174. You Don’t Need More Willpower - You Need This Instead

Willpower is a temporary override, not a long-term strategy.
What high-performing women need instead is a united will. Here's how to build one.

Last Updated: September 17, 2026

Why Willpower Doesn't Work (and What Actually Does)

I completed a 100-day Reels challenge last year. One reel, every single day, for a hundred days. I only made it because David Goggins yelled at me from inside a YouTube video with Andrew Huberman, where they discussed research showing the anterior mid-cingulate cortex — the brain region associated with willpower — grows larger in people who regularly do things they don't want to do.

So I did the thing I didn't want to do. A hundred times.

Did it build willpower? Probably. Did it translate to consistent content creation afterwards? Not even a little. It took me weeks — maybe months — before I could even stomach the thought of posting again. Willpower got me through the challenge. It did not build the habit.

If you've ever white-knuckled your way through a six-week workout plan, pulled off 75 Hard, or held a restrictive eating pattern for just long enough to prove you could — only to watch it all unravel the moment the challenge ended — you already know what I'm about to say. You don't need more willpower. You need something else entirely. (And if you want to understand why that self-sabotage pattern keeps repeating, I've written about that too.)

What Is Willpower — and Why Does the Wellness World Worship It?

Willpower is the ability to do something you don't want to do. That's it. It is David Goggins and Jocko Willink's philosophical lovechild — the "do it anyway" muscle. And there is a place for it. The anterior mid-cingulate cortex research Goggins discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast suggests this capacity can genuinely be strengthened through repeated practice.

The problem isn't that willpower is useless. It's that our culture has turned it into the entire strategy. We've been sold the idea that if we just want it badly enough, force ourselves hard enough, feel guilty enough about failing — we'll eventually push through. And for short bursts, that's true. Willpower can get you through a sprint. But it cannot carry you through a life. (If you want to hear the full conversation, the Huberman Lab podcast episode with Goggins is worth your time — just don't let it convince you that grit is the whole answer.)

Why Doesn't Willpower Work Long-Term?

Willpower fails as a long-term strategy because it is a temporary override system running on a limited resource — not a sustainable operating system for behaviour change. It borrows energy from a tank that also has to cover stress, decision-making, emotional regulation, and keeping you alive on a hard Tuesday.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

It runs on force, shame, or fear. If the engine underneath your willpower is I'm not good enough unless I conquer this or I'm terrified of what happens if I don't change — the fuel itself is corrosive. You're burning anxiety to build habits, which is roughly as sustainable as lighting your furniture on fire to heat the house.

It's unreliable under pressure. You have abundant willpower when you're well-rested, life is calm, and the stars have personally aligned for your success. Throw in a stressful week, a bad sleep, an overstimulated nervous system, and suddenly that willpower is needed for survival — not for building a new morning routine.

It can't function when your internal parts are at war. This is the piece most people miss. If one part of you wants to show up boldly while another part is quietly terrified of visibility, willpower becomes a game of tug-of-war where you're pulling on both ends of the rope. You're not going to get anywhere. You're just going to get exhausted. (I wrote about the eight red flags that your struggle is about safety, not food — and it might hit different after reading this.)

And this is where relying on willpower alone does real damage. It deepens the internal battle, amplifies anxiety, and creates the conditions for those F-it moments — the ones where you don't just take a break from the goal. You abandon it entirely.

What's the Difference Between Willpower and a United Will?

A united will means your desire, actions, beliefs, emotions, and energy are all moving in the same direction — toward the same goal, at the same time, without an internal faction quietly running sabotage operations in the background. I first encountered this concept from Carolyn Elliott, author of Existential Kink, and it's lived rent-free in my brain ever since.

When you have a united will, willpower either flows naturally as a bonus — or becomes unnecessary altogether.

Think of it this way. Willpower is forcing yourself to run while one leg is chained to a post. A united will is unchaining the leg and discovering you want to move. No more oscillating — that exhausting pattern where you force your way forward, hit a wall of inner resistance, slide backward, regroup, and force again. A united will replaces that cycle with something closer to a flow state, where the resistance that demanded willpower in the first place has been addressed at the root. (If you're curious about how control itself can become the hidden kink keeping you stuck, I explored the shadow side of food, power, and the need for control in a later episode.)

The question becomes: how do you get there?

How Do You Release Internal Resistance?

Releasing resistance is the first pathway to a united will. Your mentor Patrick Dominguez, founder of Inner Coach — a somatic coaching methodology I've trained in since 2021 — frames it this way: you transform a stuck or oscillating relationship with progress into a flow state by identifying and releasing whatever is creating the internal drag.

That resistance can show up as emotions you're avoiding, limiting beliefs, old patterns you've given too much meaning, or — and this is the one that gets high-performing women — specific inner parts that surface when the stakes get high.

Here's my ugly, honest example. I've gotten genuinely good at navigating 95% of my life without turning to food. Months without binge eating. Every hard emotion felt and processed without numbing. And yet — every time I decide to fully show up online and offer something? The compulsion comes roaring back like it never left.

