Willpower vs Wantpower

Medium.com - willpower doesn't work - here's how to actually change your life

When it comes to achieving goals, commitment involves:
  • Investing upfront 
  • Making it public 
  • Setting a timeline 
  • Installing several forms of feedback/accountability 
  • Removing or altering everything in your environment that opposes your commitment 
If you’re truly committed to something, in your mind, it’s as though you’ve already succeeded. All doubt and disbelief are gone.  (quote from article above)

A comment on the above (me to a tee only I think I had been wanting to quit drinking for a lot longer than 6 months, just couldn't figure out how, if will power wasn't the answer - and it isn't).

For me, the most significant change to my environment was stopping work at the CoOp. The 7 / 30 /100 days was the investing upfront and setting a timeline. And this blog and my penpalling with Belle the accountability bit. Not mixing with drinkers and not going where alcohol is available seem less important at the moment, but I should not be complacent or too cocky. Actually going out and socialising is a big part of it all - not isolating, being up front about not drinking, even if I am pretending to some that it's just a sober October or a No November, or dry December.

Another quote from the article on Medium.com
My father (who died at age 91) quit smoking decades ago. He was a 2 pack a day man who smoked for 20 years. One day he flushed two cartons down the toilet and never picked them up again. I asked him how he did it.

He said, “There are two ways: ‘will power’ and ‘want power’. Will power is the hardest way. Your Doctor says ‘quit or die.’ You muster all of your strength and you try to quit. That’s hard.”

He continued, “I had want power. I wanted to quit. For six months before I laid one cigarette down I began to desire to quit. To desperately want to quit. I could even taste what it was like not to smoke. So when I flushed those cigarettes down the toilet, I had already quit months before. That was the easy way.” 


I think the big difference for me this time was that I really want to quit drinking forever, whereas always before, subconsciously if not consciously, I just wanted to be a normal drinker. So as soon as I was confidently sober, I just started up again. And the truth was, I still didn't really want to stop at all, in fact the evidence is that each time I started again I wanted to drink even more than before. Which is why the whole idea of relapse is wrong (and I think Belle gets this wrong too) - I wasn't relapsing, as in failing, I was doing precisely what I wanted to do, and until I stopped wanting to do it, I was always going to fail.

This time, my problem has been that I didn't have the confidence that I could stop, and that's where Belle's 7 day challenge was really important. I felt I could do that. And all her other supports, like accountability and treats, were important too, as Benjamin Hardy also says. Then I started to feel I could do 30 days. Each day builds confidence and momentum, but that would be / will be useless, if I don't really want too stop. I'm not even thinking about 100. 42 will do for now. Or 52, which is where I am today.

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