developing one's will capacity

It is important for humans to develop their inner will capacity. We've all heard admonitions to exercise willpower when faced with certain challenges, such as weight loss or an exercise goal. Will capacity applies to everything.

Meditation and committing to a regular practice is one way to develop one's will capacity.

Exercise is almost entire an exercise in strengthening one's will. It not only takes a willful choice to get out and run seven or eight miles daily, or swim a mile daily or workout on an elliptical for however much time one wishes, you exercise with your limbs.

It is in our limbs that we exercise all our will. Our legs take us into the future, be that future the other side of the pool or a lap around a running track. Our arms make and create, again our limbs exercising our will.

Any regular practice, done with committed discipline will develop our will capacity. And we all need to have strong wills to create the life we are destined to have, to be happy, to be loved, if to be loved is what we desire. All humans, I believe, wish to be loved. So get out there and grow your will force.

I meditate daily and have since 2002 when I sat my first ten-day Vipassana course.  I exercise daily and have most of my adult life, with a few gaps when I didn't exercise. After my daughter cut me out of her life, I didn't really do anything for a few years. Slowly, excrutiatingly, I healed. As soon as I began to recover, zip, I was back in the pool. I have swum laps most days since I was in college. A lifelong habit.

In recent weeks, I have been walking several miles a day, pushing myself to get up to ten miles a day. I'm almost there. Walking is much harder for me than swimming. Swimming is pain-free. Walking brings out all my arthritic creaks and joint pain.  I will, I suspect, eventually resume swimming daily as my primary exercise practice. Walking six to ten miles daily, however, has rapidly accelerated my weight loss. I have an iron will when it comes to losing weight, to getting down to my high school weight.

As I told a group of new lawyer friends a week or so ago, one of my weight loss goals is to buy a pair of jeans that would have fit me in high school.

It takes a strong will to push myself to walk as much as I have been. Every step hurts me. I am not exaggerating. Occasionally, I am in so much pain my eyes sting with tears and I consider catching a bus home. I push on.

In such moments, when I am experience much pain and I push on with my walking goal for the day, I usually tell myself "you are growing your will force, you don't know where this power will take you but you know you need to grow your will to get where you are supposed to go."

This might sound like nothing to some. Developing one's will capacity is serious business, a central focus in Anthroposophical meditative life.

I am grateful to have the depth of knowledge of Steiner's work that I have. Recently I hear myself sharing Steiner's ideas more and more. I am sometimes surprised by how much of his thinking I retain. I forget that one of my will capacities is an unusually detailed memory.

I don't think I could walk at all if I had continued to eat dairy.  I have tested what I can eat without inflaming my knees. And I slip and eat a little dairy here and there. I see immediate results in my knees. When I eat dairy, my knees scream when I walk. Then I get clean, avoid all dairy and in just a couple days, my knees don't hurt as I walk. My hips, they always hurt.

I used to have a friend who refused to come to my apartment, would only see me in coffeeshops. And when we met in those coffeeshops, he usually rejected my stated preference to score the easy chairs.  I must have told him a couple dozen times that sitting in hard wooden chairs hurts but he must have forgotten. In a weakning of my will force, I would accommodate his preference for wooden chairs and do my best to hide my pain. I should have exercised my will and taken care of myself, insisting on only visiting with this 'friend' when I could sit in soft chairs.

I have some shame around this pain, as if it is my fault my hips hurt most of the time. Maybe it is. I should not have gotten fat, although I am not fat now. I am not longer eligible for weight loss surgery for I have lost so much weight!

Rambling. Tired. Losing focus as I ramble, eh?