Willpower is a useless medicine for a non-existent disease || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Listener: Sir, I often find myself surrounded by fears like fear of failure, fear of society. I want to know that how can I get rid of these fears? How can I develop strong will power?

Speaker: Anubhav, will power is rubbish. You do not need willpower. Willpower is a useless medicine for a non-existent disease. Remember this,

Willpower is a useless medicine for a non-existent disease.

What do you want to overcome through willpower? There is nothing to be overcome. You want to ask a question, so you get up and ask a question, what is the use of willpower in this? You require willpower only because you are living in illusions. I can very certainly tell you that at this moment I do not require any willpower to speak to you. What is right, what is natural is being done, what is the role of willpower in all this? But we make matters complicated for ourselves. What do we do? We first let imaginary fears encircle us, and then we fight these fears using willpower. Have you heard a story of these two friends who had a lot of willpower?

So, these two friends were standing at a place. One of them said that I want to buy some land and start farming. The other one said that I too will do the same. It is a good idea, you will buy land and I too will buy land adjacent to you. First one says that it is such a nice thing that two of us will still be together, our fields will be next two each other. Second one says that don’t you allow your animals to come in my field, because if you are going to have farms then you are also going to have pets, so don not allow them to wander in my fields. First one says that yes that must not happen but you see that animals are animals, how long can one control them, one cow, one buffalo, etc may accidentally stray into your fields. Second one says that I will not like this. First one says that even I do not want that, but you see I cannot guarantee, it can happen. So, second one says that what do we do then? First one says that see this is my field, and he makes a small field on the ground using his toe, and this is your field, and the boundary is clear, then why must your animal come to my side. The other says that my friend you do not understand, this is the field, this is the animal; now see this animal is going to your field, see what can be done, an animal is just animal. He says that if your animal comes here I will kill it. He says that the animal is already gone, can you kill it? He takes two deep breaths. Two deep breaths! And says that now your buffalo is going to be slaughtered, and he kills the buffalo. The two of them fight each other, hit each other, there is mud, dirt, and blood. They are taken to the court where the magistrate asks them, ‘what were you doing?. One said that he killed an animal. The other one said that I did not want to kill. The magistrate said that I know you. You are not a violent man at all. How can you kill an animal? He said that it was very very difficult for me to kill that animal, extremely difficult, but I generated a lot of willpower and killed it. So magistrate asks the policeman, ‘where is the animal? Which field?’ ‘Right now there is no field and no animal. There is only willpower’.