# The Way to Willpower

**URL:** <https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410>\
**Category:** A314 Insider's Club\
**Created:** [September 18, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410 "2011-09-18T17:15:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410/1 "2011-09-18T17:15:39Z")

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Outstanding book from 1922 that of course continues to be very relevant today. In fact I suggest that it is _more_ relevant today than it was in 1922. The tremendous possibilities for instant gratification that the technological explosion of potential has opened up to us has led us to forget the value of focusing on a more distant end, setting out a plan towards achieving it, and not letting ourselves be blown off course by the inevitable (and increasingly more frequent) distractions along the way.

Why is this relevant to A314? Well one of the points about this product is it somehow tunes one in to a frequency of wanting to be of a higher character. One doesn’t stand for things that one would have tolerated before embarking upon A314 use. One doesn’t necessarily need to deliberately change anything to achieve some benefit from A314; but it is my belief that one will substantially increase the power of the product if once one has begun its use one goes with the new kinds of impulses and reactions of ones higher self to those impulses, even though they be unfamiliar and push one into hitherto unexplored territory. I believe that the nature of this mechanism is why many users often see a limited initial response when they start to wear the product; it is the effect of gazillions of little impulses and micro-decisions cumulated over quite some months that leads one towards becoming a person of higher quality.

[Pheromones](https://pheromonelabs.com/) are breakdown products of one’s hormonal signature, and one somehow signals one’s internal psychophysical state in quite a complex manner to those around us - certainly via pheromonal means, but possibly also via some kind of putative energetic channel. This is one reason why focusing on ‘hits’ as such is missing the point. Via pheromone use one slowly incubates and reveals more crisply a version of oneself whose seeds were previously there all along waiting to germinate. Over time one develops this new set of archetypes, and often it is this new set that people respond to, more than the pheromones as such.

[http://mises.org/books/willpower.pdf](http://mises.org/books/willpower.pdf)

