Use Your Will-Power only Sparingly

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
(Confucius)

I once read one of these channeling books that claimed that the story of Adam and Eve was indeed true. It argued that Adam and Eve were highly developed souls when they were "planted" on planet earth and that they got a lot of divine help creating paradise on earth; but eventually, after hundreds of years, they just got bored with all that peace and happiness and started mis-creating the way it was recorded in the greatest story ever told. I don't lose much sleep over the question whether this story is true or not, but as the philosopher Count Keyserling once put it, even if it didn't happen, that doesn't mean it isn't true!

You can not will-power yourself into Heaven for the simple reason that a spiritual path is a marathon, not a sprint. Boredom or the lack of a mission will eventually wear you down.Will-power is there to get you over the hump, for everything else there is passion, purpose and love. Please use your will-power for a specific task at hand that is important to you, but for all long-term goals, remind yourself why you do what you do when the going gets tough. Will-power is like a muscle, it gets fatigued if you overuse it. So do only stuff that you love doing, hang only out with people you really care for, and certainly marry only someone who you truly love. 

I remember a portfolio manager on a trip to Japan who was just out of the plane but he signed up for a dinner with his colleagues that night to force himself to stay up long enough to shake the jet lag that way. You should have seen his eyes. They looked like he had put teaspoons in them to keep them open. What an act of will-power indeed. You can use this technique to catapult yourself over the hump, but use this energy sparingly. Peace and joy get you to the goal. Strain and pain only send your ego into over-drive and give power to the demon within.