POWER OF THE WILL
by Elizabeth J. Hall

“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Philippians 32:13

Why is it that less than two percent of people who lose weight keep it off? Why do New Year’s resolutions so often fail? Why is the World War II generation considered “the greatest generation?” Of course, the answer is multi-factorial. However, I would like to consider one pivotal answer, which if rightly understood, could be better than medicine for some of my readers – the RIGHT USE of the will. Each of us has a will and we all use it – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. What determines how we use it? What impacts the will?

Thinking Drives the Will

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Passive, reactive thinking forces the will into despondency. In reactive thinking, we focus on stimuli, environment, or circumstances to the exclusion of personal responsibility. “There is no way out.” “There is nothing I can do about it.” “Can’t win for losing.” “They won’t listen, so why try?” “He makes me so mad!” “If only I had more.” Words react upon character. Passive, reactive thinking, reflected in reactive language, sinks the will as surely as multi-torpedo attacks sink a ship that has no adequate protection.

Proactive Thinking

Proactive thinking, while responding to the environment, takes an active approach in delving into issues, exploring options, and seeking appropriate counseling, and revolves around personal choices. “I will explore other options.” “I can present this information in another way to gain their attention.” “I choose to deal with my anger in healthy ways.” In proactive thinking, responses are deliberate and based upon values that one has premeditatedly adopted. Proactive thinking strengthens the will.

As someone who has had to struggle with major medical depression for at least half my life, I find another kind of thinking launches me more quickly into a better pursuit of life–faith-active thinking.

Faith-active Thinking

Faith-active thinking, like proactive thinking, consciously appreciates the power of individual choice, explores options, and takes responsibility for processing one’s feelings in healthy ways. Faith-active thinking, however, is based upon values that God has designated and the internalization of His love. It explores options that would be in harmony with His principles.

Faith-active thinking reflects upon how God’s graciousness has led to small triumphs in our lives. Obstacles and difficulties that now confront us are accepted as opportunities to grow.

Faith-active thinking, while humbly acknowledging past personal defeats, is not mired in them. While it does not ignore feelings, it rests its final answer on God-based values and principles.

Emergency-Mode Thinking

Emergency-mode thinking also saps the will. Maybe because in younger years I helped in the emergency room of a small rural hospital, I often find myself in this ultra-type-A thinking. I want things done now, if not yesterday. Always bustling about, accomplishing the utmost in the least amount of time possible so that no second is wasted robs us of reflective thinking and living out our reflections, which are so necessary for the deliberate action of a purposeful will.

Emergency-mode thinking, if engaged in for long periods of time, will simply bankrupt the quality of life. If I had a terminal illness, I don’t think I would wish that I had taught more classes, made more money, and had everything in my home super-organized. I would probably wish that I had been a kinder person, given more hugs, flowers, and peaches, and spent more time walking in nature. Too often I have lived my life like the slave in a story I heard. The master told the slave that he would give him free all the acres that he could walk around before sunset. After walking fast all morning and sometimes running, the slave started to run faster as sunset approached. “Gotta have more land, gotta have more land to pass on to my children.” The slave slumped to his death just before sunset without finishing the circle! Emergency-mode thinking can make us greedy and insensitive. Greed and insensitivity corrupt the will. We need a vision of ourselves, as well as of our mission.

Purpose

A freedom-lover is captured by Cambodian communists. He is whipped, beaten and nearly starved to death. His arms oozing with infections, he mixes human dung with water and then fertilizes the rice paddies with bare arms and hands. One riveting purpose possesses him – to escape and get his young daughter to freedom. Purpose strengthens the will.

Integrity

I like to think of integrity as the harmonious integration of the thoughts, motives, emotions, and behavior into the purposes of God. Compartmentalization erodes the will. “I worked really hard today.” “I managed that feat successfully.” “I deserve this extra piece of pie with a double scoop of vanilla ice-cream!” This kind of thinking erects an artificial barrier where there is none. The mind and the body are so closely connected that what affects one affects the other. How we live physically affects the mind. Our emotions and attitudes influence our organs. The autonomic nervous system communicates directly with our immune cells, the macrophages and lymphocytes. Happiness and health depend upon the harmonious development of the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of our being. Health and happiness contribute substantially to will power.