It isn't a coincidence. It's a Perfectionist part who believes: If I show up perfectly, no one can criticize me, and if no one criticizes me, I'm safe. Her strategy? Sabotage my energy with food so I never have to risk being seen imperfectly. Then I spend all my creative bandwidth solving the food problem again instead of building the thing I was meant to bring into the world. (I went deep on what's actually happening in your nervous system during those moments — and it's not what you think.)

She isn't bad, this part. She's trying to protect me. But her protection strategy is outdated. So I'm doing something different now — I'm creating through the pattern, not waiting until after. I recorded this podcast the morning after a Popeyes dinner, feeling less energized than usual, and I hit record anyway. Not from willpower. From a conscious decision to show that Perfectionist part that showing up messy is safe now.

That's releasing resistance. Not fighting the part. Not shaming it. Meeting it, understanding its fear, and proving — through action — that the danger it's protecting you from isn't real anymore. And sometimes, what looks like perfectionism is actually something far more interesting — it's the woman you're becoming, pushing against the identity you've outgrown.

What Is Creative Power — and How Do You Build It?

Creative power is the second pathway to a united will. Once you've cleared resistance, you turn up the heat — not through force, but through desire, belief, and momentum. You stop fixing yourself and start creating the life that pulls you forward. Patrick Dominguez teaches both channels as complementary forces in Inner Coach, and in my experience, most women underinvest in this second one.

Build consistency through routines and rituals. When a practice becomes second nature, it stops requiring willpower. The compound effect of small daily actions — the kind that don't feel heroic in the moment — creates a momentum that willpower could never manufacture. Consistency becomes its own engine.

Activate the powerful parts of you — not just the wounded ones. Parts work isn't only about healing the hurting voices. It's about intentionally calling on the parts of you that can hold bigger things. In my own life, I work with the archetype of the Warrior Queen. She doesn't check if she's fully healed before she leads. She leads as the healing. She builds the business while walking through the fire — not after it. She says: Even badass warriors lose battles. They don't lose the war, because they keep showing up.

Make your vision bigger than the discomfort. When your dream is compelling enough — genuinely, bone-deep compelling — old coping mechanisms start to shrink in proportion. You become willing to sacrifice comfort, certainty, and the cheap thrill of staying small for the long game of building something legendary. (If you want the practical skill underneath this — how to build the capacity to hold bigger goals without self-sabotaging with food — start there.)

But you have to admit it first. Admit your dreams are big. Admit you want to change not just your own life but the lives of people around you. The more you tap into that vision, the smaller those old patterns become — and the more creative power you have at your disposal.

FAQs: Willpower and Behaviour Change

Q: Is willpower completely useless? A: Willpower is useful for short bursts and temporary challenges — finishing a race, meeting a deadline, pushing through one hard morning. It becomes a liability when it's your only strategy for long-term change, because it depletes under stress and can't resolve the internal conflicts that cause self-sabotage.

Q: What does a "united will" actually feel like? A: It feels like flow. You're not forcing yourself forward against resistance — you're moving toward something you genuinely want with all parts of you aligned. Actions feel less effortful, decisions become clearer, and you stop oscillating between progress and collapse.

Q: How do I figure out which inner parts are creating resistance? A: Notice when the sabotage pattern kicks in. Is it when you're about to be visible? When you commit to something new? When life gets bigger? The timing reveals the part. A Perfectionist surfaces around visibility. A People Pleaser surfaces around boundaries. The pattern is the map.

Q: Can I do this inner work on my own? A: You can start with journaling and honest self-observation — noticing patterns, naming the parts that show up, and asking what they're trying to protect you from. Going deeper often benefits from a coach or methodology that works with parts, somatics, and the nervous system, like Patrick Dominguez's Inner Coach or a parts-work-informed approach to food freedom.

Q: Why do my old food habits come back when I try to do something big? A: Because the food pattern is often a protection strategy, not a character flaw. When a bigger version of your life feels threatening to the parts of you that prioritize safety, they reach for the most familiar way to keep you small and manageable. Addressing the safety concern — not the food — is what breaks the cycle. I go deeper on the hidden reason high-performing women struggle with food freedom if you want the full picture.

The Bottom Line

Willpower is a short-range weapon, and you've been trying to fight a long war with it. The alternative isn't softness or surrender — it's a united will, where every part of you is pulling in the same direction.

Get there by doing both: release the resistance keeping your internal team fractured, and add creative power by building from desire instead of deficiency. When all parts of you are working together, willpower becomes a nice bonus. Not a requirement.

You're listening to a podcast called Embodied Writing Warrior for a reason. You're not here for the small life. But first — you have to admit it.

And in my humble opinion, no better way to create a united will than by turning your inner fire and your inner softness into hot fanfic characters and making them fall in love with each other. Learn the entire method in my book, Food Freedom Fantasy.

To Your Power & Freedom,
Kayla