The Best Use of the Will is to Be Willing
We live in a culture obsessed with the “triumph of the human will.” We are told to grit our teeth, manifest our destiny, and hustle until we bend reality to our liking. The underlying assumption is that if we just push hard enough, we can force the puzzle pieces of life into place.
I used to try that. But at some point, I had a realization that was both incredibly liberating and slightly embarrassing: Not only is it utterly futile to try and force outcomes, but I am also far too limited to even know what I should be forcing in the first place. And when I did pull off what I had imagined, I realized my imagination was too small.
The Illusion of Strength
If you think about it, we treat our personal “will” as our ultimate strength, but it is often our greatest weakness. It’s the stubborn part of us that demands a situation go exactly this way, totally blind to the fact that “this way” might actually be terrible for us. We are like toddlers screaming for ice cream for breakfast, completely oblivious to the impending stomach ache, furious at the universe for not cooperating.
That is when I coined a rule for myself: The best use of the will is to be willing.
We traditionally think of power in the Nietzschean sense - a “will to power” that demands we conquer our circumstances, dominate our environment, and bend the world to our desires. But true power is actually inverted. It is the strength required to master our own compulsion to control and to constantly intervene and to worry and fret.
This sounds like a paradox, or perhaps a lost Taoist proverb. Taoism talks a lot about Wu Wei - the art of effortless action, or swimming (or even just floating with the current rather than trying to push the river. True willingness means taking your hands off the controls. It means stepping back, refusing the temptation to intervene, and stopping the exhausting work of trying to shape every single outcome. Instead, you use your will for one specific thing: choosing to be open and available. Willing to see and try something new and unexpected. Willing to let go of control. Willing to let life itself work things out around you.
This is not to say there is not a place for the will, there certainly is. It is a matter of using the will for the right purpose - not to control everything outside of you but rather to take control of yourself.
The Will as Self-Discipline paired with the Willingness to Live with Ambiguity
The Will (Self-Discipline): Choosing to sit down at the easel, studio desk or laptop every single morning at a set time, regardless of mood, inspiration, or how tired you feel. You use your will to govern your physical behavior, honor commitments, and keep promises to yourself.
The Willingness (Accepting Ambiguity): Looking at the blank canvas, the empty page, or a messy pile of raw materials and accepting that you have absolutely no idea what the final result will be. You deliberately refuse to panic or force a premature structure, letting the composition stay unresolved and ambiguous until it naturally clarifies itself.
The Will to Set Intentions paired with the Willingness to Let Them Unfold
The Will (Intentionality): Deciding exactly what you want to explore - such as setting a clear intention to compile a series of essays, organize an archival library, or build a new body of visual work. You use your will to draw a boundary, declare a direction, and point your compass forward.
The Willingness (Non-Intervention): Resisting the urge to micromanage how that direction must manifest. If a project naturally veers down an unexpected path, or if an essay evolves into a completely different topic, you use your willingness to stop intervening or trying to force it back to your original script. You allow reality to improvise and shape the final result often leading you to a much better outcome than you had imagined.
The Will to Overcome Impatience paired with the Willingness to Wait for the Right Moment
The Will (Delayed Gratification): Actively conquering the modern compulsion for instant results, quick validation, or immediate publication. You use your will as an internal anchor to restrain impulsive rushing, quiet your anxieties, and keep working steadily in private.
The Willingness (Patience): Accepting the natural, slow growth timeline of the universe and your materials. You treat your unread archive, your raw papers, or your unfinished drafts like items in storage - completely at peace with the fact that they are waiting quietly, trusting that they will reveal exactly where they belong or where they are going only when the right moment arrives.
The Blank Canvas of Zero Expectations
But it is easy to misunderstand this approach. People hear “let go of control” and assume it means lying on the couch, doing absolutely nothing, and watching life pass you by. True willingness is actually active and attentive. You still show up. You still do the work. You just change how you handle the process.
