Willpower Essay

When one thinks of college, obviously studying, preparing for and completing various kinds of work comes to mind. For students, It takes most of us the sheer ability to dig deep down and work for us to overcome the larger obstacles in our academic paths. This whole idea of drawing from some sort of power from within is presented as Willpower. The definition of willpower, according to Merriam-Webster translates to the ability to control yourself: strong determination that allows you to do something difficult. This sort of innate ability is inside every human and they end up tapping into it when something difficult comes up like a hurdle they have to get over, or in this papers case, a difficult project assigned in class. In this research assignment,

Others would even blame their imperfect choices on their flawed willpower. We live in a society today where many people are finding it harder to succeed and not even having the motivation to try due to wanting to take it easy. A lot of people believe that willpower and being motivated can be taught or learned and in some cases it can be. In this specific case, it can be seen as delaying self gratification. A good example of this would be the experiment conducted by Walter Mischel from Columbia University who wanted to test self control in children and it was called the marshmallow test which laid the groundwork for the study self control. Mischel came up with a system that viewed willpower as “hot and cool” The cool system is related to the thought process, reminding yourself why you should complete the task, or in his case why the child should not eat the marshmallows. The hot system deals with more reaction and reflex especially with certain triggers such as the child eating the marshmallow without thinking about the consequences. These two can be compared to having the angel and devil on your shoulder. When willpower tends to waver or fail, the hot side can take over leading you to more rash or drastic reactions. An example of this can be made from how people would normally react when given two separate options and one being right and the other being wrong. The cool person in the situation who chose the right one would be happy and proud, maybe even a bit relieved while the other person in the situation would be annoyed, and stressed out. Now that we have touched willpower as a subject, we can go into how it 's effect works in a academic or learning