An Iron Will
This is a tiny little book PACKED with wisdom. Written in a classic, hard-hitting, early 20th century old- school-cool style, it reminds me of a cross between Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help and James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. In fact, the title “As a Man Willeth” would fit quite nicely. We'll unpack some goodness in the Note.
Big Ideas
- A Definition of Will-PowerA definition.
- Do less to do moreTo do more.
- “I will” PowerIs extraordinary. How’s yours?
- A thimbleful of gun powderFocus your life force.
- Do You BElieve in yourself?In yourself?
- The power to hold onPersistence (!) is where it’s at.
- Challenges are good!Are good.
- Three necessary ThingsBackbone + backbone + backbone.
“The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
“It’s impossible,” says Sharman, “to look into the conditions under which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative in right directions.” Young people need to go into training for it.”
~ Orison Swett Marden from An Iron Will
Ryan Holiday recommended this book in The Obstacle Is the Way (see Notes). I picked it up. I’m glad I did.
As you know if you’ve read many Notes, I’m a *huge* fan of willpower. (Check out Notes on Willpower, The Willpower Instinct, The Power of Habit, and Superhuman by Habit for more goodness and practical ways to build your willpower.)
All the leading scientists (and their research) tell us that willpower is THE (!!!) greatest predictor of anything good we may want to achieve in our lives. So, when I got this little classic, I was excited to crack it open.
It’s a tiny little book. And, it’s PACKED with quotes from gritty historical figures telling us why “An Iron Will” is the engine of success. Written in a classic, hard-hitting, early 20th century old-school-cool style, it reminds me of a cross between Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help and James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. In fact, the title “As a Man Willeth” would fit quite nicely. :)
Orison Swett Marden created Success magazine and was one of the early leaders of the self-development movement. (Darren Hardy is the current publisher of his magazine. Check out the Note we did on his great book, The Compound Effect.)
You can get the book here. For now, let’s jump in and have fun cultivating our IRON WILL!
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Download PDFThe education of the will is the object of our existence.
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Listen to the PodcastA Definition of Will-Power
““Perhaps the most valuable result of all education,” it was said by Professor Huxley, “is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly.””
That’s a pretty good definition of willpower.
→ “The ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.”
Thank you, Professor Huxley.
Willpower should be the first thing we teach kids. Tragically, it’s not.
Did you know willpower outpredicts IQ for academic performance by a factor of TWO? Yep.
If you spend even 30 seconds thinking about that, it makes you scratch your head a bit and wonder how it’s possible that we don’t teach EVERY.SINGLE.KID how to dial in their willpower.
(Seriously, please spend 30 seconds thinking about it now! → Being able to get yourself to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done (aka willpower) is TWICE as good a predictor of academic performance than IQ! … And it’s teachable/learnable!!)
We’ll save that for another discussion. For now, *we* need to learn how to build our willpower. And, we need to teach our children how to build it. (And, we need those so inspired to bring this education into our traditional educational systems!)
It’s quite teachable. (See the Notes I referenced in the Intro for a bunch of super practical little things you can do to build willpower—from meditation, breathing, eating, resting, precommitting, making bright lines, etc.)
But the first thing we need to do is *really* embrace WHY it’s so important. So, let’s have fun exploring some more inspirational wisdom from Mr. Marden.
‘The truest help we can render one who is afflicted,’ said Bishop Brooks, ‘is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear.’
Do less to do more
“When Henry Ward Beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish more than other men, he replied:
“I don’t do more, but less, than other people. They do all their work three times over: once in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, doing it once instead of three times.”
This was by the intelligent exercise of Mr. Beecher’s will-power in concentrating his mind upon what he was doing at a given moment, and then turning to something else… One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing.”
Amen to all that.
I love the focus on not worrying about and then ruminating about what we need to get done. Just get ‘er done ONCE! But I want to focus on another facet of focus for a moment.
First, let’s enjoy Alexander Graham Bell’s gem: “Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
How’s your concentration? Your ability to FOCUS your attention on one task and crush it?
