Be the Bigger Asshole : A Lesson in Will Power

Willpower. A word I thought I knew. Something I believed I had developed. It helped me survive. It helped me start over. It helped me move on from tremendous amounts of trauma and abuse. I thought willpower was my strength. But recently I’ve discovered that where it mattered most, when anger rose, when triggers hit, my willpower was often completely nonexistent.

The dictionary defines willpower as “the control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.” But what the dictionary doesn’t explain is how much energy it takes to restrain yourself when your body is reliving a memory you can’t even see. How it feels like death to your nervous system to not react. How silence feels dangerous when you’ve been conditioned to believe that being quiet equals being unsafe.

I blamed others for my reactions. I pushed people away because they hurt me. Because I didn’t know how to sit with my own pain. I projected. I clung to the voice in my head that screamed, "I don’t deserve this!" A phrase I now recognize was rooted in ego and unprocessed wounds. A phrase most often used by narcissist. I didn’t understand that my need to react, to explode, to defend wasn’t power. It was the leak of it. It was my body trying to regulate itself the only way it had ever learned how. It was a default setting that had been established years ago.

Carolyn Myss explains that every person and situation we encounter (even the abusive ones) are chosen by the soul. That we are not victims of our experiences but students of them. Our souls seek discomfort, friction, contrast. They seek to evolve. The human brain, on the other hand, runs. It tries to avoid discomfort. It goes into overdrive to escape tension. Most often by blaming others. But the soul seeks the truth buried within the tension. That truth shows up in the most uncomfortable places: in silence, in being misunderstood, in staying with yourself even when you want to abandon your body and scream.

And here’s the truth I didn’t want to face: I had willpower, but I didn’t use it to stay calm. I used it to leave. I used it to cut people off. I used it to avoid responsibility.

When something upset me, I didn’t pause. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t center myself. I snapped. I raised my voice. I demanded to be heard, to be understood, to be right. I did this with my spouse, my family, my coworkers, and sometimes even strangers. And I’d tell myself I was justified. That they pushed me. That they didn’t care for me enough. That they triggered me. But the truth is, my reaction was mine.

I kept spilling my energy into places that couldn’t hold it. I would cry, spiral, shut down. I used my voice like a weapon and leaving like pride. I thought I was setting boundaries, but really, I was punishing the people who witnessed my emotional dysregulation. I was still trying to control the outcome by making my pain louder than the problem. But louder doesn't mean more true.

I recently met someone who said something that made me realize this is my next big growth chapter. “Be the bigger asshole,” he told me. At first, I was taken aback. I don't want to be an asshole, I thought. Then he explained, “I use my willpower to prevent people from taking my power. I don’t give them the satisfaction of my reaction.” And in that moment, I realized just how often I’d given mine away.

It hit me: the people who triggered me the most, the ones who activated my deepest insecurities, the ones I believe disrespected and abused me, they weren’t stealing my peace. I was handing it to them.

I thought my power lived in my fire. But I realized, too often, I had burned myself down with it. I had confused righteous anger with needed expression. I had mistaken volatility for passion. And beneath it all, I had never learned to pause. Never learned how to hold myself. Never learned how to stay.

Why is willpower so powerful in these moments? Because the cost of losing it is everything. Suicide is at an all-time high. And I understand why. When you spill all your power in reactivity, in projection, in victimhood, you start to feel worthless. Empty. You become susceptible to what others believe about you. You forget what you believe about yourself. You feel physically and emotionally drained. You invite cycles to repeat. You start to wonder if people would be better off without you.

That’s what happened to me. I gave someone else my power and I completely sank. Even with all of my knowledge about the body, about energy, about trauma. Even with therapy. Even with support. I allowed someone else’s opinion of me to become my truth. And when that happened, I lost myself. I stopped trusting myself. I collapsed under the weight of emotional reactivity and ego. I let my wounds lead. I let others take the blame.

My willpower disappeared. And in its place came my lowest of lows. Rage. Despair. Extreme sadness. And a very real question of whether I even wanted to be here anymore. And I know I’m not alone in that. I know how easy it is to get lost in the cycle of reaction, blame, repeat. To wake up the next day and feel the hangover of your own outburst. Sometimes lingering for days.

