Resolutions Week - Part IV

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Welcome to the last post of Resolutions Week.  You made it!  Hopefully your first week with your new goals in 2011 went well!  If it was a rough one, keep going, it WILL get easier as these new habits become old ones.

Today I'm going to talk about willpower and tips and tricks for keeping the motivation until your new-found habits become integrated in your daily life.

First off, what is willpower? Dictionary.com defines it as: 

the ability to control oneself and determine one's actions

As I was looking through the definitions to find the one I wanted to use in this article, I found that they have a section of quotes that contain the word you've just looked up.  Pretty cool!  And funny enough, there's a quote that I think will fit well in this situation:

Writing a book is like rearing children—willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, the baby will starve. You do it out of love. Willpower is a weak idea; love is strong. You don't have to scourge yourself with a cat-o'-nine tails to go to the baby. You go to the baby out of love for that particular baby. That's the same way you go to your desk. - Annie Dillard

Let's just substitute the parts about writing a book with the idea of living healthfully and loving your body.  Nice, huh?

So let's talk about willpower from a Chinese medical perspective.  

Our willpower is associated with our Kidneys.  When the Kidneys are weak, not only can we experience a decrease in willpower, but fatigue, early aging, pain or weakness in our low back or knees and much more.  

Kidney deficiency is really common in college students, parents of young children, and anyone else burning the candle at both ends.  Have you noticed that the more tired or stressed out you are, the harder it is to follow through with things that aren't vital?

So what can we do to strengthen our Kidneys so we'll be more likely to follow through long-term with our goals?

• Get plenty of rest - I know this can seem like a tough one, especially for those who are super busy.  But rest is going to be a key ingredient in letting your Kidney Qi regenerate.
• Eat a healthy diet - We get our Qi from our food and drinks.  High quality foods give us more Qi.  
• Keep stress levels low - We all know how stress plays in with fatigue.  Exercise can help keep stress from building up.
• Acupuncture and Chinese herbs help increase our quality of sleep, decrease stress levels and improve our digestion so that we're getting the best out of our food all so that our Kidneys can recharge.

So, as Annie Dillard said, it starts with love.  Love for yourself and your well-being.  When you take basic care of your body (and yes, the items bulleted above should be BASIC things we do for ourselves - not special treats every once in a while), you won't need willpower.  You'll love yourself too much to NOT do them, and you'll have enough energy and drive to follow through with them (as well as bigger and better goals!).

Resolutions Week - Intro
Resolutions Week - Part I - Exercise
Resolutions Week - Part II - Healthy Eating
Resolutions Week - Part III - Quitting Smoking

---