If you’re like most people these days, your ability to focus has been decimated by the *constant* distractions of email, online time, text messages, social status updates, etc., etc., etc. It’s like giving that crazy little drunk monkey a jumbo size bag of Skittles plus a Red Bull. Not helpful.
If we want to focus on that which matters most, we need to identify what we will STOP doing.
For example, my one thing as I write this (in early 2015) is to turn pro as a teacher—reading a certain number of books while creating a certain number of Notes + videos this year as I help people optimize their lives and achieve certain business objectives.
I have clear goals and a clear path of what I will do. But, what’s REALLY important is to identify the things that will get in the way of me achieving those goals. Things like obsessively checking email or texts or Facebook or Twitter or the news or ESPN or staying online past sunset, etc., etc.
Those things fall onto my “STOP Doing” list.
It’s *amazing* what happens when I stop doing those things. All the sudden I have both a lot more time AND, much more importantly, a lot more mental space to actually focus my attention.
For example, when I was in full-time CEO-mode last year, it was actually kinda hard to sit down and read toward the end of the day. My mind was so hopped up on all the external stimuli from the day that it was tough to really slow down and focus. Now, with less distractions, my mind is much more calm and I feel like I can take a chainsaw to a book—it’s easy to focus and I can easily sit down and bring all my attention to it, saving a ton of time/energy in the process.
How about you?
How can you use your willpower to concentrate your thoughts on the most important stuff you’re up to? What do you need to STOP doing?
If you’re feelin’ it, you may want to create a “Stop Doing!” list. (And crush it, of course. :)
Persistency of purpose is a power. It creates confidence in others. Everybody believes in the determined man.
“I will” Power
““I will.”
There are no two words in the English language which stand out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checker-board, to so great an extent as the words ‘I will.’ There is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and delivery. It talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression.”
“I will.”
Those are two (extraordinarily) powerful words.
What will YOU do?
I will:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________
Fantastic.
Here’s to the strength, depth, solidity, decision, confidence, power, determination and vigor of your “I will” power!
A thimbleful of gun powder
“What is will-power, looked at in a large way, but energy of character? Energy of will, self-orginating force, is the soul of every great character. Where it is, there is life; where it is not, there is faintness, helplessness, and despondency. “Let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you.” Men who have left their mark upon the world have been men of great and prompt decision. The achievements of will-power are almost beyond computation. Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open air.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
A thimbleful of gun powder channeled precisely through the barrel of a rifle is more powerful than an entire carload burned in the open air. Remarkable.
We need to focus our energies on THE (!) most important thing(s) in our life and exercise our will to sustain that focus.
Imagine your life force being the equivalent of the gunpowder. Are you burning it in open air or focusing it powerfully in the direction of your dreams?
Here’s to using our willpower to focus our energy to actualize our enormous potential.
Do You BElieve in yourself?
“The man without self-reliance and an iron will is the plaything of chance, the puppet of his environment, the slave of circumstances. Are not doubts the greatest of enemies? If you would succeed up to the limit of your possibilities, must you not constantly hold to the belief that you are success-organized, and that you will be successful, no matter what opposes? You are never to allow a shadow of doubt to enter your mind that the Creator intended you to win in life’s battle. Regard every suggestion that your life may be a failure, that you are not made like those who succeed, and that success is not for you, as a traitor, and expel it from your mind as you would a thief from your house.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in being “a plaything of chance, the puppet of my environment, the slave of circumstance.”
If we want to be powerful creators, we need to rid our minds of the traitorous thoughts that tell us we’re not capable.
We *MUST* believe in ourselves.
Period.
Scientists call this “self-efficacy”—the belief that we have what it takes to do what we aspire to do. It’s fascinating how this belief (or lack thereof) affects our lives.
One study looked at wrestlers. THE variable that best predicted who would win was the wrestler’s self-efficacy—his (or her) BELIEF that they would win. (That’s nuts.)
