[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Understanding willpower requires understanding emotions functionally, so let's start there. A functional perspective isn't the only way to view emotions -- exploring and communicating how they feel is another, more relevant to art and music, for example -- but it serves our purposes. I'll stick with it, but I don't mean to imply other perspectives aren't important in other contexts. Emotions, functionally Functionally, emotions motivate you to interact with and change your environment. They also result from your environment, subject to your…

[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I'll be starting what I expect to be a four or five part series on willpower. The series should give an understanding of what willpower is and how to use it more and more effectively to improve your life. Everyone generally knows what willpower is. Some people value being able to use willpower to overcome great challenges. Some people don't know how to use it at all. In all cases, we want to be able to use it more effectively than we…