"The War of Art" / "Turning Pro" / "Do the Work" by Steven Pressfield

• There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.
• Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
• Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity will elicit Resistance.
• Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.
• 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.
• The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
• The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight.
• Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. But there’s a parallel peril that must also be guarded against: sabotage by others.
• The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend is to get over the wall and keep motivating.
• The best and only thing that one artists can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
• Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Persistence because it’s the easiest to rationalize.
• The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit.
• Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on resistance This second, we can sit down and do our work
• We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame.
• A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one’s experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat.
• Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.
• Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
• As artists and professionals it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture.
• The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals.
• Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.
• 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 them.
• If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance.
• Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself.
• The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
• The 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.
• The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.
• Any support we get from persons of flesh and blood is like Monopoly money; it’s not legal tender in that sphere where we have to do our work.
• Rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.
• What’s particularly insidious about the rationalizations that Resistance presents to us is that a lot of them are true.
• The moment an artist turns pro is as epochal as the birth of his first child.
• The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time.
• The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.
• All of us are pros in one area: our jobs.
• Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that the enterprise is important to use and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no resistance.
• Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
• I’m keenly aware of the principle of priority, which states that (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first. What’s important is the work.
• What exactly are the qualities that define us as professionals?
• We show up every day.
• We show up no matter what.
• We stay on the job all day.
• We are committed over the long haul.
• The stakes for us are high and real.
• We accept remuneration for our labor.
• We do not over identify with our jobs.
• We master the technique of our jobs.
• We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
• We receive praise or blame in the real world.
• The 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 artists.
• The amateur over identifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.
• Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it’s for failure.
• So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines.
• To clarify a point about professionalism: The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love.
• The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude.
• To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.
• The professional arms himself with patience not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.
• He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.
• A pro views her work as craft, not art.
• The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.
• The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.
• The professional prepares mentally to absorb blows and to deliver them. His aim to to take what the day gives him. He is prepared to be prudent and prepared to be reckless, to take a beating when he has to, and to go for the throat when he can. He understands that the field alters every day. His goal is not victory (success will come by itself when it wants to) but to handle himself, his insides, as sturdily and steadily as he can.
• The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it.
• All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.
• The professional self-validates. She is tough-minded. In the face of indifference or adulation, she assesses her stuff coldly and objectively.
• The professional gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow.
• The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance.
• The professional endures adversity. His core is bulletproof. Nothing can touch it unless he lets it.
• The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment.
• A professional recognizes her limitations. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect.
• The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. He continues his journey.
• The professional senses who has served his time and who hasn’t.
• Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and consciousness-running-the-show.
• The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
• The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.
• Nothing matters but that he keep working.
• The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.
• “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” -- Goethe
• The Ego is that part of the psyche that we think of as “I.” Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans, and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The self is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious swell there. It is the sphere of the soul. What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die is that the seat of our consciousness shifts. It moves from the Ego to the Self. The world is entirely new, viewed from the Self. At once we discern what’s really important. Superficial concerns fall away, replaced by a deeper, more profoundly grounded perspective.
• The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are.
• Dreams come from the Self. Ideas come from the Self. When we meditate we access the Self. We we fast, when we pray, when we go on a vision quest, it’s the Self we’re seeking.
• When we deliberately alter our consciousness in any way, we’re trying to find the Self.
• The Ego hates the Self because when we seat our consciousness in the Self, we put the ego out of business.
• The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego.
• The Ego produces Resistance and attacks the awakening artist.
• Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear.
• The real fear. The master fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it is: fear that we will succeed.
• 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 this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.
• 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.
• In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways--by their rank within a hierarchy or by their connection to a territory. 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. 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.
• Most of us define ourselves hierarchically and don’t even know it.
• 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.
• 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 have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.
• For the artist to define himself hierarchically is fatal.
• The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling.
• The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake.
• To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.
• The artist can’t do his work hierarchically. He has to work territorially.
• We humans have territories too. Ours are psychological.
• A territory can only be claimed alone.
• A territory can only be claimed by work.
• A territory returns exactly what you put in.
