The power of will can be cultivated in the same way as the muscles of our body. Here are some exercises for building a strong will.

A strong will power is crucial to success in one’s life. There are some methods following which we can achieve for ourselves a tension-free and strong-willed mind.

1. You get into a closed room. It should have a dim light and also a soft music. Ensure that as you are practising this method nobody knocks at the door or puts any obstacles in the way.

Put off your clothes and stretch yourself on the bed. See that your body feels relaxed. Now you suggest to yourself that your feet are totally relaxed and so they are unable to do anything. Now you suggest to other limbs one after another-such as waist, heart, chest, stomach and hands – that they, too, are feeling relaxed. In none of them is any action being noticed. Last you suggest to your mind that it is also feeling relaxed and it has no desire or thought. Finally you suggest to yourself that you are feeling drowsy and perhaps you are about to fall asleep. In a couple of minutes you will drop asleep.

This experiment has a tremendous significance. Every limb follows whatever you suggest. Even the brain if suggested goes thought free. The entire psyche is at your command. Thus you come to possess total control over your mind.

2. If at all you have contracted a bad habit or tendency you put it down on a piece of paper. And place it somewhere so that it can always hit your eye. Your writing table for instance can be an ideal location. Say you are given to chain-smoking. You tried hard to get rid of it. but you could not. Now you write on a piece of paper – ‘Come what may I shall not smoke from today onwards.’ And place it on your writing table. Suggest to yourself that your psyche is quite capable and you can have control over itself. You will not smoke in any case. You suggest to yourself 3 or 4 times a day. Whenever the urge to smoke is taking an upper hand. you look at the table and suggest to yourself that you will not smoke in any circumstance. At night before you retire for sleep suggest to yourself that you will not smoke. Whether you develop headache or tension or indolence, you stick to your determination.

If your determination remains as it is you will certainly give up smoking. It will be taken as an indication of your will power getting strengthened day by day. It will give you a lot of pleasure too.

3. Put down any five lines from a book in front of you. Have a timepiece. Now take a vow that you have got to commit the five lines to memory in only ten minutes. Now repeat the lines without uttering them loudly. Suggest to yourself that you have got to learn them in ten minutes. You yourself will feel that you have learnt the lines within ten minutes. As you continue with this kind of practice reduce the time progressively – from 10 minutes to 8, from 8 minutes to 6. and so on so forth. Soon you will reach a stage when you can learn any five lines in no more than a minute.

4. Ascertain what time you take to cover a certain distance on your bicycle. Suppose you negotiate a distance of 2 kms in 10 minutes. Now you start progressively reducing the time-duration. While you will not feel tired or panting for breath, you will certainly be able to negotiate the same distance in reduced time.

5. You start counting in reverse from 1000 to 1. Ensure that you do not take more than 10 minutes for this job. You take a firm decision that you will now do reverse counting only in 8 minutes. If you achieve this feat taking even less time, it should be taken as an indicator of your firm will power.

You are to bear in mind that you will do a certain thing taking less than the allotted time. It will show that you have gained full control over yourself.

You can have another interesting practice. Place a timepiece in front of you: fix your eye on it, being seated at a place without the slightest movement. At least for 10 minutes continue to watch like this. During this allotted time even if a fly settles down on your face, you shall not budge an inch. In other words you may have any kind of obstacle but you must have grim determination to stick to it in any case. Your determination must know no relaxing.

If you go about the job with sustained determination, you will achieve it within the allotted time-span.

6. After having accomplished the practices referred above the practitioner should take up bafflingly difficult jobs or such jobs as normally take a very long time.

The practitioner should take up a difficult job which takes at least a month. In that case he must accomplish the job within a month.

Similarly the practitioner should fix up to have a certain income within a certain period. Whatever difficulties he may have to face, he must earn this amount within the time schedule.

It is likely that one has to face many difficulties and obstacles doing a job within a fixed time schedule. Whatever be the difficulties he must not give up. If he has full control over his will power, he will certainly achieve it.

Dr. Narayan Dutt Shrimali

Dr. Narayan Dutt Shrimali is a scholar and practitioner of Tantra Yoga. He is also a prolific writer who has authored more than forty books on Tantra, Astrology and other related subjects.