My Technique to Develop Willpower

As I have written elsewhere (Poker Gaming and Life), what made me think about this was a comment made to me by businessman and expert poker player Jay Heimowitz during the World Series of Poker. He told me that he was not going to play in the final event unless he was ahead money at that point. When I mentioned that it looked like the field was going to be juicy, he replied. “It doesn’t matter. I told myself that I need to be ahead to play, and I am not going to lie to myself”. In other words, he considered the act of lying to himself a worse transgression than missing out on picking up several thousand dollars in EV. I realized that this attitude is a major key to developing willpower. Why? Because in many of those situations where you “weaken”, you come up with “rationalization” to do that. Some sort of logical or pseudo logical reason other than simply lack of self-control. But except in extreme circumstances, that method to wiggle out of your promise to yourself won’t work anymore if you use Jay’s concept, because avoiding the lie to yourself is more important than whatever your rationalization is saying you will gain if you go back on your promise.
It shouldn’t be too hard to accept this concept if you are the type of person who hates being ashamed of himself. And the first time you use this technique stick to a resolution in the face of temptation, and feel pride rather than shame, it will make it easier to use it from then on. And once you accept it, you can practice it with trivial exercises such as depriving yourself of dessert when there is no reason to do so other than the fact that you told yourself you would.