The concept of "willpower" pits the conscious mind against the subconscious mind. In any conflict the subconscious will always triumph, therefore the concept of willpower is largely meaningless. Any notion of overcoming subconscious resistance with conscious will is a myth. Bicameral resonance is a much more accurate and useful concept.

The notion of "willpower" has caused a lot of anguish in modern times.

We would all like to think that our conscious will is the master of our destiny but it takes only a brief introduction to the facts of life to realize that the truth is otherwise. No one who has ever eaten something they had already made up their mind ("willed") they would not eat—said something they had made up their mind not to say—smoked again after quitting for the umpteenth time—or experienced any of the thousands of other failures of will could possibly say they are in total, conscious control of their lives. Not seriously.

Even if we put common experience aside, the findings from modern genetics and psychology research leave no doubt that it is time to trash this outmoded concept. It should be consigned to the semantic rubbish heap along with concepts like a flat earth, spiritual possession, ghosts, and the Easter Bunny. None of these things, including willpower, exists. (Well, okay, the Easter Bunny is a possible exception.)

Let's think about what we generally mean by the term "willpower." First of all, for such a commonly used word (compound term) it is hard to find in most English dictionaries. When you do find it in the big ones, like the unabridged Webster's, what you usually see is, "see will." Then if you actually do look up willyou are really in for it! Uses and meanings vary all over the map and if you thought you knew what the word meant before you looked it up, you might change your mind. If you really want to bury yourself in semantic esoterica, look up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary where you will find page after page devoted to "will".

None of which will help you actually develop anything resembling better willpower. If you are really tenacious you might head for the psychology literature. And if you thought the dictionaries were confusing, you ain't seen nothin' yet. You would discover that different schools of psychology have different notions of what willis, and that for the most part none of them agree with one another. If you were really astute in your reading you would probably come to the conclusion that much of psychology doesn't really have a clue about what willreally is.

The truth is, we could spend a lot of boring time and space trying to grapple with the concept of "will" with all its complexities and perplexities. But that would not move us forward on the practical side of things, and that is where we want to be.

However, having said that, I hasten to add that just a teensy bit of theory is helpful. You need at least some basic knowledge about how your subconscious mind works relative to this concept we are calling "willpower." Otherwise you might end up willingyourself to do something your subconscious is unwilling to do and you will fail.

The Cogito and Willpower

Just to put this into a brief historical perspective, the ancient Greeks, especially Socrates (circa 500 BC, give or take), had something to say about "will." (Didn't they have something to say about everything?) But as far as I can ascertain, they stuck pretty much to the concept of willful intentwithout getting into the thornier issues of what we now think of as will power. Almost a millennium later St. Augustine (Catholic guy, 354-430 AD) sort of warmed up to the concept of inner conflict with the will. But it was René Descartes (1596-1650) who really got the ball rolling with his Cogito, ergo sum("I think, therefore I am").

It is Descartes who generally gets the blame/credit for starting the whole idea of the separation of mind and body. What Descartes really did was convert what had until then been a dichotomy—body and soul—into a trichotomy of soul, bodyand mind. That had immense appeal to the 17th century Western intellect because of the Christian trichotomy of Father, Sonand Holy Ghost. But it led to a division within the concept of self that has been troublesome ever since.

One of the troubles was the eventual development of the concept, willpower. What had been a schism between body and soul ("The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," for example) became a somewhat confused conflict between body and mind. That in itself was unacceptable to 19th and 20th century scientific thinking but attempts to clarify concepts like will, body, and mind(and get rid of soul) served only to make an even bigger muddle of it all.

When we try to apply this concept to practical situations it becomes obvious just how muddled is our ordinary concept of willpower. A good one to start with is weight control because approximately 70 percent of the American population is overweight. Most people who are overweight know they weigh too much—or, more accurately, there is too much fat on their bodies—and they know the solution to their problem would be to simply eat less and exercise more. So why don't they do that?

Why is there such a conflict, a fight between a conviction to do (or not do) something and the compulsion that dooms the conviction to failure? Let's distill this down to a concrete situation and let donuts stand in for whatever is a person's weakness. Imagine that just yesterday John bought a dozen donuts and ate every one of them. He was so disgusted with himself he pledged never again to eat donuts. Yet someone left a donut on the table today and he is wrestling with himself over whether or not to eat it. Part of him wants the donut, another part of him wants not to eat it. Which is which? Whence comes the desire? The resistance?

The usual argument is that his body wants the donut and his mind wants to resist it. (Roll over, Descartes!) But if we have separated mind from body, how does the body "want" anything? Is it the kind of need that comes from, say, addictions? If so, how do we know what the body needs? All knowledge is mental, right? So how did we come up with something mental from the non-mental body? As you can see we are already having trouble with the distinction between mind and body. Some have tried to overcome this difficulty by saying that we think with our bodies. That is nonsense. We don't think with our bodies, we think with our minds.

So there are two "thinkings" going on here: One for the donut, one against the donut. And if we posit both ideas, these conflicting ideas, as residing in the same part of the same mind, then we destroy all semblance of mental stability. Thus we need either two minds or two distinct divisions within the same mind. By this argument we arrive at the conscious-subconscious dichotomy of the mind. More about this later.