Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
The 'I Resolve to Will' Regime
Install a strong will by carrying a constant resolve-affirmation, deliberately doing small disagreeable acts, forcing real decisions, and demanding what you seek in a positive mood.
Carry the resolve-affirmation all day: “I resolve to will — attention!” Do one small disagreeable thing daily, just because you’d rather not — will-insurance. Practice forcing a real, prompt decision and acting on exactly it. Will one great goal with all your might, ignoring means. Hold the Mood of Expectancy and demand what you seek. Plan each morning, never vary it; review each night and resolve to do better. Make it a perpetual regime — the will grows by directed exercise, compounding like interest.
What it is
The connective tissue of the whole book: the standing auto-suggestion and daily conduct-rules Haddock weaves through every chapter so that will-culture becomes a permanent state, not an exercise. Its mantra recurs hundreds of times — “I RESOLVE TO WILL!
ATTENTION!!” — to be carried “constantly in mind as a goal never to be yielded.” Around it sit four signature practices:
(1) the constant resolve-affirmation and “Mood of Will”; (2) William James’s discomfort drill — deliberately do small disagreeable or insignificant things “for no other reason than that they would rather not do it”; (3) the decisive-will exercise — force a real, prompt decision and then act on exactly it; and (4) the positive-demand mood — “I DEMAND.
I simply MUST have them.” His law is “It is by doing, that we learn to do. every little act of will deliberately carried to completion is adding to your power of will,” with the gain compounding “like compound interest.”
The Method
- Carry the resolve-affirmation (Chs. V, VIII). Make the abiding thought “I resolve to acquire a strong and well-trained Will!” — its value “can scarcely be overstated.” Through any activity, “From first to last, cultivate and sustain the Mood of Will. Put the Will at the fore.” Re-sound the formula “I RESOLVE TO WILL! ATTENTION!!” silently through the day.
- The discomfort insurance drill (Ch. V). Following James: “do something occasionally for no other reason than that they would rather not do it, if it is nothing more than giving up a seat in a street car. He likens such effort to the insurance a man pays on his house.” “Resolve to secure such a grade of will by doing disagreeable things, or things of apparent insignificance which ordinarily you shirk doing.” Every such act “deliberately carried to completion is adding to your power of will.”
- Force a real decision (Ch. XVIII, Ex. 6). Sit, raise several possible acts (walk across the room, take a book, sit still), let impulses arise, “Resist them all a little time. Now decide, quickly and resolutely, what you will do. Do not act lazily; do not decide impulsively. Force a real decision. Then act. Do exactly that one thing.” Repeat six times with different actions, ten days.
- Will a single great goal (Ch. XVIII, Ex. 5). “Summons a resolute state of mind. select some desired goal in life which you believe to be possible, and will, with all your might, that this shall be. Do not think of means. Attend wholly to the Mood of willing.” Make the resolution “a permanent matter, not only of Will, but of feeling as well.”
- The positive-demand mood (Ch. VIII, Seventh Principle). Cultivate the “Mood of Expectancy” — “There is nothing which tends so much to the success of a volitional effort as a confident expectation of its success.” Then “Mentally demand, over and over. ‘I DEMAND health. I DEMAND better things in life. I simply MUST have them.’” as the deliberate opposite of “the cringing, timid condition.”
- Resolve-before-sleep (Leland’s method, Ch. X). Before sleeping, “if there be anything. which requires Will or Resolution. make up your mind to do it — as calmly and unthinkingly as may be. simply and coolly make up your mind to do it — and it will more likely be done.”
- Plan and review the day (Ch. XXI, Ex. 9-10). Each morning “make a plan for your general conduct until evening. never, if possible to carry it out, vary its execution.” Each night “carefully review your thoughts and doings. Resolve upon betterment the next day.” Make all of it “a perpetual regime of your life.”
Source & Lineage
Power of Will (1907) — drawn from Chapter V “Training of the Will,” Chapter VIII “Suggestions for Practice” (its Seven Principles), and the decisive/demand drills threaded through Chapter XVIII and the closing pages.
Haddock cites William James on the discomfort-insurance habit, Marden on discipline under pressure, and Leland on the resolve-before-sleep method. Frank Channing Haddock (1853-1915). → (haddock frank channing).
Common refinements
Affirming without acting. The resolve-mantra is scaffolding for acts; “It is by doing, that we learn to do.” Repetition alone, with no decisive action, is hollow.
- Deciding impulsively or lazily. Ex. 6 wants a forced, prompt, real decision — neither dithering nor whim.
- Power without integrity. Haddock warns energy “without. a soul of goodness” is “the maximum of the barbarian”; he ties will to right ends.
- Straining to exhaustion. “Expend no unnecessary amount of force”; the will, like a muscle, needs the rest-beats he prescribes elsewhere.
- Treating “I DEMAND” as magic. Use it as a confident-expectancy posture against timidity; pair it with the doing-drills, not in place of them.