A Power that Can Move
Mountains

When there is strong will power, nothing can stand before it, neither habit nor addiction nor anything else.

Ram Kapoor (b. 1973) is an Indian television actor about whom The Delhi Times published an interview on March 29, 2015. In the interview he says, “After 20 years of smoking I quit it overnight. From 40 cigarettes to zero, only because my daughter said to me, ‘Dada, you want to die. You want to leave me.’ It has been one year, three months since I stopped smoking.”

Ram Kapoor was addicted to smoking and under normal circumstances it was not possible for him to overcome his addiction. But one sentence from his beloved daughter had shaken him and a strong will power emerged in him. And when there is strong will power, nothing can stand before it, neither habit nor addiction nor anything else.

Often people say that they cannot give up a habit. For example, they say, I cannot stop being angry, or I cannot prevent myself from becoming tense, or I cannot stop hating others, or I cannot agree to humble myself before another, and so on.

All this is not because it is impossible for the person in question to do these things. The real reason is that he is not serious about developing strong will power. If he developed strong will power, he would be able to give up any habit in the same way in which Mr. Kapoor overcame his desire to smoke.

There are two kinds of strong will power—emotion-based and reason-based. There are many people who are motivated by an emotional moment and so abandon their habit. But it is better to abandon something on the basis of reason: a person should think and apply reason to his behaviour, then give up his habit as the result of a well-considered decision.

For example, people often develop complaints about others and go on living in the complaint culture. The habit of complaining is an issue of reason and not of emotion. That is, if a person just thinks about it, he will realize that to go on complaining means being a bad member of society. A good member is one who wishes others well. This kind of thinking is possible through rational analysis. If a person thinks in this manner, he will surely develop strong will power and instantly abandon the complaint culture.

I once met a person who told me that he used to constantly feel angry with others. One day he thought that although he was the one who was angry with others, but it was actually he alone who paid the price for this because he constantly lived in a state of tension and stress. When he realized this, he instantly took the decision to change his attitude and stop being angry.

It is commonly seen that people easily develop strong will power for their own personal interests, but where it concerns another’s interests, they do not do so. Such a person lives by double standards. If he uses his reason and recognizes this as a weakness, then surely he will develop strong will power and will abandon his wrong habit.

Often after marriage rifts develop between husband and wife and then their married life is filled with bitterness. If both were to reflect that if, after marriage, they could not live in the same happy way as before marriage, it was because they had been living with their own family members with whom they had a blood relationship: now there was no such relation. Once they acknowledge this, they would be able to summon the will power to correct their behaviour and so manage to lead a normal happy married life.

Develop strong will power and you will certainly be able to move mountains.