Volition means the power to make your own choices and decisions. It's what's happening when you act according to your own will rather than being forced, tricked, or pressured by someone else.

When you do something of your own volition, you've decided to do it yourself, without anyone making you. If you clean your room of your own volition, you chose to do it without your parents nagging you. If you join the school band of your own volition, you joined because you wanted to, not because your friends pressured you or your parents insisted.

Volition is closely related to free will. It's the feeling of being in control of your actions, of steering your own life. A character in a story who becomes a hero through their own volition chose that path themselves rather than stumbling into it by accident or being forced into it.

The word often appears when someone wants to emphasize that a choice was genuinely free. A teacher might say, “Nobody forced you to sign up for the science fair. You entered of your own volition, so now you need to complete your project.” That means you made the commitment freely, so you're responsible for following through on it.