Practical Myths of WillpowerOf course the most common concept of willpower is that it is a force with which we get difficult things done. We use the term to refer to a certain strength of will which we interpret as self control. If a person has good willpower, we say, he can control himself and what he does. The major problem here is that willpower is posited as a generalized quality of mind that ranges from zero or none to some kind of super human self control. If it were that, then one's willpower would be applicable across every area of one's life. It would be like muscle. If you can lift 10 pounds of wood, you can also lift 10 pounds of steel or dirt or whatever.

So if a person had a given amount of willpower she would find it just as easy or difficult to quit smoking (or resist starting) as it would be to lose weight (or never gain it) or avoid bad habits like chewing nails or hitting her husband, and so on. Everything would be equally easy or difficult, depending upon the amount of willpower in that person's possession. She would be able to use that same willpower to never yield to pressure from friends to do something she did not want to do. She would have an equal amount of control across all areas, unvarying. Does this sound like anyone you know? Probably only in the negative; we all know at least one person who does not seem to have the slightest shred of willpower about anything. But the absence of anything that looks like willpower in one person is not evidence for its existence in others.

More often we hear about willpower from someone who has, say, quit smoking without much effort. "I just quit," he says. "Just used a little willpower and didn't smoke any more."

What he fails to mention is that all that so-called willpower of which he is so proud was nowhere to be found when it came to eating. He gained a ton of weight when he quit smoking and now he cannot get rid of it. Where is all that willpower? If it really were willpower he used to quit smoking, it would also be available to control his eating behavior and anything else he consciously wanted to achieve.

So willpower is a mythical conception. It is a quality of mind or personality that just does not exist. It is a phantasm. It is a cruel hoax because it makes those of us who don't seem to have it feel inadequate. Yet adequacy and inadequacy have nothing to do with it.

Bicameral Resonance as WillpowerOn the other hand we do need a concept to explain those times when we struggle and win, times when it is not easy for us to do something but we do it anyway. For this it is better to go back to the relatively ancient concept of "will." This is the original term from which the contaminated term "willpower" came.

Let's take a gander at the formal statement of the position I advocate, then I will elaborate on it. I think you will find it very useful.

Theorem: "Will" is bicameral resonance.

"Bicameral" simply means there are two governing parts of the mind. In other words, the consciouspart and the unconscious, or subconscious, part. Mindis implicitly understood here. We want to keep the statement of the theorem as simple as possible so I am not going to launch into a semantic investigation of what we mean by "mind."

"Resonance" is a much richer concept than mere agreement, but that is close to its meaning. We would not be far off to say "bicameral agreement," but that would be a gross over-simplification of how the two parts of the mind work together. As an analogy, imagine yourself pushing a child in a playground swing. Your actions must be in concert with the movements of the swing. Otherwise everything gets messed up. If your efforts are not finely coordinated to place your hands on the child at just the right moment and push with just the right amount of force, it does not work. When you are doing it right you could say that you and the swing+child are resonating together.

To tap into more of the richness of the concept of resonance, and to go further into the complexities of how the two parts of the mind work together, think of two musical instruments, say a horn and a guitar. If a note is played on the horn it will make the guitar strings vibrate the same note and some of its harmonics. That is resonance. The closer the horn's note is to the "key" of the string, the stronger the vibration.

Now consider two related qualities of resonance, consonanceand dissonance.

Consonance is a good thing. It sounds good when two notes that are consonant are played simultaneously, and in the same way it is easy for us to do something when there is consonance between the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind. The more consonant they are, the easier it is.

Dissonance is not such a good thing. Two notes that don't go together jangle our nerves; they are not harmonious. Same goes for ideas. If there is conscious-subconscious dissonance about something, it is the subconscious "note" that will come through. In other words, without conscious-subconscious agreement, the only thing that will happen will be what the subconscious wants.

What this theorem says, then, is that will is the product of agreement about a particular idea between the subconscious and conscious parts of the mind. Everything we do, we do with agreement from the subconscious mind. To suggest that we will consciously override the subconscious is ridiculous. The subconscious mind is far and away the dominant force and must be reckoned with for any achievement to occur. Conversely, without subconscious concurrence, you will not be able to do it. Not for very long, anyway.

This position has immense ramifications at every level of human study. It challenges conventional wisdom which is seemingly set in stone. It attracts a lot of controversy.

But evidence for the validity of the theorem resides in every one of us. None of us beyond the age of puberty considers ourselves perfect. We all do things we wish we did not do, and don't do things we wish we would. Our unfulfilled wishes and desires are clearly conscious. What we really do tells us our subconscious position on things.

Self hypnosis and suggestion are the way we go about bringing the subconscious mind into agreement with our conscious plans. It is the way we tune our intrapsychic or bicameral resonance.

To achieve your ends it is in fact essential that you cease thinking in adversarial terms and move toward the concept of harmony, coordination and resonance.