What is willpower? Are some people born with good willpower or can it be developed? Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
When we talk about willpower we all have many things which we would like to do in our life either for our own self-improvement, for our contribution to the outer world and for this we need to be able to translate our intention into action. So for that purpose we require willpower.
I’ll try to analyze willpower in terms of the Bhagavad Gita’s model of the self. The Bhagavad Gita explains that our self is a three-level existence. The body, the mind and the soul.
In a computer system we have a hardware, software and user. The hardware is the body, the software is the mind and the user is the soul. So what we want to do is say what is coming from the soul, that is the intention.
So the intention comes from the soul the action is done at the level of the body and the action when it is to be done at the level of the body in between is the mind and the mind is the seat of emotions. So sometimes our emotions work for us and sometimes our emotions work against us. Something which is important for us, we have decided to do it sometimes we feel like doing it and sometimes we don’t feel like doing it.
We feel like just giving it up entirely. So between our intention which is coming from the soul and the action which is meant to be done at the level of the body is the emotion of the mind. This emotion can work favorably and can work unfavorably.
So when our willpower is weak at that time this emotion is working against us. And when the emotion works against us, at that time we often give up our intention. So where does this emotion in the mind come from? And why does it work against us? So going back to the example of the software say suppose somebody has regularly visited some website say they visited Bollywood.com they want to know something about movies and then they come for a spiritual program and they hear about the Bhagavad Gita now they go to their browser and they want to know something about Bhagavad Gita they type B and what happens? Bollywood comes immediately.
So what has happened over here? The browser the software in it has stored the past preferences and because those past preferences are stored they come as default propositions and when they come as default propositions unless we consciously say no, Bollywood may come as autocomplete and I have to type something else then the Bhagavad Gita will come but otherwise by default Bollywood will come So similarly for us, based on the way we have lived in the past, the way we have thought the kind of emotions we have felt based on that certain emotions automatically come within us so those emotions are like the autocompletes which come on the browser and sometimes the autocomplete may take us where we want to go say if we have visited Bhagavad Gita many times in the past I type B immediately Bhagavad Gita comes so like that there are some things which we intend to do which are good for us we like it also some of us may like music and when we want to practice music at that time oh I start feeling so good about music so in some cases the autocomplete may work for us in some cases it may work against us so basically the intention, the emotion and the action these three are the components for us to implement our resolutions whatever willpower we want that means from the stage of intention to the stage of action so how do we move forward so if I take a metaphor of an airplane an airplane takes off from one point flies through the air and then lands at the destination so we could say our intention is like the take off point and the action that we want to do that is like the landing point so from the intention to the destination from the take off to the landing in between sometimes something goes wrong so the plane crashes along the way so our resolutions crash now why do the resolutions crash because just like when a plane is moving through the air if the plane runs out of fuel then no matter how expert the driver may be the pilot’s expertise will not matter much if the fuel is not there so just the intention of the pilot or the expertise of the pilot won’t get them if the fuel is not there similarly the fuel that will take us along that sometimes falls short so usually some people say I have weak willpower some people may hear about some people are great achievers in their life they have strong willpower so now is it that we are born with a certain level of willpower some people have a lot and some people have less it may be that we all have different levels of willpower but willpower is not some mystical gift that some people have and some people don’t have every one of us can develop it it’s like anybody can fuel their plane adequately and then the plane will fly of course it could be that some planes themselves have limited capacity so if the fuel capacity of the plane itself is limited then it can cover 500 miles and if we embark on a journey of 1000 miles no matter how much fuel we put in, it will not be enough then in that case the plane has to land refuel, and then again start off