The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Steven Pressfield
Description
In this powerful, straight from the hip examination of the internal obstacles to success, bestselling author Steven Pressfield shows readers how to identify, defeat and unlock the inner barriers to creativity.
Key words: Creativity
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My notes
“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance.”
Do we have to stare death in the face to stand up and face resistance? How many of us have become drunks, drug addicts, developed tumours, succumbed to painkillers, excessive cell phone use, simply because we don’t do the thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us.
Book 1
Resistance – Defeating the Enemy
If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment business, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom.
Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favour of long-term growth, health or integrity elicits resistance.
The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel towards pursuing it.
The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battles must be fought anew every day.
The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got. The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don’t open the bag of wind.
Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. But there is a parallel peril that must also be guarded against: sabotage by others. When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance – in other words, when she actually starts to write – she may find that those close to her begin acting strange. They may become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of ‘changing’, of ‘not being the person she was’. The closer these people are to the awakening writer, the more bizarrely they will act and the more emotion they will put behind their actions. ‘They are trying to sabotage her’. The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or unconsciously, against their own resistance. The awakening writer’s success becomes a reproach to them.
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and inspiration.
Creating a soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you can get just as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record?
When we drug ourselves to block out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We`re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product.
The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.
If you find yourself criticising other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own. Individuals who are realised in their own lives almost never criticise others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself.
Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the surer we can be that we have to do it.
The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come.
Sometimes we balk on embarking on an enterprise because we’re afraid of being alone. We feel comfortable with the tribe around us; it makes us nervous going off into the woods on our own. Here’s the trick: We`re never alone. As soon as we step outside the campfire glow, our muse lights on our shoulder like a butterfly. The act of courage calls forth infallibly that deeper part of ourselves that supports and sustains us.
Book Two
Combating Resistance – Turning pro
It’s one thing to study war and another to live a Warrior’s life.
The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full time. That’s what I mean when I say turning pro. Resistance hates it when we turn pro.
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.
Pro’s show up every day.
The pro prepares himself for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull into Nome.
A professional has ‘NO EGO’
A professional does not hesitate to ask for help.
A pro reminds himself that it’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than up in the stands or out in the parking lot.
Don’t get emotional, stay stoic and humble.
Recognise your limitations.
Reinvent yourself. Continue your journey.
A gunn, recognises another gunn.
There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.
Book Three
Beyond Resistance – The higher Realm
Nothing else matters apart from sitting down every day and trying.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.
When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens. A crack appears in the membrane.
The moment a person learns he has terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Why do we have to wait until then?
Dreams come from the self. Ideas come from the self. The self is our deepest being.
Resistance feeds on fear. The mother or all fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalise it we don’t believe it. ‘The fear that we will succeed’. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can truly become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous. We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognise us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to. Of course, this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.
In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways—by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf). This is how individuals—humans as well as animals— achieve psychological security. They know where they stand. The world makes sense. Of the two orientations, the hierarchical seems to be the default setting. It’s the one that kicks in automatically when we’re kids. We run naturally in packs and cliques; without thinking about it, we know who’s the top dog and who’s the underdog. And we know our own place. We define ourselves, instinctively it seems, by our position within the schoolyard, the gang, the club. It’s only later in life, usually after a stern education in the university of hard knocks, that we begin to explore the territorial alternative. For some of us, this saves our lives.
We humans seem to have been wired by our evolutionary past to function most comfortably in a tribe of twenty to, say, eight hundred. We can push it maybe to a few thousand, even to five figures. But at some point, it maxes out. Our brains can’t file that many faces. We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit. We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.
In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within.
I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting and left its reception to the gods.
Instead let’s ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.
Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.” (Death is meaningless)
