The Empowering Nature of Willpower

The Empowering Nature Of Willpower

Lessons spurred by Cormac McCarthy & Jocko Willink  

"But more than one of his friends describes McCarthy as a "chameleon, able to adjust easily to any surroundings and company because he seems so secure in what he will and will not do." 

I came across this description of Cormac McCarthy in a 1992 article in New York Times by Richard B. Woodward. The article precedes McCarthy's masterful elegiac Western, All The Pretty Horses.

The novel was his first widely celebrated success and kicked off his Border Trilogy, which to my mind, is one of the greatest trilogies in fiction.

The quote shook me.

This depiction of the elusive author speaks to the power of self-awareness and the comfort of self-identity.

 It says much of the equanimity born of a relationship of trust with oneself brought about by discipline.

Ex-Marine turned motivation speaker Jocko Willink's counterintuitive credo,

 "DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM" flashed associatively to mind. 

The pithy mantra insists that we reflect on what we consider liberating. 

 Is "freedom" unfettered hedonic bliss, or is it restraint and the personal agency inferred by self-control?

Uncertainty begets anxiety, a mistrust of your competence in the face of spontaneity's challenges.

Anxiety is a panicked preoccupation with the alarming gravity of the event horizon of potential. 

 If you can rely on your predictability to mitigate the future's myriad unknowns, you are less likely to be fidgeting in the uncertainty.

Willpower is empowering. 

As my partner, the gifted poet and yogi, Sabrina Perrino reminded me: willpower is the disciplinary bridge between our imagined aspirations and their actualized results brought into reality across the fraught, temporal chasm of process.

We establish a dependable reputation with ourselves by assuring we make good on the personal promises we make. 

If we set goals and intentions and see them through, the resultant self-perception is deeply meaningful.

To frame this, cartoonist Fran Meneses tweeted a precious cartoon about this wonderful concept of imagining your present and future selves as different people.

 (This article by Sarah F. Roach has some practical advice on the matter of taking care of your future self, including a concept called "commitment devices".)  

Sure there's plenty of inspiration, fun and adventure found in following our impulses and adapting quickly, but to know ourselves ONLY as windblown by our whim's gusts is to fail to know ourself as a person capable of having our hands at the wheel of consciousness.

As someone with ADHD, I can testify that having no sense of focused will is to feel hijacked by my own mind and the interruptive allure of random circumstance.

At worst, it feels like I'm not in the driver seat. It's as if I'm living in a dream with no lucid command and can't rely on my own intuitions. 

To be willing to do whatever you want whenever you want is freeing sense of fluidity.

To be (or feel you are) unable to be tenacious is to have neither a feeling of personal agency nor your own voice to narrate and govern your own experience.

To know you will always act in accordance with long term goals and personal morals and ambitions is to have concrete will. 

This foundation assures us that we aren't likely to do something we regret.

It also asserts we aren't likely to miss out on an activity we preferred to participate in because we were distracted by something less relevant to our ideals and ambitions.

Tenacity is the evidence-based practice of learning that you can grant yourself wishes.

Even fulfilling the smallest goals is a good way to uplift yourself and establish this relationship of reliability with yourself.

Cormac McCarthy reminded me of the power of knowing and trusting myself and Jocko Willink insisted on the unglamorous but ultimately fortifying power of self-direction.

These states of being and values may actually be a binary star, related and interwoven virtues.

Within a week of working on this blog, the brilliant vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond, shared this lovely video on her substack.  

The quirky and insightful clip begins with the quote "Genius is overrated, settle for discipline."  which I take to advise that we artists should invest in the reliable, rote merits of progress via persistence over the elusive, deified mentality around artmaking as exclusionary and mystical. 

Get in the workshop and start crafting!

I hope this was helpful, or at least interesting.  Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.  

What do you do to keep yourself accountable, tenacious and aligned with your long-term goals?

-Bruce AllOne