Our online world is dominated by people with a great deal of will. They initiate projects and implement them. At least, that’s how it seems because you only see the projects where they had enough will to carry them out. This gives the impression that they have a lot of will. However, this cannot be concluded from this.

On the other hand, there are the philosophers who claim that we have free will. They suggest that we can decide to do this or that. Although this statement may be correct (I won’t go into that here), it is not practically relevant. Which is okay, because they are philosophers and deal with fundamental things. But the message that everything that is theoretically within our power to do is possible for us to do is optimistic or even wrong.

Free will, or I prefer to say simply will, is limited. Using will needs energy. We can only focus on the thing to be decided and lose sight of the rest. Will is clearly a resource you have to manage. Once you realize this, you can understand your life on a deeper level. Instead of appealing to yourself that you will pull yourself together tomorrow, you will realize that this is not sustainable behavior. You will look for ways to avoid using your will as much as possible. You will achieve this with habits. If you do 5 push-ups every morning, it doesn’t take much willpower. Subsequently, it becomes a habit and you can increase the 5 push-ups. You use the resource of will wisely.

But it is not a matter of abolishing the will. No, you should strengthen it and train it. But you do not do that with a permanent load, but with chosen challenges in your life. Cold showers, for example. This is an activity that requires will, but it is also done quickly. This is how you train your will. As soon as cold showering becomes too easy, you need a new challenge.