When Our Willpower Wilts Us

Hi.

Still here in quarantineland. Still trying, like all of us, to remain positive and find daily silver linings in these uncertain times.

One thing I’ve been doing quite a bit of is reading. Reading books, scrolling social media, reflecting on my own writing from years gone by. And there is a fairly consistent theme present, now more than ever. We are all beating ourselves to emotional death with the hammer of willpower. We are waving it around like a banner we should be wearing with pride. It’s almost as pandemic as our pandemic.

I think our quest for willpower (me included) is rooted in a need for the familiar in the highly unpredictable time we are going through. I just need to be more focused, more disciplined, more in control. After all, the more in control we feel of our actions and our thoughts and our kids and our homes and what we put into our bodies and how we work out our bodies, the less impacted we feel by being forced to live a life no one wants to be living right now. While everything else is spinning in some crazy orbit we can’t see or feel, we are exerting control over what we can. Willpower.

But, in this sense, this type of willpower can be sneakily and surprisingly destructive. To be clear, I’m not talking about goal setting or self improvement or vision boards. Those are all good and help us climb toward better versions of ourselves. I’m talking about willpower that comes from a place of punishment and negative inner dialogue.

This type of willpower – let’s call it wiltpower –  is subtractive and reductive. It takes away and makes us small. Wiltpower most often means we are narrowing ourselves into smaller boxes. Eat less. Weigh less. Less frivolity. Less free time. More productivity. More rigidity. More time spent outside of ourselves and less time within ourselves – because wiltpower is about a physical, visible output that we allow ourselves to be measured by. All my effort will result in me becoming someone others look up to. Wiltpower moves us toward the aspirational quadrant of life, and if we don’t quite make it there, we wilt.

Quite simply put, wiltpower exists in the land of “should.”

Think of your own wiltpower narratives. “I should stop eating so much. Stop napping. Stop getting frustrated because my kids don’t want to homeschool.” Basically, I should stop being human, acknowledging that life right now sort of sucks. Wiltpower often goes beyond “a drive to get stuff done and feel accomplished” and morphs into something no one benefits from.

What happens when we can’t muster enough “willpower”? What do we do to ourselves? Berate, belittle, shame, and engage in all sorts of negative talk that ultimately gets us nowhere. No one goes places by feeling like they have failed. And no one is improved by the special sort of assault that we often fling at ourselves when we find we just don’t have the willpower or self control to be as perfect as we perceive other people to be. Willpower meets its mean cousin – wiltpower.

Instead of willpower that wilts us, can we all try to be willing? Sit with the word a minute.

Willing.

It’s a small word shift but an internal transformation that matters. Instead of living in the land of “should”, we live in the land of potential and possibility.

Being willing means you are open to what is happening and open to embracing it. All of it. The good, the bad, the sad and the magical. It means you will start where you are, with what you have. Wiltpower comes from the top and pushes us down, where willingness is from the ground up and lets us build. It transforms us from punisher to cheerleader.

Where wiltpower makes us smaller, willingness gives us permission to grow. We usually invoke wiltpower when we feel negatively about what we are doing (or not doing). We invoke willingness when we are intrigued by something. Think of a baby learning to walk. The entire exercise comes from willingness. Willingness to try, fall down, get up, and do it all over again hundreds of times. If learning to walk came from wiltpower, half of us would still be crawling, telling ourselves how dumb and incapable we are. Wiltpower is a no. Willingness is a gentle, encouraging yes.

Try to be intrigued by life right now. Be willing to sit still, lay down, waste time with your kids, throw away the “should book” of what you think to be true, and accept that what is best right now might be to simply go with the daily flow of your mood. We are smarter than we think, if we are just willing to listen to ourselves.

Today, stop and ask yourself if your willpower is really just wiltpower in disguise. Are you feeling too negatively toward yourself? Is your goal setting less about moving toward a better version of you and more about keeping up with the Instagram narrative of who the perfect quarantine woman is?

I, for one, am throwing wiltpower away. It doesn’t serve me, and I honestly don’t think it helps anyone. We should not shame ourselves into anything, and especially now. We need to be gentle with ourselves. Don’t see your frustration with your kids in these times as a lack of willpower. Instead, be willing to embrace your humanity and your own acting out. Our kids are acting out and so are we! Feel how empowering it is to admit that? I am willing to admit I am not perfect and that it’s okay if my kids see me as not perfect. At the end of the day, people don’t want perfection. They want authenticity.

I won’t be mad at myself or “should” myself into a shame spiral. I will be willing to be open. I will be willing to embrace small choices that add up to big shifts in how I see each day and feel each moment. I will be willing to believe that I instinctively will make the right choices for my family and for myself. I will be willing to use my willpower for good.

So go out (figuratively) and embrace the day by kicking your wiltpower to the curb and stop “shoulding” all over yourself.