What Does It Mean To Have An Iron Will?

The ideal would be never to have to use willpower and always swim in the direction of the current. Under no circumstances is it worth following what for many is the law of life: filling agendas with commitments and responsibilities that put a strain on willpower. Challenging willpower can generate satisfaction, but it takes too much effort.

Perhaps the first step to having an iron will is precisely to not abuse it. In other words, we don’t have to spend the day doing a thousand different things, but make sure that the activities we do don’t continually challenge us by pushing ourselves to the limit. This too is a sign of intelligence.

Will and habit

Willpower turns out to be useless when you create an inertia, a routine. In physics, the term “inertia” refers to the movement of an object on which the resultant of the forces is equal to zero. Let’s imagine a marble that rotates on a surface without friction or obstacles: it will never stop or, in any case, we would have a harder time stopping it.

Speaking of people, inertia has to do with habit. For example, the habit of getting up in the morning. If we always choose the same time to get out of bed, in the end the will we need to get up will be less. In a sense, it is about taming or adapting our behavior with a discipline, so that the final result depends less and less on the will and more and more on the inertia that perpetuates a movement in our favor.

The motivation: the soul of the will

On the other hand, if there is a very welcome help it is that of motivation. For example, if we return a book to the library late, we will be fined a few days. In other words, in case of delay, when we return the book, we cannot immediately pick up more. Once the loan has expired, we cannot go to the library as soon as possible because our motivation to go there, that is to immediately take other books, is lacking.

Yes, immediately, because the cost of not being able to take them for two, three or four days is perceived as lower than that of going to the library and not being able to take other books right away. Some users, therefore, once the return day has passed, postpone the commitment to return the books to when the library requests it, instead of going there spontaneously.

The relationship between will and motivation can also be understood in another sense. For example, when we set a medium- or long-term goal, reaching intermediate goals will take away the weight of the will required by the tasks we least like. Let’s imagine that you have decided to lose 10 kg, this means improving nutrition and increasing daily physical activity. If it seems to us that these measures are working, then it is likely that the effort we will have to make to maintain them will be less.

Willpower, self-efficacy and goal setting

Willpower also depends on how we define our goals. They must be precise, divisible, easily assessable and controllable, defined, stable to strengthen our willpower. In this sense, uncertainty is one of the factors that negatively affects willpower because it eliminates its support base.

Will is sensitive to self-efficacy. This concept has to do with the feeling or intuition of being effective while carrying out a task. For example, an athlete friend told us that in the last period he does nothing but get hurt and that he had to cancel several workouts due to this problem.

If before the workouts were tiring, now from a mental point of view they are much more so. Our friend believes that he cannot complete them and has even canceled many of them before even starting them.

In this case, it is the lack of a sense of self-efficacy that has led to an increase in the demand for will. The idea of ​​getting up early, going to the athletics field, warming up, starting the workout and then stopping it and coming home with that feeling requires more willpower from our friend.

Will and social support

Finally, the will can also benefit greatly from social support. For example, sharing our intention to quit smoking with others can lead these people to help us in times of weakness. To our will we will have to add the motivation that everyone has, that is to be consistent between what we say and what we do.

In this sense, social support is a double-edged sword. If it is not intelligent and constantly reminds us of our mistakes or anticipates them, increasing our level of anxiety, it can force our will even more. When we share a goal with our friends, then, we could also tell them how we would like them to help us.

As you have seen, a more or less strong will is important, but there are often several factors that lighten the work. Any test of will requires great effort, an investment of our inner strength that we should use wisely because it is limited.