Steven Pressfield Quotes
The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
In my experience, depth of work consists of two components. The first is recklessness; the second is discipline. Dionysian; Apollonian. Passion;reason.
Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
As resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.
Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?
When we sit down to work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.
Playing for money, or adopting the attitude of one who plays for money, lowers the fever.
We cannot let external criticism, even if it's true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already.
Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.
Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.
But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested.
When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us... Ideas come. Insights accrete.
Thr principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbit; rivers make their way to the sea.
The 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.
We need to ascend beyond our own petty Resistance, our own negative self-judgment and self-sabotage, our own "I'm not worthy" mind-set.
You don't need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.
I guess what I want to say to us artists and entrepreneurs is that conventional yardsticks of success don't apply to all enterprises. Labors of love count.
The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.
The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.
These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual.
What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle.
The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals.
A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.
On the artist's journey we are redefining and reconfiguring ourselves and our lives.
Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.
Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.
Persian envoy "our arrows will black out the sun..." Dienekes of the Spartans.."Good, then we'll fight in the shade.
Reading is alive and well and will get more alive and more well. Reading on tablets (or whatever the next tech device will be) is the future - and the future is now.
When 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.
One thing I've found in any project is almost universally about three quarters of the way through - or maybe a little father, maybe seventh eighths on the way through - any project will explode.
I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.
This man has conquered the world! What have you done?"The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world.
Next 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.
What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.
