Willpower rarely helps you grow

How can I grow without relying on willpower? This page explains how changing your environment, not willpower, leads to personal growth.

This an excerpt from a summary of Benjamin Hardy's book 'Willpower Doesn't Work.' You can access the full book summary via the link icon.

Historically, scientists believed that you change a person’s behaviour by changing their mindsets. It turned out, however, that this was only effective for a small subset of behaviours, mostly ones you rarely perform.

Willpower is deemed essential to success. However, we should understand it as a means of last resort, not as the primary source of personal growth. When you’re told something is impossible, you need a lot of willpower to make it work. When you know it can be done, it’s already so much easier to do it.

Cells stemming from the same stem cell are all genetically identical. However, when you place them in a different environment, they can become bone, muscle, fat… This (epigenetics) shows that who a person becomes depends more on which genes are expressed. Not necessarily on which genes are present.

You and your environments extend each other. Who you are and what you can do in one environment is very different in another. Not every environment enables you to be the person you want to be.

You are, depending on your context, playing a particular role. By identifying with that role, letting that role define you, you put yourself in a box. You make something that is subjective and fluid into something objective and unalterable.

The roles you play aren’t your fixed and unchanging identity. Rather, you are acting a particular way based on the rules of the environment you are in. Your role is relative to what surrounds you.

This became apparent in Carol Dweck’s research on (fixed and growth) mindsets. People who believe they can grow are more likely to do so. The belief that you can change leads you to take responsibility for your life.

You can change your roles by altering your environment, not by learning about how you should behave. Instead of trying to prequalify to be someone, create the environment that will qualify you to become that person now.

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