The Pull
Why Willpower Fails and What Actually Works
One Insight
Willpower depletes. Vision pulls.
You can’t force yourself toward a future you don’t viscerally want. Discipline and willpower are useful tools, but they run on a limited resource that’s usually gone by 3 PM after you’ve spent all day fighting yourself.
Pull motivation works differently.
When your vision of the future is clear and emotionally compelling enough, you’re not pushing yourself toward it. You’re being drawn. The movement feels inevitable, not effortful.
This isn’t motivational rhetoric. It’s biochemistry.
Your brain treats vague obligations (”I should work on my health”) as threats to current comfort. Threat activation suppresses prefrontal cortex function and makes everything harder.
But when you have a clear, emotionally resonant target what Jordan Peterson calls “Aim” your brain can calculate a path. Dopamine pathways activate. Movement toward the target feels rewarding instead of punishing.
The difference isn’t just psychological. It’s neurochemical.
Tony Robbins talks about managing your state through movement, gratitude, and visualization not as a “wellness practice” but as tactical biochemistry. If your energy drops, limiting beliefs take over. If you maintain intensity, solutions appear.
This is the distinction between forcing change and engineering it:
When you’re forcing, you’re depleting willpower trying to push yourself forward.
When you’re engineering, you’re creating conditions where forward movement becomes automatic.
The first exhausts you. The second compounds.
One Real Moment
I did something I never thought I’d want to try.
A 5-day fast. No food. Just water.
I expected to hate it. I expected constant hunger, mental fog, counting down the hours until I could eat again. I expected to need massive willpower to push through.
That’s not what happened.
Day 1: Mild hunger, manageable. Day 2: Mental clarity started kicking in. Day 3: I felt lighter. Sharper. More present than I’d felt in months.
By Day 4, something shifted. I wasn’t suffering through this. I was experiencing a state I wanted to KEEP experiencing.
That’s pull motivation.
I finished the 5 days. Felt so good that I immediately started planning a 7-day fast.
Completed it. The mental clarity at Day 3-4 was even more pronounced. My body felt light instead of bloated. My mind felt sharp instead of foggy.
I wasn’t forcing myself to fast. I was being pulled toward the experience of that state.
Now it’s become a system:
16:8 intermittent fasting daily (eating window from noon to 8 PM)
24-hour fast once a week
3-day fast once a month
7-day fast once per season
Not through discipline. Not through willpower. Through engineering conditions where the state I want to operate from becomes my default.
This gave me something I’d been denied my entire life: ownership.
For decades, I felt controlled. By my toxic work environment. By my body (chronic pain, fatigue from operating under siege). By an installed belief so deep I didn’t recognize it as a belief: My life’s only purpose is to take on as much pain as I can for others. Failing to do so makes me unworthy of living.
That wasn’t mine. It was installed by authority figures who had power over my circumstances. The message was always: suffer for others, your needs don’t matter, you don’t get to pursue happiness.
I’d been treating my own life as something rented that I had to constantly pay for through suffering, rather than something I own and can shape to suit my aspirations.
Every day was rent payment. Every moment of peace felt stolen. Every pursuit of something I wanted felt like defaulting on the debt I owed for existing.
Completing that first 7-day fast proved something I needed to prove: I can do something entirely FOR ME that feels GOOD instead of punishing. And I don’t become unworthy for prioritizing my well-being.
That’s not just about fasting. That’s about claiming ownership of my life instead of treating it as perpetually rented.
And once you prove capacity in one domain, it compounds everywhere else.
Pull motivation + clear ownership = sustainable building.
One Tool: The Pull Protocol
If you’re exhausted from fighting yourself through willpower and want to create conditions where forward movement feels inevitable, here’s what works:
Step 1: Clarify Your Aim (Make It Visceral, Not Abstract)
What to do:
Don’t just set goals. Create a future so specific and emotionally resonant that your brain treats it as more real than your current circumstances.
Peterson’s framework: Your brain needs a target to calculate a path. “I want to be healthier” isn’t a target it’s a direction. “I want the mental clarity and lightness I felt on Day 4 of my last fast” is a target.