• The act of creation is by definition territorial.
• Remember, as artists we don’t know diddly. We’re winging it every day.
• How can we tell if our orientation is territorial or hierarchical? One way is to ask ourselves, If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do? Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? If you’re all alone on the planet, a hierarchical orientation makes no sense. There’s no one to impress. So, if you’d still pursue that activity, congratulations. You’re doing it territorially.
• We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
• 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.
• The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
• A hack is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for. 
• Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.
• Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.
• In the shadow life, we live in denial and we act by addiction.
• The shadow life is the life of the amateur. In the shadow life we pursue false objects and act upon inverted ambitions.
• The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits.
• The Zen monk, the artists, the entrepreneur often lead lives so plain they’re practically invisible.
• Resistance hats two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed.
• Fear is the primary color of the amateur’s interior world. Mostly what we all fear as amateurs is being excluded from the tribe.
• The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is imprisoned by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be.
• The amateur believes that, before she can act, she must receive permission from some omnipotent other--a lover or spouse, a parent, a boss, a figure of authority.
• The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.
• Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it.
• When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.
• Turning pro is a decision.
• Habits of the professional:
• The professional shows up every day.
• The professional stays on the job all day.
• The professional is committed over the long haul.
• For the professional, the stakes are high and real.
• The professional is patient.
• The professional seeks order.
• The professional demystifies.
• The professional acts in the face of fear.
• The professional accepts no excuses.
• The professional plays it as it lays.
• The professional is prepared.
• The professional does not show off.
• The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique.
• The professional does not hesitate to ask for help.
• The professional does not take failure or success personally.
• The professional does not identify with his or her instrument.
• The professional endures adversity.
• The professional self-validates.
• The professional reinvents herself.
• The professional is recognized by other professionals.
• The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards. He will murder his darlings without hesitation, if that’s what is takes to stay true to the goddess and to his own expectations of excellence.
• The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.
• The amateur is an acolyte, a groupie. The professional may seek instruction or wisdom from one who is further along in mastery than he, but he does so without surrendering himself-sovereignty.
• A practice has a space, and that space is sacred.
• Two key tenets for days when resistance is really strong:
• Take what you can get and stay patient. The defense may crack late in the game.
• Play for tomorrow.
• The amateur believes that she must have all her ducks in a row before she can launch her start-up or compose her symphony or design her iPhone app. The professional knows better. The professional takes two aspirin and keeps on truckin’.
• The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns. You are the hero.
• The following is a list of the forces arrayed against us as artists and entrepreneurs:
• Resistance (i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, addiction, distraction, timidity, ego and narcissism, self-loathing, perfectionism, etc.)
• Rational thought
• Friends and family
• Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artists live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
• Next to resistance, rational through is the artist or entrepreneur's worst enemy.
• The last thing we want is to remain as we are.
• Ignorance and arrogance are the artists and enterprises indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be--and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.
• Start before you’re ready. Don’t prepare. Begin.
• You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more. No underlining, no highlighting, no thinking or talking about the documents later. Let the ideas percolate. Let the unconscious do its work.
• If you and I want to do great stuff, we can't let ourselves work small. A home-run swing that results in a strikeout is better than a successful bunt or even a line-drive single.
• Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.
• Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish.
• Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.
• End first, then beginning and middle. That’s your startup, that’s your plan for competing in a trillion, that’s you ballet.
• We only need to remember three mantras:
• Stay primitive
• Trust the soup
• Swing for the seats
• Be ready for resistance
• Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time. We must never forget that research can become resistance.
• One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP. Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to the end as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and pulling you in the butt with his pitchfork.
• Get the first version of your project done from A to Z as fast as you can. Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t think.
• The answer is always yes. When an idea pops into our head and we think, “No, this is too crazy,”...that’s the idea we want.
• Momentum is everything. Keep it going.
• Our greatest fear is fear of success.
• Panic is good. It’s a sign that we’re growing.
• A professional does not take success or failure personally.
• Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing.
• It takes balls of steel to ship.
• Start (again) before you’re ready. Begin the next on tomorrow.