Some problem drinkers and substance users can learn to follow a more advantageous path

1. Are you powerless?
Or, do you have the power of will [volition]

2. Dictionary def of volition.
• 1: an act of making a choice or decision.
• 2: the power of choosing or determining

3. Volition is a Phenomenon
•Like emotion and perception, volition refers to
a category of experience rather than a concrete
object.
•Consider the perception of the color blue. The
direct experience of it is an essential part of its
definition.
•Like music appreciation and performance,
reading about it can only deliver understanding
at an abstract, superficial level

4. It is often possible to discern a structure to
people’s difficulties in which internal states and
external events continually recreated the
conditions for the recurrence of each other – Paul
Wachtel

5. Your internal state is determined by what you
are attending to.
So your power to influence your internal state is determined by your
ability to aim your attention to an intended target, despite the pull of
distractions.

6. You may not be able to control your reaction to
certain Stimuli, but you can choose which Stimulus
to attend to
• Addictive and threatening stimuli are salient [provocative, bright,
attention-grabbing] and are able to capture your attention.
• salient S elicit predictable emotional/motivational states if they
capture attention:
•Addictive S elicit desire
•Threatening S elicit fear

7. Creation of subjective reality
• Motivational states distort state-dependent phenomena. So there is
positive feedback. Once fear or desire is evoked, it exerts a promotes
a self-confirmatory seq of events. once in a particular state, O
becomes more sensitive to state-relevant S.
To exercise will, you have to over-come this tendency .

8. Applied Phenomenology
• Applying what you know about cause-and-effect in your subjective
universe to influence the course of events according to your interests
and principles.
• Willful influence over external events begins with learning to control
your internal states [emotions and motivations].

9. will = over-riding external influences and drive
actions from within - i.e., to act according to O's
interests and principles as O defines them, rather
than acting according to external det
•exercsing will involves aiming attention
rather than the target of attention det by
salience or autonomous chain