Tony’s addition: Feel it. See it. Make it sensory. What does that future state feel like in your body? What does mental clarity actually feel like versus fog? What does agency feel like versus helplessness?
The more sensory detail, the more your brain treats it as achievable reality instead of vague fantasy.
Why this works: Your dopamine system rewards movement toward clear targets. Vague goals don’t activate reward pathways they activate anxiety about whether you’re “doing enough.”
Example from my experience:
❌ “I should eat healthier”
✅ “I want the mental sharpness and lightness I experienced during extended fasting”
One creates obligation and resistance. The other creates attraction.
Step 2: Engineer Your Biochemistry (State Precedes Action)
What to do:
Stop waiting to feel motivated to act. Act on your biology to create the state that makes action feel natural.
Morning priming ritual (10 minutes):
Movement that elevates heart rate (jump, dance, pushups, anything)
Gratitude for three specific things (activates positive emotion pathways)
Visualization of your Aim (makes it neurologically real)
Why this works: Your emotional state isn’t something that “happens to you.” It’s biochemistry you can influence. Tony’s work shows that changing your physiology (breathing, movement, focus) changes your emotional state, which changes what actions feel possible.
When you feel defeated, building feels impossible. When you feel certain, building feels inevitable.
You don’t wait for certainty. You create it biochemically.
Example from my experience:
Fasting is literally biochemistry management. After 24-48 hours without food:
Insulin drops, ketone bodies rise
Mental clarity increases (ketones are excellent brain fuel)
Autophagy activates (cellular cleanup)
You feel lighter, sharper, more present
I’m not “disciplining myself” to fast. I’m engineering the biochemical state where my best thinking happens.
Step 3: Build Systems That Remove Friction
What to do:
Identify the valuable actions you’re “planning to do” but never actually doing because friction is too high. Then systematically remove the friction.
Examples:
Want to fast regularly? Build it into your calendar as non-negotiable structure (not “should I fast this week?”)
Want to exercise? Put gym clothes next to bed so barrier is lower
Want to write daily? Open document before bed so it’s waiting in morning
Want to maintain your practice? Schedule it like an appointment, don’t rely on “feeling like it”
Why this works: Willpower is for overcoming friction. Systems eliminate friction. Every decision you remove (”should I do this today?”) is energy you can allocate elsewhere.
When the path is frictionless, you take it. When it’s high-friction, you don’t no matter how much you “should.”
Step 4: Refuse Complexity That Doesn’t Serve Your Aim
What to do:
Get ruthless about what you’re NOT doing. Every platform you’re “planning to be on,” every project you’re “going to start,” every obligation you’re “trying to fit in” ask: Does this serve my Aim?
If not, refuse it. Not “someday.” Now.
Why this works: Complexity creates cognitive load. Every open loop (”I should also be doing X”) consumes processing power even when you’re not actively working on it.
Refusal creates focus. Focus creates momentum. Momentum creates pull.
Example from my experience:
I refused to take on new obligations while building my foundation. My energy goes to:
Weekly writing (building framework publicly)
Psychology studies (building toward practice)
Fasting practice (maintaining the state where building feels possible)
Everything else is noise that would dilute the signal.
Step 5: Repeat Until It’s Myelin
What to do:
Tony talks about myelin the insulation around neural pathways that makes actions automatic through repetition. You build myelin through consistent practice, not through understanding.
Your job: Show up to the system daily, even when you don’t feel like it. The priming. The building. The refusal of what doesn’t serve.
Why this works: At first, it takes effort. After 30 days, it takes less effort. After 90 days, it feels weird NOT to do it.
That’s not willpower anymore. That’s myelin. That’s pull.
Example from my experience:
My fasting schedule is now automatic:
16:8 daily (I don’t think about it, it’s just when I eat)
24h weekly (Thursday is my fast day, non-negotiable)
3 days monthly (first weekend of the month)
7 days quarterly (seasonal reset)
I’m not deciding whether to fast. I’m following the structure I built when I had clarity.
One Micro Win
The 7-day fast worked.
