Holding Tension and Its Limits

This episode discusses the concept of willpower, particularly in relation to the struggles of individuals with ADHD.

We question the traditional notion of willpower as merely doing, or not doing, something despite our internal emotional opposition.

We explore how creating supportive environments and pausing enables wandering minds to make better choices and engage in meaningful activities.

We discuss:

1. What defines willpower
2. Willpower versus the wave of emotions
3. The power of holding tension
4. Supporting our needs with pauses

We conclude with a piano improvisation piece called 'On a Dare'.

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Transcript

Willpower. What a troublesome word. Those with ADHD in particular supposedly don't have enough. Fight more, do more, do the thing you don't want to do. But what is this willpower thing anyway?

What Defines Willpower?

Have you ever had a cut and then knew, while it was healing, that it was important not to pick at it. But there was some part of you that just felt like, "Hmm, I just gotta scratch it,"

And when you hold back, and you just keep holding back, is that willpower?

Maybe we can define willpower as the ability to deliberately do, or not do something, despite an unaccommodating, if not deeply opposed, emotional world that surrounds it.

But is that really the focus? To do things we don't want or not do things we do want?

Willpower Versus the Wave of Emotions

The emotional world, is a swirling world.

At times chaotic, at times peaceful, sometimes vengeful. Throwing one wave after another at us.

Is it a lack of willpower to fail to stand against some typhoon of emotion? I think there's something here, some tension.

When going with the flow, we follow some line of least resistance, a summed vector of internal fields of boat floating wherever the sea of emotion takes us in this moment.

But we know that it's important to occasionally hold back.

The Power of Holding Tension

When we're having a bad day and someone asks us for one more thing, we hold a certain tension to not respond.

When meditating and trying to hold onto awareness itself. We hold a tension.

When we try to understand, build, create, maybe hold two ideas in mind simultaneously. Once again, there's this tension that we're holding onto.

But holding that tension seems about as possible as chronically holding a 50 pound weight in the air. At some point we lose it. Consciousness being the way it is.

We don't even recognize that we've lost it. I dunno about you, but, even though I've meditated for many years, there's still plenty of times that I wonder, wait, where did I go?

Beyond the Path of Least Resistance

Pushing ourselves through a difficult task can be similar. Somehow we lose track, exhausted. There's something that happens when we can hold tension.

We discover, if not create, options. We have this option to place ourselves on alternate paths. We realize that there's more than just the path of least resistance.

And as such, we can create more accommodating situations, make better choices. We can even create supports for ourselves.

When practicing on the piano and only going with the flow, I engage in some empty form of play. Playing the same piece I know all too well, doing the same licks over and over.

But in that pause I see other paths. This I know, this I don't. Here's a book that I can look at. Here's an idea and an area to study. How would I even do that? Options we did not have before begin to form.

And from here, we can seek the windows of challenge within the difficult. We can simplify things, shrink them down, slow them down. Whether in piano or in therapy, or in hobby or work, whether habit or craft.

To resolve, if not dissolve, the difficult into the newly easy. Mind can discover paths of tension to now release.

Support Through Pausing

In other words, what we seek is not necessarily more willpower, some finite resource if there ever was one. Instead, we look to practice using our limited reserves to pause.

To pause for leaving that itch unscratched, to decide what we can to support ourselves — we place ourselves in situations showing up to a visit.

We create our environments to support us, reducing our distractions so that we can find ways we can support ourselves, so we don't need to hold ourselves back so much. And that way we can engage with our nature of curiosity, if not grace.

The following piece is called, “On a Dare.” It's an improvisation. It'll never be played again. I hope you enjoy it.

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