Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North--meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
Steven PressfieldLook in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.
Steven PressfieldYou know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
Steven PressfieldThe professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.
Steven PressfieldRule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
Steven PressfieldIt may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe... The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
Steven PressfieldThe more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
Steven PressfieldThe counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Steven PressfieldTraditional publishers will be dominant, and they should be because they really do assure quality. But eBooks, which are huge already, are going to eclipse everything. They will save traditional publishing the way DVDs saved movie studios (for a while) and they'll greatly expand the number of readers.
Steven PressfieldThe difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.
Steven PressfieldWe're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.
Steven PressfieldIf you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
Steven PressfieldThe amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
Steven PressfieldThe professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He's petrified.
Steven PressfieldIf you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Steven PressfieldThere is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
Steven PressfieldLate at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.
Steven PressfieldDo we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?
Steven PressfieldResistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.
Steven PressfieldThe essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.
Steven PressfieldMost of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
Steven PressfieldThat’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.
Steven PressfieldResistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.
Steven PressfieldCourage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
Steven PressfieldIn the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.
Steven PressfieldArtists, writers and people in creative fields are entrepreneurs by necessity. Nobody gives them a paycheck or picks up their medical insurance. The ones who succeed learn to think and act like 'independent operators.' I think people who are technically 'employees' have to think this way as well. The company is not looking out for you.
Steven PressfieldA great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all.
Steven Pressfield...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.
Steven PressfieldWhen you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.
Steven PressfieldA writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.
Steven PressfieldNext morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.
Steven PressfieldOur job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Steven PressfieldThe most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
Steven PressfieldWhen a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.
Steven PressfieldThese scars on my body,” Alexander declared, “were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your weariness and go home.” Not a man came forward. Instead, a great cheer arose from the army. The men begged their king to forgive them for their want of spirit and pleaded with him only to lead them forward.
Steven PressfieldIt is a commonplace among artists and children at play that they're not aware of time or solitude while they're chasing their vision. The hours fly. The sculptress and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, 'Suppertime!'
Steven PressfieldThe professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.
Steven PressfieldAmbition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred and fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.
Steven Pressfield