Motivation is the spring from which one’s will acts. However, under an enlightened conscience, the will can affirm what is true and godly, empowering motivation and rejecting what is false and base. True, wholesome motives are strengthened when we are committed to working through the roots of bitterness with God, and when we refuse to let past hurts make us more suspicious and stunt our behavior. Trials and obstacles permit us to recognize the roots of bitterness. As these are eradicated, our will power grows.

Dealing with Injurious Habits

The habits that we wish to overcome are like Johnson-grass. Johnson-grass is a tall weed that is especially abundant in our area. From a distance, it looks like a corn-stalk. Its roots grow very, very deep. In fact, it grows as deep as several shovel lengths straight down. The foliage and the fruit represent behavior. The stem, supporting and nourishing the behavior, represents thoughts and feelings. The deep root system represents the purposes and motives. Chopping off a bad behavior, without dealing sufficiently with the motives, thoughts, and feelings, will never eradicate a bad habit. It will surface again, bigger than before. The motive of any harmful habit must be addressed if success is to be achieved. It can’t be eliminated passively.

The Example of Lilo

Although persistence, determination, and ambition are important, Lilo Ljubisic, lecturer on motivation, emphasizes “choice, commitment, and courage” as necessary for success. Choice, she says, is an incredible tool for success even though she admits we humans do not always utilize it as such. We don’t use it as profitably or successfully as we could. The choices we make result in the quality of life we live.

Why should I or anyone else listen to Lilo? Lilo was apparently born normal at birth, but at an early age she gradually began to lose her sight. At school, the only way she could read the blackboard was to put her nose up close to it – so close that sometimes her nose would accidentally erase the notes for the other students or her head would block their view. She finally retreated to the back row and often used her binoculars to read the material on the board.

Lilo felt singled out, rejected, and ostracized, but she persevered in her learning. Several times she had surgery to restore her sight, after which she could see, but only temporarily because of complications. Then she would be plunged into darkness and devastation again. Although her sight rapidly deteriorated, a kind teacher taught her how to serve a volleyball.

Over a period of years, she became totally blind. But Lilo was determined to excel and chose throwing the discus. With the training of a skilled professional and with courage, persistence, and confidence in God, Lilo did excel. As a discus thrower, she won an Olympic gold medal in 1992. Again, in the 1996 Olympics she won another medal. Her life confirms the power of commitment to God, proactive choice, and persistent practice undergirded by faith in Him.

Cause-to-Effect Thinking

Emotional reasoning weakens the will. For example, “I feel like a failure, so I am a failure.” By considering consequences, the front brain is activated giving us more power to succeed. While we are to acknowledge our emotions, the front brain is in charge. Do you feel trapped in certain areas of your life? The will is a rope from God to pull you up. Here are some helpful habits that will strengthen your front brain and subsequently, your will.

Watch your thinking language. Check yourself for reactive thinking. Counter it. If you have used reactive language, acknowledge it verbally and correct it audibly. What we say audibly registers in the brain more deeply than just thinking it.

Cultivate discipline in the areas of life adjacent to the problem. For example, obese people are usually not prone to loving exercise that burns up calories. Do you have a problem controlling your appetite? Set up specific times to exercise. Walk an extra seven minutes when you are thinking about returning home.

Establish habits of regularity that include meditative thinking. Make a daily checklist that helps you focus on your goals. Goal-planning fortifies the will and the front brain. Stress suppresses many components of the immune system. When patients experiencing stress are given some focus of control, these improve. Goals and checklists provide for this focus. Reflective thinking helps to evaluate our goals. What values do you want to incorporate into your life? Establish small, specific goals that will feed into your larger ones. Examine the day’s activities. What successes did you experience? What diversions? What would be some constructive ways to overcome them? Journal your successes and defeats. We often mistake our mission for our vision. What is your vision? Not only do we need to make a personal mission statement but a vision statement as well.

Psychologist Elden Chalmers suggests that everyday we do something we dislike to build the will. The practice of wise self-denial increases serotonin synthesis. Serotonin, one of the major neurotransmitters, helps create and foster a good mood. Cheerfulness improves will power.

Appreciate conflicts as opportunities. Many of us think that all conflict is intrinsically evil and live in continual dread of them. But conflicts provide opportunities for us to reassess our values and priorities and to improve our communication skills. Should the worst happen and people misjudge us, conflicts provide more bonding time with our Best Friend. Men of might and moral power have often been baffled, thwarted, and opposed.