Carolyn Myss says, "You either master your power, or it masters you."

Willpower lives in the third chakra, our solar plexus. This is where our personal power resides. It governs self-esteem, confidence, boundaries, decision-making. When it’s strong, we stand tall in who we are. When it’s weak or blocked, we collapse. We react. We seek external validation to fill an internal void and to justify. And every time we react from that place, every time we lose it, we drain the very energy we need to heal.

Joe Dispenza teaches that our thoughts trigger emotional responses, which become chemical reactions in the body. When we repeatedly fire those same thoughts and emotions, especially anger, fear, or shame, we create a chemical addiction. Our body becomes addicted to the feeling of being a reactive Vitcim. That’s why it’s so hard to stop. It becomes a justified loop that traps us. The body is living in the past while the soul is begging for the future.

And Roy Baumeister’s research on willpower confirms that it works like a muscle. It gets depleted with overuse. But it can also be trained. Every moment you choose to pause instead of react, every moment you choose to take responsibility, you’re building strength.

But we can’t do it alone. We need space. We need awareness. And we need accountability. And most of all, we need honesty.

I would tell my friends my side of the story, hoping they’d affirm it. I wanted them to say, “You’re right. That was wrong. They shouldn’t have done that to you. You have every right to react that way” But now I crave something deeper. Now I ask: what could I have done differently? How did I abandon myself in that moment? What pattern was I repeating? And what would it look like to choose something new?

"Be the change you want to see. "

Because healing isn’t just about naming what hurt us. It's not at all about pointing a finger. It’s about taking responsibility for how we respond now. It’s about asking yourself if you’re still letting a past version of you dictate your present choices. It’s about getting curious. And if we keep reacting from the same wounds, we keep recreating the same story. We might leave our abuser, but we will meet the same message in someone else. Because healing comes in cycles, until you, not other people, break them. That's the lesson of the soul's path.

I’m not interested in repeating cycles with someone else. I’m interested in rewiring. I'm interested in becoming a victor not a victim.

But if I'm being completely honest, I'm scared. I have in no way mastered this side of my emotional spectrum. This journey will be my greatest challenge. Its going to be trial and error for a while, because I know just like physical fitness, change takes repetition and time.

So here’s how I'm going to rebuild my willpower in these moments:

I'm planning to meditate, even if its just for five minutes each day. Everything I've researched about willpower has stated this is extremely beneficial to emotional regulation. Its not fancy, it doesn't require spending money, and yet it is powerful. I personally enjoy meditating, but often allow myself to fall off the wagon. So I'm going to take this practice more seriously. Not treating it like a discipline but rather a devotion.

I plan on rehearsing calm responses before I need them. To visualize myself breathing through a conversation instead of yelling. Joe Dispenza calls this mental rehearsal. He swears by it. I've never tried it before, so I'll keep you posted on its personal effects for me.

I'll ask for help. I tell the people I love, “Please be patient with me while I learn how to respond.” Because I truly believe the people in my life didn't enter by accident. I think because of my ancestorial history, my up bringing, and my brains ability to avoid responsibility its going to be a lot to work through. I'm going to fail, but I also know I have the ability to write my story, and I'm up for the challenge.

Nothing in this world is impossible. I believe people can change if they are devoted and willing to see themselves through new and uncomfortable perspectives.

Because that’s where my power lives now, not in the outburst, but in the pause. In the breath. In the sacred seconds between the feeling and the choice.

This is willpower.

It’s not loud. It’s not about others. It doesn’t always feel like strength.

But it is.

During this Full Moon in Capricorn, the collective consciousness will be pulled toward themes of accountability, emotional maturity, and spiritual restructuring. So it's no surprise this lesson has reached me in this moment in time.

This is a no-nonsense moon, one that asks the world to pause and take inventory of what’s no longer sustainable, whether in relationships, careers, or inner narratives. As a society, we may feel a wave of seriousness or emotional detachment, but beneath that heaviness is wisdom: a call to align with what’s real, responsible, and soul-led. It’s not about striving harder, it’s about choosing what truly supports our evolution.

Expect heightened awareness around boundaries, burnout, and the cost of staying in personal systems that no longer fit.

It's time to ask ourselves, why the cycles keep repeating.