To survive this shift, I had to pair my first rule with another saying I coined for myself: “Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed.”
At first glance, it sounds a bit cynical - like a pessimistic shield against reality. But in practice, it is pure freedom. When we approach a situation with high expectations, we are secretly trying to control the future. We write a script in our heads for how people should react, how a project should succeed, or how a day should go. When reality inevitably improvises, we get disappointed that our preconcieved expectations were not fulfilled as we had hoped. But maybe we were expecting the wrong thing.
By expecting nothing, you stop trying to force outcomes on the universe. You strip away the rigid demands of what should happen. This doesn’t mean you expect bad things; it means you leave the canvas blank and your mind neutral. If something great happens, it is a genuinely, pleasant surprise. If nothing happens, you lose nothing because you weren’t holding onto a fantasy in the first place. It turns out that zero expectation is the secret to total appreciation.
The Forensics of Daily Life
This isn’t just abstract philosophy; it is literally how we discover truth in the real world. Think about science or forensics.
If a forensic investigator walks into a crime scene with a predetermined theory of what happened, they are a terrible investigator. They will experience confirmation bias. They will only look for clues that fit their hunch, entirely blind to the muddy footprint or the stray hair that proves otherwise. To find the truth, an investigator has to walk into the room with zero expectations. They have to use their will to remain completely willing to see whatever is actually there, no matter how unexpected or inconvenient it might be to their original assumptions.
We need to treat our own lives less like a movie we are directing, and more like a laboratory in which we are investigating. When you stop trying to force a specific outcome, you stop blinding yourself to alternative paths. You give reality the space to show you something better than what you could have planned. By expecting nothing and remaining willing, you aren’t being passive - you are being a good scientist. You are letting the data of life guide your next move. You notice subtle patterns forming, motifs developing and see things taking shape that were not previously obvious. Our experience becomes conversational with Life.
The Mid-Career Crisis of Faith
We see the alternative to this investigative openness everywhere in our culture, particularly in the relentless drive to reach the “top of the heap.” It is a widely held, deeply problematic assumption that to succeed is to dominate - to force our world into submission so completely that those we admire have no choice but to applaud.
This trap is especially perilous for creatives, artists, and writers navigating their late thirties and forties. By this stage in life, the initial, romantic momentum of youth has often burned out. Many look at the traditional art world or institutional metrics of success and realize they haven’t achieved the total domination they or their peers expected. It is a threshold marked by a profound crisis of faith. The trail they have been walking for decades suddenly feels ambiguous, and they are left trying to figure out how to proceed forward - and more agonizingly, toward what?
When we obsess over dominating our environment or reaching an arbitrary summit to justify our creative calling, our will is entirely misdirected. We use it to manipulate external outcomes, chase market trends, and police the opinions of others. This is a structural guarantee of suffering. First, because the external art market and its gatekeepers refuse to be micromanaged. Second, because tying your peace of mind to the admiration of an audience means you have handed them the keys to your well-being. You aren’t actually king of the hill; you are a prisoner to their validation.
From Dictator to Observer
This is the ultimate irony of pure willfulness. It dresses itself up as supreme strength, leadership, and ambition. But because it is rooted in a rigid demand for a specific outcome - I must be seen as successful - it is completely fragile. When reality improvises and the creative trail winds through a dry valley, immense disappointment and exhaustion follow.
Ultimately, giving up control is not the same as giving up power. True power lies in adaptability, not rigidity. For an artist at mid-career, the shift from willfulness to willingness is the only way forward. When you stop fighting the universe to prove your own will, you finally free up your energy to cooperate with reality. By emptying your mind of expectations and unlocking your willingness, you cease being a frustrated dictator of your life and become its most fascinated observer - and that is exactly when life, and the work itself, finally begins to reveal itself.
Join the Conversation: For the artists and writers here, have you ever hit a wall where forcing a creative outcome completely exhausted you? How do you practice “willingness” in your studio or writing routine when the path forward feels ambiguous? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
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