Willpower Condensed: Master Self-Discipline to Do Your True Will

by Dominic Reichl

To do your True Will, you must overpower your impulsive will, control your desires, and dismantle bullshit excuses.

But without getting at least somewhat emotional, you won’t ever do shit about anything. Therefore, willpower must team up with emotions to be effective.

Willpower cannot rely on emotions that make you choose instant gratification! Rather, it must rely on an emotion that drives ambition, productivity, and performance—a motivational emotion. That emotion is pride, the feeling of greatness.

Evolutionarily speaking, the emotion of pride evolved to elevate and communicate one’s social status.[11] This makes self-discipline an inherently social endeavor. If people understood that nothing they do is done absolutely for themselves, but always relative to a social group, real or imagined, they could use their true pride much more effectively to fuel their willpower.

Willpower, as you have learned, is fueled by pride. What elicits pride? Achievement. And what is achievement? A result of having successfully exerted willpower.