01c. 1943 ADThe working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
02c. 1943 ADRule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
03c. 1943 ADThe professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
04c. 1943 ADTo labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
05c. 1943 ADOur job in this life 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 Pressfield / quote ↗
06c. 1943 ADIn other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
07c. 1943 ADLat at nigh have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were mean to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't pain, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
08c. 1943 ADTo yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
09c. 1943 ADLike 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.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
10c. 1943 ADNothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it's for failure.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
12c. 1943 ADThe sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
13c. 1943 ADThe part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Besides, what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty? Isn't that the whole point of healing?Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
14c. 1943 ADIt can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
15c. 1943 ADThe hack is like a politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
16c. 1943 ADWriters think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?"They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
18c. 1943 AD. . . None of us are born as passive generic blobs waiting for the world to stamp its imprint on us. Instead we show up possessing already a highly refined and individuated soul.Another way of thinking of it is: We're not born with unlimited choices.We can't be anything we want to be.We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.Our 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 Pressfield / quote ↗
19c. 1943 ADThe marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
20c. 1943 AD...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
21c. 1943 ADThe artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
22c. 1943 ADIn my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There's a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful.The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.This is invaluable for an artist.Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don't know how to be miserable.The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell."Page 68Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
23c. 1943 ADI wouldn’t say “art” as much as “virtue,” in the ancient Greek sense of “andreia” – manly action – or “arete,” excellence. In my experience, Resistance kicks in any time we try to move ourselves from a lower plane to a higher. In other words, when we try to align with the better parts of our nature. This move can be creative (art) or physical (athletics) or it can be ethical, moral or spiritual. Have you ever tried to meditate? I have and it kicks my butt every time. Spiritual stuff is hard! But so is making “cold calls” if you’re opening a new business. Somehow the principle is the same. We’re trying to overcome our natural laziness, selfishness, sloppiness, etc. So I wouldn’t say “art,” I’d say “virtue.Steven Pressfield / quote ↗
