You Have to “Want To”
Why Real Willpower Begins with Aligning Your Life to a Higher Purpose
My Father’s Wisdom
My father was a remarkable man who taught through stories, always colorful, sometimes exaggerated, but always packed with wisdom. I didn’t appreciate them fully back then. Like many sons, I assumed I knew more than I did. It wasn’t until I found myself teaching my own sons, repeating his words almost verbatim, that I understood the weight behind them.
Lately, I’ve been feeling what many midlife professionals quietly admit: that sense of being stretched thin, unclear, and disconnected. The responsibilities pile up, work, family, health, faith, and somewhere between doing everything and meaning everything, we lose our why.
When that happens, autopilot takes over. We keep moving forward but without enthusiasm or direction. And that’s when my dad’s voice comes back to me:
“Son, sometimes you just gotta want to.”
I was seventeen when he first said it. Stressed about school, sports, and life, I told him I just didn’t have the energy to keep trying. He listened patiently, then smiled and said, “You’ve got to want to!” I remember snapping back, “Of course I want to!”
But that wasn’t what he meant.
Over time, I realized his phrase wasn’t about desire, it was about alignment. He was teaching me that real willpower doesn’t come from emotion or adrenaline; it comes from connecting your will to a deeper purpose.
The Nature of Willpower
Willpower, what we often call self-control or discipline, isn’t just mental toughness. It’s the conscious ability to direct attention and energy toward what matters most, even when comfort or distraction beckons.
Neuroscience tells us that willpower lives in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s control center for planning and decision-making. But this system is finite, it tires under stress, fatigue, and uncertainty. That’s why forcing yourself through life on sheer effort eventually fails. What sustains you isn’t willpower alone, but willpower with meaning.
Align Your Will to Something Bigger
In faith traditions, we’re taught to align our will with God’s. Through prayer, Bible study, and meditation, we seek to live according to divine wisdom. But even outside of religion, the principle holds: aligning our personal will to a higher purpose, a calling, a cause, a set of core values, fuels resilience in ways brute discipline never can.
Modern psychology calls this value congruence: the alignment between what we do and what we deeply believe. When our actions match our values, motivation becomes renewable. When they don’t, we burn out, no matter how hard we push.
Neuroscience reinforces this: acting in alignment with purpose activates reward pathways and buffers stress responses. Stoic philosophy echoes it too, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus taught that peace comes not from controlling outcomes, but from aligning one’s will with nature, reason, or Logos.
Across disciplines, the message is the same:
Strength of will is not about domination—it’s about direction.
Clarifying Your Higher Purpose
So how do we bring this alignment into focus? Start by making your higher purpose visible.
Name it. What do you ultimately serve, faith, family, freedom, growth, contribution?
Write it down. Purpose gets stronger when you can articulate it clearly.
Check your alignment. Do your daily decisions and goals reflect that purpose?
When you can see your purpose on paper, your will has something to aim at. You no longer rely on fleeting motivation, you draw on conviction.
Returning to My Father’s Lesson
As I’ve faced new seasons of stress and uncertainty, I’ve realized my father’s phrase, “You gotta want to”, was his simple way of saying: Your will must serve something worthy.
You can’t sustain focus by forcing yourself. You can only sustain it by wanting something big enough to orient your entire life toward it.
So the next time your energy wanes or you feel aimless, ask not just how hard can I push? but what am I aligned to?
Because true willpower isn’t about control, it’s about connection.
And once your will is aligned with purpose, you won’t just move forward. You’ll move forward with meaning.
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