> [@](#):
>
> We have defined will as the desire to become a certain sort of  
> character. We have seen that, at critical moments, when the craving  
> to do a certain thing threatens, like a great tidal wave, to sweep us  
> helpless before it, it is this desire to become a certain sort of character  
> which throws its weight in the scale with the other weaker desires to  
> balance us; it is this desire which stands like a rock to cling to until  
> the torrent has spent its force. It, too, may be swept away at times.  
> But when it is, we know that it has not been strong enough. It is a  
> warning that the breakwater has been too low and too weak. We  
> must build it higher and stronger. We must strengthen this desire to  
> become a certain sort of character.
> 
> The ideal that we actually form will depend upon our parents,  
> our religion, our associates, our reading, our thinking, the traditions  
> of the nation and the age in which we live. Many of these elements  
> are intellectual, and to the extent that these determine our ideals,  
> they determine part of our desires.
> 
> But even here we cannot say that the intellect creates our desires.  
> Rather, it transforms them. They exist congenitally in the form of raw  
> materials; or more strictly, they exist as a country’s “natural resources”  
> exist, waiting to be worked up by our environment and our  
> intellect (itself shaped by environment) into the finished product.
> 
> Practically all men are born with the sexual instinct. But though this  
> particular instinct, in its raw state, may be present in equal degrees  
> in three men, environment, training and intellect may so shape this  
> raw material that the first man may elect to marry and lead a normal  
> sexual life, the second may launch forth as a roué, and the third may  
> enter and abide by the vows of the priesthood. Similarly, the pugnacious  
> instinct, which makes dogs fight and men go to war, may  
> also, through environment and the intellect, be discharged through  
> the channels of football or a philosophical controversy. It is the same  
> with gregariousness, or any other instinct. These are the materials;  
> the desires the finished products.  
> …  
> The trouble with the average man is not that he neglects to  
> make resolutions. The trouble is that he makes far too many  
> resolutions. Making resolutions is sometimes his principal daily occupation.  
> He is forever forgetting or breaking them, and that is why  
> he has to make them all over again.  
> …  
> Understand me, I am not saying that it would be to your advantage  
> to make that resolve on the train. I do not contend that it  
> would be better to get up at seven and take your time than to get up  
> at quarter to eight and hurry. You are the judge of that. I disclaim any  
> moral attitude whatever. But I insist that if you do make a resolve it  
> should be carried out. There should be never an exception. This  
> point is supreme. To make a resolve and break it is demoralizing.  
> Though not a single other soul on earth should know it, though  
> God himself should not know, you would know it. You would have  
> to confess your failure to yourself. To break a resolve is to undermine  
> your self-respect. To break a resolve is to lose faith in yourself.  
> It shakes your confidence that you can keep any other. The next time  
> you become suddenly disgusted with any action or habit, and you  
> clench your teeth and your left fist, and are just about to drive your  
> left fist into the open palm of your right, and say to yourself. “The  
> next time I—“ you are apt to stop short and think of your previous  
> failure, and the bitter irony of it all may rush over you. You start at  
> the very beginning with an unwholesome doubt of whether you are  
> going to keep your resolve. And when self-respect and self-faith are  
> gone, nothing else is worth while. But with every resolution kept, be  
> it ever so small a resolution, your faith in your self grows. The keeping  
> of the next resolution becomes tremendously easier. Will-power  
> comes into its inheritance.
> 
> The moral of all this is that you should make fewer resolutions  
> and keep more. The foolish resolution is the resolution made in a  
> moment of passion and self-disgust. It is well that you should have  
> such moments. It is of such moments that great achievements are  
> born. But before you make a resolve that you seriously mean to execute,  
> look at it coldly and completely. Think not alone of the benefits  
> of keeping it, but of the disadvantages. If you have been lying in  
> bed until quarter to eight, you have not been doing so unless there  
> were some advantages to lying in bed until quarter to eight. Consider  
> these advantages in the moment of your resolve. Do not pass  
> them over in contempt. Weigh them at their full value. Measure the  
> sacrifice of forsaking them. Balance it against the advantages of getting  
> up promptly at seven. You may decide that getting up promptly  
> at seven is not worth its price. You may decide to compromise on half  
> past seven, which would allow you half an hour’s more sleep and a  
> little more time to dress. Upon what you decide it is not for me to  
> comment. But your decision should be carried out. No more demoralizing  
> course could be conceived than daily to resolve to arise at seven  
> and the next day always to wait until a quarter to eight. Such a course  
> comes only because, when you make your resolves, you do not fairly  
> face the price.
> 
> This rule is so important, and has so wide a bearing, that we cannot  
> forsake it here. It applies to all our resolves. Let me illustrate  
> with the example that has become the favorite with all writers on  
> will. I refer to drinking. The law-makers insist on solving this particular  
> will-problem for us, but the Constitutional Amendment, so  
> far as I am aware, puts no ban on its invaluable use as a literary example.  
> Moreover, I cannot be arrested for pointing out that the actual  
> temptations to drinking are not altogether a thing of the past.  
> You have a drink; then another. Perhaps you have one or two  
> more, though the count becomes rather confusing after a time. The  
> liquor “touches the spot,” as you say, and for a time it produces a  
> mental and emotional reaction that is highly delightful. But the next  
> morning your stomach is upset; your food doesn’t taste right; you  
> have a headache; your mental and physical movements are slow and  
> listless; you get little work done; the color of the universe is drab.  
> You are probably minus a good deal of money. You feel your self-respect  
> slipping. You are losing the respect of your friends. And your  
> resolve that morning, accompanied with the usual terrible knitting  
> of brow and clenching of fist and of teeth (as if that helped) is that  
> these occasions of getting drenched must forever cease, end, terminate.  
> And then what? That acute psychologist, William James, can tell  
> you much better than I:  
> how many excuses does the drunkard find when  
> each new temptation comes! It is a new brand of  
> liquor which the interests of intellectual culture in  
> such matters oblige him to test; moreover it is  
> poured out and it is sin to waste it; also others are  
> drinking and it would be churlishness to refuse.  
> Or it is but to enable him to sleep or just to get  
> through this job of work; or it isn’t drinking, it is  
> because he feels so cold; or it is Christmas-day; or  
> it is a means of stimulating him to make a more  
> powerful resolution in favor of abstinence than  
> any he has hitherto made; or it is just this once,  
> and one doesn’t count, etc., etc., ad libitum—it is, in  
> fact, anything you like except being a drunkard. That  
> is the conception that will not stay before the poor  
> soul’s attention. But if he once gets able to pick  
> out that way of conceiving form all the other possible  
> ways of conceiving the various opportunities  
> which occur, if through thick and thin he holds to  
> it that this is being a drunkard and nothing else,  
> he is not likely to remain one long. The effort by  
> which he succeeds in keeping the right name unwaveringly  
> present to his mind proves to be his saving  
> moral act.  
> And how is he to get “able to pick out that way of conceiving”  
> and hold to it? There is only one way. Not in the moment of temptation,  
> but in the moment of his resolve, on “the morning after,”  
> that is the time for him to summon all these excuses before him, to  
> bring up every possible excuse, to think of every conceivable advantage  
> of drinking, and then to ask himself whether they are powerful  
> enough to offset the conception of being a drunkard, or whether  
> the advantages of drinking outweigh its disadvantages. He must give  
> an honest answer then. If he ignores these excuses, on the ground  
> that they are unworthy his noble resolve, he will find them dancing  
> before his eyes in the next moment of temptation; and not having  
> faced and answered them when he was in the mood to face and answer  
> them, he is not likely to face them in that unhappy moment.

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**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410/2 "2011-09-18T17:48:48Z")

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…

> [@Bacon](#):
>
> He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not  
> set himself too great nor too small tasks; for the  
> first will make him dejected by often failings, and  
> the second will make him a small proceeder,  
> though by often prevailings. And, as the first, let  
> him practice with helps, as swimmers do with bladders,  
> or rushes; but after a time let him practice  
> with disadvantages as dancers’ do with thick shoes;  
> for it breeds great perfection if the practice be  
> harder than the use.

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**Author:** ![The\_Hammer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/90db22/32.png) [@The\_Hammer](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/The_Hammer)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 12:14am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410/3 "2011-09-20T00:14:52Z")

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Even better is that it is from [Mises.org](http://Mises.org)

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**Author:** ![SteveO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@SteveO](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/SteveO)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 8:18pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410/4 "2011-09-21T20:18:24Z")

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Thanks for the PDF. I’ll convert it to Kindle and I’m sure it will be a great read 🙂

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**Author:** ![p27](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c67d28/32.png) [@p27](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/p27)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 7:06am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/the-way-to-willpower/52410/5 "2011-09-29T07:06:02Z")

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looking forward to reading this as well. thanks!