it, we sabotage our efforts through negative self-talk. If you are feeling paralyzed, maybe you are being held hostage by self-talk that says, "If ever I have a chance to..." which becomes dwarfed by a long list of "if only’s."

Or maybe you are stuck in a rut, frozen by convincing self-talk that says, "Dare not take a chance or you might make a mistake." The person who has never made a mistake is a person who has never achieved very much. There is no glory in not trying. Do not allow your self-talk worry you into not taking the next step; instead, use positive self-talk. Take the if off the end of the phrase "I will if," and you have "I will."

Let us stop for a moment and look at worry because this distress signal is one that most often interferes in your progress. Experts who have studied worry have found that more than 90 percent of our worries never materialize. Looked at another way, this means our fears have only 10 percent chance of happening. (Actually, our worst fears take place even less often than that.)

Sometimes the worries that are festering in our minds concern things that are completely out of our control, which means they are not worth the worry.

There is only one way to get from Point A to Point B: Go there! Sometimes it takes considerable willpower to do it. But it will not happen otherwise.