Willpower is the starting point of building Discipline. You have to be thinking about the new habit, and then make yourself use that new habit until it becomes routine. And willpower helps with the “make yourself” part.

It’s been said that the best championship athletes and top business leaders have or had the power to will circumstances to be in their favor. Whether that meant carry their team to a victory in the big game, forcing their products to market, or winning an argument just for the sake of winning, their wills are sometimes described as “indomitable.”

I consider myself a strongly willful person. I decide what I want and how I want things, and do (and say) unreasonable things to make them happen. I want to win things out of sheer perversity.