Ernest Holmes comes to mind: “No thought of discouragement or disorder should ever be created, but only positive assurance, strong thoughts of success, of Divine activity, the feeling that with God all things are possible, the belief that we are One with that Great Mind. These are the thoughts that make for success.”
How’s your belief in yourself?
You need to kick some thieves out of your mind?
The man of iron will is cool in the hour of danger.
The power to hold on
“The power to hold on is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything great; they may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent from a successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what discouragement overtakes him, drudgery cannot disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him; misfortune, sorrow, and reverses cannot harm him. It is not so much brilliancy of intellect, or fertility of resource, as persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man. Those who succeed in life are the men and women who keep everlastingly at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they ever accomplish anything they must do it by determined and persistent industry.”
That. Is. Awesome.
Persistence = Power.
As Calvin Coolidge tells us: “The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
Benjamin Franklin tells us: “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Martin Seligman, the Godfather of the Positive Psychology movement echoes their wisdom. (See Notes on Learned Optimism + Flourish.) He tells us: “Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. I believe that optimistic explanatory style is the key to persistence.”
The greatest obstacles to persistence?
Thinking things should go perfectly right out the gate. Getting flustered the moment your great plan proves to, actually, kinda suck. Thinking mistakes + temporary failures are signs you’re an idiot. You know, helpful stuff like that.
We need to believe in ourselves. We need to KNOW that we will fall down again and again in our journey up the mountain. We need to get up each time with a smile as we dust ourselves off, thank the powers-that-be for the opportunity to get just a little stronger, and GET BACK TO WORK. In short, we need to have an iron will.
How’s your persistence?
How can you dial it in a bit more starting today?
Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed; and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.
Challenges are good!
““Every condition, be it what it may,” says Channing, “has hardships, hazards, pains. We try to escape them; we pine for a sheltered lot, for a smooth path, for cheering friends, and unbroken success. But Providence ordains storms, disasters, hostilities, sufferings; and the great question whether we shall live to any purpose or not, whether we shall grow strong in mind and heart, or be weak and pitiable, depends on nothing so much as on our use of the adverse circumstances. Outward evils are designed to school our passions, and to rouse our faculties and virtues into intense actions. Sometimes they seem to create new powers. Difficulty is the element, and resistance the true work of man. Self-culture never goes on so fast as when embarrassed circumstances, the opposition of men or the elements, unexpected changes of the times, or other forms of suffering, instead of disheartening, throw us on our inward resources, turn us for strength to God, clear up to us the great purpose of life, and inspire calm resolution. No greatness or goodness is worth much, unless tried in these fires.””
Wow. So good. (And worth a re-read.)
We have a story that everything should be perfect. But only ALL.THE.TIME.
The slightest challenge freaks us out. Big challenges can paralyze us. Not helpful.
What if we completely flipped our story about challenges and saw them as AWESOME? As absolutely (!) necessary parts of our evolution—the very stuff that makes our hero’s journeys heroic?!
For some wacky reason, we all want to sidestep lizards on our hero’s journeys. But, guess what? When we really go for it, we’re going to battle DRAGONS! Not lizards. :)
How about you: You have any stories that could use some editing?
Three necessary Things
““Three things are necessary,” said Charles Sumner, “first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone.”
A good chance alone is nothing. Education is nothing without strong and vigorous resolution and stamina to make one accomplish something in the world. An encouraging start is nothing without backbone. A man who cannot stand erect, who wabbles first one way and then the other, who has no opinion of his own, or courage to think his own thought, is of very little use in this world. It is grit, it is perseverance, it is moral stamina and courage that govern the world.”
Wow.
That’s some great old school mojo. That’s pretty much the simplest way to describe GRIT—which is what scientists now identify as the secret sauce. Grit is kinda like willpower squared.
Elizabeth Duckworth tells us Grit = Intense Passion + Intense Persistence. At the end of the day, if you went old-school you could just say grit is essentially three things: Backbone. More backbone. And more backbone. (Laughing.)
As Ernest Holmes says, we need more backbone and less wishbone. :)
History furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute.
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