تربية الإرادة .. كتاب علم النَّفس جميل صَليبا

Raising the will

There is not enough space in this book to talk about raising the will at length, so let us limit ourselves to mentioning some warnings taken from the previous analysis.

General note.
The will grows through practice and exercise, just as the udder grows through stretching. The reason for this is that if a person exercises himself with voluntary effort, this exercise gives him useful habits. If a person is not born strong-willed, he must train himself all the time to learn to choose and weigh matters. Because weakness or loss of will often results from lack of practice and lack of exercise. A person may learn to control himself through the influence of external causes, or he may be unable to do so due to illness, fatigue, old age, and laziness, but raising the will is possible at all times, and it does not end until the end of life.

1 - Body health.
A strong will only exists in a healthy body. Body health is the basic means of self-control. Therefore, in raising the will, it is necessary to follow the rules of good health, rest, and physical exercise. A person is not strong-willed unless he has a correct nervous system. His nervous system will not be active unless he takes care of his food, breathing, and rest. Heavy foods tire the nervous system and weaken the will. Let us eat a little and digest well. The beginning of wisdom is digesting food. The beginning of madness is gluttony, exhaustion of the stomach and nerves. Good breathing is no less dangerous than good nutrition, and it requires that it be deep, and that the air be pure and purify the blood. In all of this, exercise is necessary. By sports, I mean reasonable physical exercises based on natural movements, not championship exercises that most often lead to the development of one organ at the expense of another. Sports exercises include walking in the open air, scientific trips, scouting, bully exercises, and engaging in some manual labor during rest times. And organized rest is not laziness. Organizing rest times strengthens the will. As for laziness, it is the arch enemy of the will. In short: exercise is the elementary school of will. Muscular effort is the first form of voluntary effort.

2- Benefiting from habits and involuntary movements.
In raising the will, one must make use of good habits and well-established involuntary movements. Good habits, such as order and moderation, facilitate the cultivation of the will, and involuntary movements help to save time. However, it is required that these movements be characterized by some flexibility, and that they should not be rigid or harsh, because if they become purely mechanical, they will prevent the advancement of the will. The mechanism is therefore a condition for raising the will, but if it becomes strong, it leads to its weakening and annihilation.

3- Love of order.
Among the conditions for raising the will is a love of order, a tendency to cooperate, work, habituated to being active, and staying away from laziness. It is obligatory for the child to learn obedience and to govern and govern before all else, because that. Firstly, he is accustomed to vanquishing the self and restraining it. Whoever learns obedience learns order and knows how to manage his actions. Himself, his gender. The family has other children. The school has a profound effect on creating this spirit in the souls of children, and as the child’s awareness grows, his feeling of the necessity of submitting to a reasonable system becomes stronger, so he follows this system willingly and is satisfied with it himself, not through coercion, cruelty, or oppression. The will of the regime is based on the spirit of personal clinging and a sense of social cooperation.

4- Educating the mind.
- Then the will is inherent to the mind, so the child’s will does not develop unless he learns to think and pay attention. Scientists have explained the harm of recklessness, distraction, and scattered thoughts in raising the will, and they said: The will is not strong unless the goal of the action is clear in the mind.
William James said. (The strong-willed man shouts his poison without hesitation at the voice of reason, even if its call is weak, and he seeks without fear the idea emanating from death. He receives it with grace, celebrates it, believes it, and fights for its sake the army of opposing perceptions that want to remove it from feeling. Thus, the idea overcomes. Contrary to other thoughts, using the effort of attention and determination, until she gathers her friends and allies around her, and finally changes the current of feeling. And when you change the current of feeling, you change the action, because the new idea generates all its kinetic results when it becomes the master of the situation, so the difficulty is all in keeping it and approving it. In the soul, the way to do this is for attention to resist the natural flow of thoughts, and to insist on supporting the new idea that it wants to succeed, until it becomes able to support itself. This effort made by attention is the factor that strengthens the will. And if attention is the core of the will, then thinking is its vain. Descartes even said: The strength of a strong will is clarity of thought.

5-Refining emotions.
One of the conditions for raising the will is the cultivation of emotions, because the idea alone is not sufficient to nourish the action, rather it needs to be coupled with something else, which is the cultivation of sublime emotions that push a person to desire lofty ideals. A person cannot accomplish great deeds except with intense enthusiasm and strong emotion. Therefore, he must contain his emotion, organize it, and learn how to direct it to the matter he wants. Enthusiasm and emotion are two basic conditions for raising the will. Nothing kills the will more than stagnation in the heart and doubt about the value of action.