Create Good Things

Archive for the ‘Power of Intention’ Category

In this final part of our Developing Willpower we present the fourth Developing Willpower exercise. This exercise is a little different, because the task involved will vary from reader to reader. The instructions you need to adhere to are as follows:

Developing Willpower Exercise #4

Every day for the next seven days, choose at least one important  thing that you have been putting off doing and finally get it done.

On a purely physical level, the vast majority of people fail in life because they simply never learn to take action on things that they know they ought to do. This week, you will do at least seven things that you have been ‘meaning to do’ for a while but haven’t actually got around to doing. It could be obtaining a gym membership, exercising, making a certain phone call, writing a certain letter, clearing out the garage or any number of other tasks that you have been postponing for a considerable amount of time.

By taking action on the things which you specifically tend to procrastinate about, you will develop a greater ability to trust yourself. You will establish the habit of recognising a task that needs attending to and then following through to get it done. As a result, your self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of inner strength will all increase quite markedly.

Most people know what they need to do in order to change their lives, but they have never developed the will power required to put their knowledge to good use. By the time you successfully complete this exercise, you will join the ranks of the relative few who not only know what to do, but actually do what they know, and thereby consciously create the lives they desire.

You should note that you have considerable freedom to choose what you will do with this exercise. Choose only to do very easy things and your willpower will grow much less than if you were to choose to do quite demanding things. The more you challenge yourself this week, the stronger your willpower will become.

With the first two Developing Willpower exercises you have developed your willpower by focusing on fundamental aspects of human life, namely your sleeping and communication habits. In this third Developing Willpower exercise you will focus on a third area of life which could well challenge you even more than the previous two. Your instructions for this week are as follows:

Developing Willpower Exercise #3

For the next seven days, you shall only eat and drink products which are genuinely wholesome and nutritious. Specifically, your diet should be rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and as far as possible – free of processed foods or those with added sugar. You should also avoid all forms of alcohol and animal products.

Now, it may strike you that this kind of diet is rather more severe than that of most people, and we would agree. However, it is an extremely healthy way of eating which everyone should experience at least once in their lives, and adhering to it for seven days is a very good way of developing your willpower.

Most people have no idea how much they allow their base cravings for sugars, fats, animal products and alcohol to control them. This week you will experience your own cravings very clearly. Do not become disheartened by this, but welcome the opportunity to overcome your base urges for such things. You are not required to eat this way forever, but only for seven days.

The benefits of succeeding with this exercise are considerable. As well as strengthening your willpower even further, you will experience a dramatic increase in the amount of physical energy you have. This is because a wholesome diet which is free of sugars, fats, animal products and alcohol is a lot kinder to the human body. Your body will not have to expend nearly as much energy to digest this diet, and so you will feel a lot more alive and vital as a result.

Many people who have somewhat reluctantly developed their willpower by adhering to this strict diet have been surprised to find that they wanted to continue eating more naturally in the future. Few have embraced the diet as a way of life, but almost everyone has chosen to eat with more awareness in the future.

If you successfully completed the previous Developing Willpower exercise then you will already feel very good about how quickly your willpower is developing. The second Developing Willpower exercise is designed to continue this development, albeit in a different area of life. This week, your instructions are as follows:

Developing Willpower Exercise #2

For the next seven days, you must not speak a word of pessimism, criticism or negativity. Instead, you will speak in an optimistic, encouraging and positive manner. If you cannot say anything positive in a given situation, say nothing.

Many of us speak without thinking, and not only does this demonstrate a deficiency in willpower, it can also hurt others and make life seem a lot more negative than it really is. By adhering to a ‘verbal negativity fast’ for seven days, you will develop your willpower and experience life itself from a much more positive perspective.

Controlling the tongue is not easy, because it requires us to think about our words and choose them carefully, rather than allow ourselves to be swept in one direction or another by the emotional feeling of the moment. The key to success here is to get into the habit of pausing for a few seconds before saying anything. This will give you the presence of mind required to process your response consciously.

The words we speak not only influence other people and the universe around us, but the way we ourselves feel. For example, if we continually tell people that ‘life is hard’ and that ‘money is tight’ then we will tend feel a lot more stressed and anxious than if we were to remain silent or to actually have a positive attitude and say ‘life is easy’ or ‘ always have enough to meet my needs.’

Look at the people who always seem to enjoy life and you will notice that they regularly speak in positive terms. They do not speak in such a way because they are enjoying life, but rather, they enjoy life because they have developed positive ways of representing it to themselves and those around them.

By the time you have completed seven days with this exercise, the truth of that last statement will be more apparent than you can currently imagine.

The first Developing Willpower exercise that we would like to present sounds extremely simple – and from a technical perspective it really is – but most people find it a lot more difficult than they first imagine. The instructions for this exercise are as follows:

Developing Willpower Exercise #1

For the next seven days, get out of bed one hour earlier than usual and spend the first thirty minutes of this time sitting in the same spot with your eyes closed and your mental focus only on your own inhalation and exhalation.

We all know that meditation is good for us, but how many people actually take the time to do it? This first exercise requires you to do just that, for the first thirty minutes of the next seven days. If you already meditate then that is good, but you must now get out of bed an hour earlier than usual to meditate. If you normally get up at 7am and meditate, you now need to get up at 6am and meditate.

The earlier time of rising is important, because it is at that time that you will most clearly witness an internal struggle between your base self, which usually wants you to do what feels good, and your Higher Self, which usually wants you to do what is right even if that thing doesn’t feel good.

Your mission here is to resist doing what feels good, and to instead do what you know you ought to do. This is a training exercise, and as such it does not require you to make a life-long commitment to getting up a whole hour earlier than usual. It only requires that you demonstrate your ability to do so for the next seven days.

Some students – especially the ‘early risers’ among you – will find this exercise relatively easy. But many more will find it very difficult. We make no apology for this. In order to raise yourself to the next level of ability you first need to face and do battle with your base self. Conquer it’s desire for sleep, or to move around the home when you should be sat with your eyes closed in meditation, and you will be surprised at how strong you suddenly feel. After seven consecutive days of such victory it seems as if your willpower has multiplied ten-fold. And in truth, that’s exactly what it has done. At that stage – after seven days of success – you may proceed to Exercise #2.