Day 3: mental clarity kicked in exactly as expected. Day 4-5: felt lighter, sharper, more present than I’d felt in months. Day 6-7: proved I could complete something I never thought I’d want to try.
But the micro win isn’t the fast itself. It’s what it represents:
Proof that I have agency over my biochemistry, my mental state, my body.
For two years, I operated under installed beliefs: “You’re lazy. You’re making up pain. You’re using your condition as an excuse.”
Those beliefs came from authority figures who had power over my circumstances. My parents. My ex. My manager.
Completing that fast didn’t just give me mental clarity. It gave me something I’d been denied my entire life: permission to be the main character in my own story.
For decades, I operated under an installed belief so deep I didn’t even recognize it as a belief:
My life’s only purpose is to take on as much pain as I can for others. Failing to do so makes me unworthy of living.
That wasn’t mine. It was installed by parents who told me I deserved punishment. Reinforced by a 16-year marriage where I was labeled “anti-social and sick” for having needs. Activated by a manager who questioned whether I deserved the promotion I’d earned.
The message was clear: Your role is to suffer so others don’t have to. Your needs don’t matter. You don’t get to pursue happiness you get to carry pain.
I’d been treating my own life as something rented that I had to constantly pay for through suffering, rather than something I own and can shape to suit my aspirations.
Every day was rent payment. Every moment of peace felt stolen. Every pursuit of something I wanted felt like I was defaulting on the debt I owed for existing.
Completing that 7-day fast broke something fundamental:
I did something entirely FOR ME. Something that felt GOOD instead of punishing. Something that improved MY mental state, MY physical experience, MY sense of agency.
And the world didn’t end. I didn’t become selfish or unworthy. I became clearer, lighter, more capable of actually building something meaningful.
I stopped being a tenant paying rent through pain and started being an owner shaping my life toward my aspirations.
That’s not just about fasting. That’s about rejecting the installed verdict that I don’t deserve to go after what I actually want.
I have the right to build a practice that serves people. I have the right to pursue psychology. I have the right to write publicly about what matters. I have the right to engineer conditions where MY capacity becomes accessible FOR MY GOALS.
The micro win isn’t proving I can fast. It’s proving I own my life, not rent it.
And once you claim ownership, everything else becomes possible.
If You’re Here...
If you’re reading this because you’re exhausted from trying to discipline yourself forward, tired of the internal battle between what you know you should do and what you actually feel capable of doing.
You might be fighting the wrong battle entirely.
The question might not be “How do I get more disciplined?”
The question might be: “Have I been treating my life as something rented that I have to pay for, rather than something I own and can shape?”
Because if you’re paying rent for your existence through constant suffering, if you believe every moment of peace is stolen and every pursuit of happiness is defaulting on the debt you owe for being alive.
Then no amount of willpower will build the life you actually want.
You’ll keep pushing yourself toward goals that feel like obligations. You’ll keep forcing yourself through disciplines that feel like punishment. You’ll keep exhausting yourself in service of a vision you never viscerally wanted in the first place.
Pull motivation works differently.
It starts with ownership: recognizing that this is YOUR life, that you have the right to shape it toward YOUR aspirations, that pursuing what makes you feel clear and capable and alive isn’t selfish it’s what ownership means.
When that ownership is real not just intellectual but felt in your body everything else becomes simpler.
Your Aim becomes clear because you’re allowed to have one.
Your biochemistry responds because you’re creating states YOU want to experience.
Your systems work because they’re serving YOUR vision, not someone else’s verdict about what you should want.
You’re not lazy. You’re trying to build a life you’ve been treating as rented.
And until you claim ownership viscerally, not just intellectually the engineering won’t work. Because you’ll be engineering toward a destination while still believing you owe rent for existing.
So ask yourself:
What would I build if I stopped treating my life as rented and started treating it as owned?
Not what should you build. Not what would make you worthy. Not what would prove you’re paying your debt.
What do YOU actually want to create with this life that’s YOURS?
That’s where pull begins.
Stay grounded and remember that sustainable change isn’t won through discipline. It’s won through claiming ownership of your life, then engineering the conditions where shaping it toward your aspirations becomes inevitable.
