As a business coach who herself battles a food addiction and depression, I am fascinated at the theory that we have a limited amount of will power.

I have lost 187 pounds. left an abusive marriage, left a six-figure job to start my coaching consultancy and have recently written a book. I have accomplished all this in 4 years. I have had to change many behaviors and have a hard time cmprehending a limit on will power in light of this.

If I were to imagine a finite amount of will power through all of this, I wonder if I would have been able to accomplish all of this. Would I have used my resources of energy, faith, wilingness in different ways? Through all of this I have reached out to my whole community for help. Was I really adding to my will power reserves by tapping into others??

My Book Who’s Helping Who? due out in several weeks, talks to the topic of going outside of yourself and asking for help as a way to build your own energy, build relationships and hence build intimacy.

I love the notion of meditation as a way to increase or leverage what we have, yet question the ability to build enough alone. I would theorize that social and emotional intelligence is actually the way to increase personal will power and that of others.

As you point out we are wired to connect. I would say we are wired to build upon ourselves by connecting with others. We are designed to leverage each others skills and abilities and hence grow stronger together as a community, as creative beings, and as individuals.

I believe in the sum of the parts. We are about connection, and it is the skills of reaching out for and giving help that will support all of us achieve our potentials.

Without being able to receive help, we are ill equipped to give it in a healthy way. It is the flow and balance of the Cycle of Help that allows for full expression of everyones gifts and abilities, no less will power and the ability to make meaningful change….

Many do have the belief that they can overcome every single weakness and incompetencies that they have, but that in my opinion is some unrealistic goal.
What’s critical is finding out or discovering (and not choosing) our areas of natural strength. We must then learn to polish and exploit these inherent abilities for maximum profit.

For illustration purposes, a 4 x 4 could never outperform a McLaren or Ferrari on a smooth race track, no matter how hard it tries. Reverse the equation by changing the circuit to rough sandy terrain. The speedmasters would hardly move. By their very nature and inherent design, each machine already has competitive advantage as a function of the environment and frame of reference.

Indeed, we do have will power and as much as we could develop it through constant use, we still do have limitations. Paradoxically, those limitations are to our advantage. A research carried out on different sets of kids exposed to confined and unfenced playgrounds showed startling results. The kids in the well demarcated playground were adventurous and moved about freely through all nooks and crannies of the playground.
The other kids (in the vast open playground) were less adventurous, stayed put in a small place, and exhibited less creative tendencies.

I believe the learning point is that we’ve all got limited but sufficient measures of will power to achieve what we are designed to achieve.