The Difference Between Willpower and Self-Motivation
The difference between willpower and self-motivation comes down to how your impulses and temptations help or hurt as you pursue goals. Willpower is simply the idea that you can control an impulsive temptation to behave badly by exercising mental restraint. Self-motivation is that impulsive temptation. Although, the idea is that the impulse is to do something purposeful to make progress towards your goals.
In other words, willpower and self-motivation are two sides of the same coin. The former is stopping yourself from exhibiting undesirable behaviors, the latter is innately wanting to do the desirable ones. Therefore, when you pursue a goal using willpower you don’t have self-motivation. Conversely, when you pursue a goal using self-motivation, you don’t need willpower.
With this in mind, willpower is only useful for short-term goals. For example, willpower would work for a short-term goal like losing weight to fit an outfit for a reunion party. It’s realistic to expect your willpower to help you live a healthy lifestyle temporarily. For 30 days, most people can avoid dessert, bread, and pasta. In the short-term, most people can also use will power to push themselves to workout 4 days a week. However, after you reach a short-term goal like this, the willpower ceases since the external motivation is gone. So, it’s very likely any gains made will disappear just as fast as they came.
On the other hand, self-motivation is a requirement for longer-term goals. In the long-term, a lifestyle change is necessary. This change requires you to understand yourself from the inside out, so you know what makes you tick. Then change your priorities to take advantage of your impulses so they help you instead of hurt you. This is how self-motivation gives you the fuel you need to sustain lifestyle changes over the long haul.
In short, willpower fights your natural impulses and self-motivation fuels those impulses. In the short-term, willpower is helpful, but in the long-term it’s not. Since difficult goals are always long-term by definition, self-motivation is the only way to achieve these types of goals.