Sheer Force of Will

I have a lot of blind faith in my car. Whenever I stick my key in the ignition I expect it to respond to my wishes without hesitation. On the vast majority of days it does just that. But a car is actually a big lint-ball of technology with many different processes all working together: the fuel delivery system, the combustion chambers, the electrical system, the climate controls and then there is the electronics and power this-and-that’s. All of that to say there is a lot that can (and does) go wrong. In that event it’s not a great strategy to simply go out and believe that by ‘sheer force of will’ I can expect the same outcome from a system that is now broken. First, I need to fix the system.

It continually surprises me how much blind faith we place in our will power. It seems as though, to us, we think we simply just need to ‘make a decision’ and our life will magically comply. We say ‘I need to be more creative’ or ‘I need to be more relational’ or ‘I need to whatever…’ And then we respond with more time, more effort, more wishful thinking and often more disappointment.

Why? Because our life is a complicated system of many processes all working together. You can’t arbitrarily decide to have a different set of outcomes without changing some part of the system to match it. Where is that ‘more creativity’ going to come from? It’s as though we think our mind is like a magic wand. We need only say it and it is so. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How much time do we waste wondering “How can I change the outcome without changing anything about the system that leads to it?” As though you could draw cold water out of a hot tap just by sheer force of will! We can’t just decide to have a different set of outcomes without changing the parts of our life that are related to them.

So instead of just looking at those outcomes in your life (who you are, what your relationships are like, where your health is going, where your career is going…), why not also look at the whole range of other choices that lead to them? And if the system is broke – why not fix that first? And even if that system isn’t ‘broke’, you can at least ask how it could be changed. Every new decision you make will need to be supported by a whole new cluster of habits and changed behavior.

Just a thought,

Chris