How’s your strength of will? Without a healthy will, challenges may be impossible to overcome, getting the motivation to start anything new is difficult, and momentum never seems to build.

Will is a developmental resource, and like all such resources, in some of is, it’s underdeveloped, while in others of us, it’s overused. Too little will can lead to hopelessness, despair, and passivity. Too much causes burn-out, and an incessant goal-orientation that makes life less enjoyable.

If you want to develop your will, it needs exercise! Taking on deliberate challenges gives you an opportunity to exercise your will. Just the practice of getting to the other side of challenging activities helps you believe you can do it. And there are some tricks to help you get stronger along the way . . .

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.