In Dr. Alexander Loyd’s new book Beyond Willpower: From Stress to Success in 40 Days, he quotes this staggering statistic: 97% of all self-help programs fail. These programs have a simple gameplan—1) set a goal; 2) make a plan to achieve the goal; 3) do the work to achieve the goal—so why don’t they work?
The massive failure rate, according to Dr. Lloyd, is a result of choosing our goals from an unhealthy space and relying only on our willpower to reach our goals. But he’s got a blueprint to change that.
Our life goals come from two states of being: fear or love, says the doctor of psychology and naturopathic medicine. Unless you’re in eminent danger, acting out of fear is not the way to get what you truly want. Fear breeds envy and covetousness, obsession and selfish actions. Acting out of love, on the other hand, brings peace, joy, total satisfaction—the fruits of the spirit.
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Unfortunately, we’ve been programmed all of our lives to act from a place of fear instead of love, even on a subconscious level. It’s our 
fight or flight instinct, our innate desire to avoid pain and seek pleasure, even if the pain is for our good and the pleasure to our detriment. That fear can manifest itself as physical pain and dis-ease in our bodies, Dr. Lloyd says. Fear can play a role in addictions unhealthy romantic relationships, abuse and self-destructive or anti-social tendencies, he says. Fear also plays a role in our love of the law.
Like the Pharisees, people of faith can become so stuck on the law and our own actions because of our fear of not being enough. Often we think if we keep the Ten Commandments, go to church, look good on the outside or at least are able to say we are better than someone else, then we will be enough. That religious thinking, Dr. Loyd says, completely misses the point of Christ, who is all about grace and mercy.
“Love violates cause and effect,” he tells Guideposts.org. “The only way is to get out of that legalistic mindset to a place of the spiritual, which is love and grace.”
The key, Dr. Loyd says, is to be deprogrammed from our fear-based living and reprogrammed with love. But we cannot do this by our own willpower because, as Paul said, there’s sin living in us that prevents us from doing what we know is right and healthy and holy. There must be a real change in the way we think and act, and that requires some healing.
Dr. Loyd was instantly healed from his fear-based living in what he calls a “transformative a-ha moment,” when he encountered God in his parents’ backyard after his wife, Hope, had kicked him out.
“She said, ‘I can’t stand to live with you anymore.’ I knew our marriage was terrible. We were both unhappy. I was in my 20s and had no energy to do anything. I was exhausted all the time, I was in debt way over my head, knowing it’s going to take me 15 years to pay all the money back I owe while living at the poverty line and I remember thinking, ‘How did I screw this up so fast? This isn’t supposed to happen until middle age.’ So I hit absolute rock bottom. The thought of ending my life went through my head.”
God spoke to him, he says, and showed him the ways he had not been loving his wife, himself or anyone else. Though he was teaching love to others in counseling sessions, God showed him he was not living in love. After first being offended, Dr. Loyd, in desperation, decided to listen to what God was convicting in his spirit.
“The question I felt God asking me was, ‘Are you willing to truly love Hope and live in love in everything you do?’ I didn’t answer Him quickly. But eventually I went outside, got on my knees and I said, ‘Yes. I will do it,’” he tells Guideposts.org, in tears. “And the moment I made that decision—and it wasn’t a head decision, it was to the core of my being—everything changed.”
Even his wife saw the immediate change in him and agreed to take him back. He’s since spent the last two decades working with his patients on living from love instead of fear. For those who do not have that instant, transformative a-ha moment, the 40-day plan laid out in Beyond Willpower aims to teach people how they can achieve the abundant life for which God has created us.
His technique involves using simple steps (placing your hands over your heart, forehead and crown and rubbing in a circular motion for 1-2 minutes) and reprogramming statements. Those statements replace negative statements you’ve believed about yourself that prevent you from functioning as God intended with positive words that tell the truth about who you and what your true self desires). He also calls on readers to re-imagine their lives (envisioning on their “heart screen” what life would look like if there were healed from all untruths, and physical and emotional pain). “You can heal your life and invite the light and love of God to permeate everything you do,” Dr. Loyd says.
That’s when you know you’re truly successful and you’re achieving your life purpose.
Following the 10 steps in his blueprint, using the 3 tools to heal yourself over 40 days, Dr. Loyd says you too can live your life Beyond Willpower. What’s stopping you?
Beyond Willpower is available here.
