Is Willpower Running Your Life (or Ruining It)?

If you struggle with consistency, discipline, motivation, etc. this may be the most important article you ever read.

A huge part of the way I work is intuitively and it’s a huge part of how I help my clients to work as well.

Working intuitively is very simply the idea of regularly checking in with yourself and asking “what is the most important thing to me in this moment.” Most of us go throughout our lives on autopilot doing whatever it is we’re supposed to do. But a lot of the time those are things we don’t really care about at all and so we wind up burned out and miserable.

When it comes to working intuitively there’s a framework that I learned from one of my mentors that I find helpful. There’s 3 main categories

Compass/Intuition - This is your natural sense of flow. When you “just have a feeling” about something that’s your intuition. When you get into “flow state” you are operating from this place.

Ego - Your sense of identity.

Thoughts/Emotions - All the STUFF that’s constantly bouncing around in your mind.

Because we have so much external stimuli nowadays our ego, thoughts, and emotions are constantly getting stimulated. We look at social media and see all the cool stuff everyone else is doing. This activates our ego and makes us feel like we need to do more.

Our parents tell us the right way we’re supposed to go about doing things which brings up all sorts of thoughts and emotions.

Friends, family, society, etc. we are just constantly inundated with all of this external expectation and it makes it very hard to tune in to the quiet voice that is our compass.

A great way to start is to take some time to sit down and ask yourself the question “If no one could judge me what would I be doing right now.”

When the flow between these 3 things is properly aligned your intuition sends instructions and your ego, thoughts, and emotions are tools that we use to carry out those instructions.

But usually, because of all the pressure we feel to do what we should, ego, thoughts, and emotions block our connection to our intuition.

I was talking to someone the other day and they commented on how I had changed my bio to something about people pleasing. I told them that a huge majority of the issues I work with people on can be reduced down to

“doing things you think you should but don’t actually care about.”

Let me show you something else that one of my mentors taught me.

This is called the motivation table. On the left side are things that are typically considered to be bad motivators and on the right side are things that are typically considered to be good motivators.

Upper left are shoulds and expectations. This is where people pleasers live. Almost everything that they do is motivated by what they think those around them want them to do.

The reason is not a good motivator is because it’s not intrinsic. You don’t actually care about it, you’re just doing it because someone else is making you. This is a recipe for resentment.

In the lower left are wants. This one confuses a lot of people because they’re like “wait shouldn’t things I want be super motivating?” The problem with wants is that they are fleeting. You smell something delicious and think to yourself “I’m going to make that when I get home!” but then you get home and you’re no longer smelling it and it would take a lot of work. You have to clean up the dishes afterward. “Eh nevermind it’s not worth it” and so you don’t follow through.

Upper right are values. Values are good motivators because they are intrinsically important to you and they typically don’t change. Every once in a while if you have some major life event your values may change but for the most part they stay with you for a long time.

Finally in the lower right you have purpose or duty. Again intrinsic and it makes things thoughtless. You think about a mother stepping in front of a car to protect her child. Most of the time stepping in front of a car would be something we would avoid at all costs. But for a mother protecting her child she does it without a second thought. It’s just what you do.

So as you think about what you are working on, pay attention to where it falls on this table. The goal is to start to shift your actions from the left side of the table to the right.

So now that I’ve explained the concepts let me give you a real world example.

Yesterday I was having the craving to stream. I needed to work on my creative work but I couldn’t get myself to do it. There was just no flow there. At the time my creative work sat squarely in the “shoulds/expectations” corner of the table.

My intuition was telling me the right thing to do was stream but my thoughts kept getting in the way saying “but if you stream no one is going to show up and what will you do if you stream?” So I took some time yesterday to just sit with my thoughts and emotions.

I didn’t take much action at all yesterday. I knew what my compass was telling me so I gave my ego, thoughts, and emotions some time to figure out how to carry it out.

This morning I woke up and they presented me with an answer. Work on your creative work live on stream and extend an invitation out on your Instagram for people to come ask questions, hang out, or even body double. Also write some friends and family and invite them personally so it’s more likely that people will show up.

So that’s what I did. And amazingly I recorded 9 shorts and 1 long in under an hour. And that was with stopping to talk to chat.

But this isn’t just me. I have worked with a lot of clients whose primary fuel source is will power. They brute force their way through life. And credit to them they have done an amazing job, but they are exhausted and they struggle to find consistency.

Usually, when I first present the idea of working intuitively to them there is a lot of resistance because they have relied on the tool of will power for so long. It’s scary to set down. But when they give intuitive work a try what usually happens is they come back the next session and say something along the lines of

“Holy shit! I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner.” I’ve worked with a lot of content creators and they’ll say things like

“I banged out 7 scripts in a week! I’ve never written that much!” All because they allowed themselves to work intuitively. To listen to their compass and allow their ego, thoughts and emotions to serve as tools to carry out the instructions.

The major difference is that when you aren’t working intuitively there is so much friction. You’re constantly having to fight against yourself. Whereas when you are working intuitively everything is working together. So the amount you can get done is infinitely greater.

And what’s fascinating is that often times it will actually be objectively harder.

When I left school my first job was at Target. People hate retail. It was not a fun cool job at all. But my entire life I had been brute forcing my way through school because my parents told me that’s what I was supposed to do. So to finally have made a decision that felt right to me, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t the ideal choice.

Tim Cook has a great quote where he says “this idea that if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life is a load of crock. You’ll work harder than you ever have in your life…but the tools will feel light in your hands.” This has been my personal experience and what I’ve observed in clients that start working intuitively.

Now to be very clear, I don’t think I’m some arbiter of truth. So if you have a way that you work that is better for you than by all means do that. But if you’re suffering with the way you’re working currently give out working intuitively a shot and see how it feels.

And if you try it and just can’t quite figure it out but still want to try it schedule a free 50 minute session with me.

With care and service,

Sean