Florence Nightingale, opposed by a multitudinous bureaucracy, finally persisted in improving the quality of nursing care in the Crimean War and raised professional nursing standards to new heights. Before engaging the bureaucracy, she had to endure the many manipulations of her parents, who were staunchly opposed to their daughter going into nursing, which at that time was considered a dishonorable profession.

Physical Lifestyle

Fortify your physical lifestyle with balanced activity and good nutrition. Many studies show that regular physical exercise reduces anger, hostility, and depression, and improves the outlook and mood. Physical exercise actually facilitates learning and memory by improving synaptic connections. B vitamins and other nutrients from whole gains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, are necessary to produce gamma-amino-butyric-acid (GABA), a major neurotransmitter involved in self-control. Adequate amounts of vitamin B6 are necessary for production of both GABA and serotonin. A well-balanced vegetarian diet balances the mind, improving electrical activity in the front brain and checking the electrical activity in the lower centers.

My neurophysiology teacher emphasizes that the brain is so connected with one’s motor system that “the will goes with the labor of the hands.” I think of my sister. When in her twenties and facing severe post-traumatic stress syndrome, she was so depressed she didn’t feel she could do anything. Living with an accusatory, paranoid mother didn’t help. But as she was praying, she said, “Okay, God, my life is wasting away. I will do one job every day.” God responded, “NO, I want you to do two.” She adhered to that commitment and soon she was able to work half-days.

By moderately reducing caloric intake now, most people can improve their memory in later-life. High-fat diets reduce the oxygen-carrying ability of the red blood cells. The brain, significantly deprived of oxygen by a high-fat diet, slows the response time of the will. Be sure to keep your blood sugar within normal limits because a sudden drop or fast rise of blood sugar impairs cognitive processing in the brain.  Eat at least two good meals a day that includes whole grains, legumes, whole fruits, and vegetables which provide fiber that steadies the blood sugar curve.  Skip the soft drinks.

Caffeine, a psychoactive drug, decreases the blood flow to the cerebrum. It increases distractibility and impairs the ability of the mind to deal with high load, complex situations. It stimulates, only to depress. Frequent and long-time use of caffeine decreases the important neurochemicals, acetylcholine and serotonin. Acetylcholine is an excitatory neurotransmitter in the frontal lobe, which provides the power to initiate and to do. Serotonin contributes to a positive outlook on life. Caffeine magnifies the effect of stressors in both the nervous and endocrine systems. It lowers the threshold to anger, hostility, and resentment. The average American intake of coffee inhibits the will.

Alcohol, toxic to the brain, impairs moral reasoning, judgment, and discernment, and decreases the foresight essential to a healthy development of the will. Binge-drinking contributes to the hyper-coagulability of platelets (increased blood clotting) and thus increases the risk of stroke caused by hemorrhage in the brain. Within 24 hours just two or three drinks increase the risk of stroke 6 times in men and 7.8 times in women!

Sleep deficiency saps the will, as well. PET scans show decreased activity in the frontal lobe with sleep debt. Good quality sleep builds the will.

Irregularity

Have you noticed that it is so much more difficult to discipline appetite or the tongue when meals are irregular, physical exercise is infrequent, and the hour of retirement is constantly being postponed for the ever-present sense of urgency to get more done first? On an irregular schedule, physical and mental fatigue occur three to four hours earlier. Physical and mental fatigue dampen the will.

RX for the Weak Will
Success or failure, a healthy confidence or querulous uncertainty, a productive life or wasted opportunities, deep satisfaction or constantly unfulfilled expectations – everything depends on the right use of the will, the inalienable God-given power to chose.

The will may be incredibly weak due to a lifetime of abuse and prostitution to unworthy goals, behavior, and activities. But it is still there, still respected by our Creator. Right thinking, indomitable purpose, integrity, choice of positive language, appropriate self-discipline, wise self-denial, regarding conflicts as opportunities, and a lifestyle emphasizing habitual, purposeful exercise, good nutrition, adequate regular sleep, and the avoidance of mind-damaging drugs and practices – all require the right use of the will.

The good news is that God promises to empower our will by adding His all-powerful will to our feeble, but determined effort. And He is always a majority. With Him, we cannot fail! “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” (Philippians 32:13)

If you have enjoyed Liz Hall's article, you will enjoy on her Lifestyle Physiology class online offered by the College of Health Evangelism.  Check out www.healthevangelism.com or call 1-706-820-1493, ext. 412.
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This article originally appeared in The Journal of Health and Healing and is used with their permission.