Basic Motivation and Willpower

[deleted] · 2014-12-12T08:47:11+00:00

Regarding willpower: According to the researches it is indeed like a muscle and like every muscle in your body you can choose to exert its energy deliberately in a controlled, systematic way to increase it.

Motivation doesn't necessarily trigger in the morning. People work differently in that way. But ideally you want to do it in the morning after having breakfast, when your willpower tanks are full.

Breaking constant fapping is an exercise of willpower but you don't have to break it completely. In a complete turn of events, researchers suggest that even the smallest attempt to hold your unconsciousness from dictating you to do something is "working out" your willpower: Eat a cake in front of you, fap to porn, play video games etc. My take is: Learn to do mental gymnastics with your power of will but don't take it to the extreme and blame cakes and games as vices, unless they're an explicit obstacle to your long-term goals (if you want to lose weight, as an example, you must deny yourself from chocolate cakes).

Maslow's hierarchy is interesting and agree in that regard that he lists "sex" and "sexual intimacy" in different levels. The bottom one refers also refers to paying for it or even fapping. As a human animal you can suppress your urges but ideally you want to indulge in sexual pleasure as long as you don't grow complacent and say "who cares about women? Hand ftw", something that bluepillers decided (not ashamed to admit that I held that view once upon a time).

Depression is also an interesting experience: You realize that if your brain suffers from the chemical imbalances that leads to your opinion about yourself being stuck in the negative that you should seek professional help. Honestly, I can't "blame" a depressed person for feeling down all the time or has sudden out of the blue mood swings. I would advice either professional help or professional help. That is, if your depressive state of mind comes from chemical imbalance in your brain and it's not just something that came up a year or 2 ago. My case of depression lasted 4 years but after reading books, realizing how the brain works and how I work I pulled myself together. But that's something people who were born with deficiencies in their brain that leads them to depressive tendencies simply cannot do. I can't tell if you belong in group A or B but you can.

My opinions around willpower came from a book called "the willpower instinct". Look it up.

Squeezymypenisy · 2014-12-12T09:58:32+00:00

At the end of the day, only you can make the change. You decide what is good for you and how you want to live your life. Some stuff may require outside help (like serious depression, anxiety, or other illness), but otherwise its all on you.

oldredder · 2014-12-13T04:50:43+00:00

hope that works for someone... those things do the opposite to me. My reserve tanks are at full at night, empty in the morning.

My motivation for useful things is severely interrupted if my sex drive isn't fed too. If I go a week without sex/masturbation I will literally stop doing everything else but eat. If I keep it up a long time (went 90 days max) I will lose all motivation for sex at a reflex, physical level.

My take on will-power is to treat it like a learned reflex. Use it. Try it. Repeat it. Reduce the resistance by repeating use of it. Have a real goal: just pushing yourself into a habit without a real goal is pointless. Your mind will know this and stop you. Fear: remove any fear from the goal. Good goals are often hard goals, hard goals often require facing fear & when that fear stops you, you might just think that's lack of motivation. Sort of: it's more like 2 opposing motivating forces, 1 motivation to a goal, 1 motivation away from something labeled as danger by the mind, and if either the goal or the fear is irrational you need to figure out which one it is and remove it.

After that... the rest should become clear.

ol_durrrty · 2014-12-24T02:14:43+00:00

I agree. Will power is like a muscle. The beautiful thing about trp is it opens our eyes and gives us a mission to pursue. However the equal problem is we try to take on too much at once. When I started I jumped into trying to learn 5 different things and over stacking my schedule. My willpower flagged and I started procrastinating. A lot of people don't realize that sometimes you have to start with one thing at a time and gradually build your willpower muscle up. It's taken me a while and now willpower is not so much an issue. Part of it is understanding yourself when you have high motivation and effortless willpower and using it to your advantage.

Side topic: Talking story with some friends and we came across the idea of purpose and passion in pursuing our career and life goals.

Purpose: is defined by whatever you decide your mission to be and your efforts to pursue it.

Passion: The sacrifices you're willing to make for your goals and your love for the pursuit of it.

We decided to add this in to complete our trifecta: Discipline. Discipline is what will make us work even when your willpower is flagging, when we've lost our passion and derailed from our purpose.

Title	Basic Motivation and Willpower
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	8
Comments	4
Date	December 12, 2014 4:46 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/2p1sxv/basic_motivation_and_willpower/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/basic-motivation-and-willpower.192991 https://theredarchive.com/post/192991

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