Steven Pressfield's Blog

I’ve always wondered how the great avatars and truly evolved personages respond to the boring, quotidian, zero-glam aspects of their lives.

How does the Dalai Lama wake up? How did Gandhi brush his teeth?

Here’s what Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) said to his followers about that moment, in bed, when he first opens his eyes. 

“Wake up! Get out of bed! Do not lie there ‘thinking!’ Nothing good ever came from that!”

What Yogananda meant by “thinking,” I’m convinced, is Resistance. It’s not really thinking. It’s not rational cogitation. It’s the voice of self-sabotage. It’s the dragon. 

We will not “think our way” out of that chatter in our heads. We will not overcome it by reasoning with it or listening to it as if it were talking sense.

“Get up! Get out of bed! Do not lie there thinking! Nothing good ever came from that!’

The post “Wake Up! Do Not Lie There ‘Thinking’!” first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

People ask sometimes, “What time in your day do you first experience Resistance?” 

My answer: “The second I open my eyes.” 

Why do I go to the gym first thing in the morning? To confront that negative force and establish a pattern of positive commitment for the day. Have you ever logged onto Navy SEAL Jocko Willink’s site? Every morning he posts a photo of his wristwatch at the moment he completes his workout. It’s inevitably Zero Dark Thirty. Jocko’s been retired from active duty for years, but he has never slackened off from the self-discipline he manifested in “the Teams.”

My friend Randy Wallace (who wrote Braveheart) has a mindset he calls “Little Successes.” From the minute he wakes up, Randy sets his mind to establishing—and mentally crediting himself with—a series of positive achievements, however modest, one after another. He counts brushing his teeth. He counts taking a shower. He too works out like a maniac early in the morning. 

Resistance wakes up with Randy and with Jocko, just like it does with Twyla Tharp and with you and with me. This is why we train early, this is why we build habits, this is why we school ourselves in self-discipline and reinforce ourselves with “little successes.” To steel ourselves against that dragon of Resistance that we all know we’re going to face when we sit down to do our work.

The post My Head in the Morning first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

We were talking in an earlier post about the choreographer Twyla Tharp and her book, The Creative Habit. Let’s dig a little deeper into the principles that underlie Ms. Tharp’s mindset and that book.

What we’re really talking about is the difference between discipline and self-discipline.

If you’re a private in the army or a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, each day you practice. You run drills. You train in the gym. You do rehab for injuries. 

That’s discipline, but it’s not self-discipline.

It’s not self-discipline because the structure of your day is imposed on you from without, by coaches, by superior officers, by teammates. A schedule is posted on the wall and you follow it. In the army, you literally have a sergeant yelling at you to get out of bed, run up that hill, get down and bang out fifty pushups.

Externally-imposed discipline is great, but it’s not what you and I need as artists and entrepreneurs. In our world, there are no sergeants. There is no boss, no coach, no mentor. We have to be our own coaches, our own editors, our own motivators.

Think back to Twlya Tharp, catching that cab for the gym at five in the morning. That’s self-discipline. That’s self-motivation. That’s self-reinforcement.

The post Discipline and Self-Discipline first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

We’ve been talking in the past few posts about self-reliance, self-sufficiency, the mindset of the entrepreneur and the professional.

We’ve said to the aspiring writer or artist, “Brother, Sister, beyond talent and imagination, you’ve got to be mentally tough to succeed in these hardcore fields.”

Why? What’s the reason we have to be tough? Whom are we fighting? Who’s the enemy?

In The War of Art, I call it “Resistance.” With a capital-R.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late 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.

Resistance afflicts everyone, but it takes its greatest toll on the artist.

Why? Because the artist is alone. She has no coach, no mentor, no Gandolf or Merlin or Obi-wan Kenobi. She’s alone inside her own skull … and rattling around inside that unholy hemisphere is the demonic voice of her own Resistance. Fear. Self-doubt. Distraction. Procrastination. Laziness. Arrogance, Perfectionism. Complacency.

You and I as artists have to acquire—however and by whatever means —the same degree of mental toughness as test pilots and solo mountaineers and the greatest adventurers exploring the inner landscape of the human soul.

Yes, the artist faces competitors and rivals in the flesh. But her greatest foe resides inside her own head.

She is her own worst enemy.

The post It’s All About Resistance first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

“If you believe the critics when they tell you you’re good, you have to believe them when they tell you you’re bad.”

In other words, DON’T BELIEVE THEM.

Better yet, don’t even read them.

Courtesy of Lloyd Arnold/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe post Hemingway’s Rule first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

My business partner Shawn Coyne has a term that he can’t utter without personal and emotional abhorrence.

“Third party validation.”

He HATES it. He hates the very idea of it. When he sees it in others, he shakes his head. When he discovers even a glimmer within himself, he’s horrified and moves heaven and earth to eradicate it.

What is Third Party Validation?

3PV is the need for approval from someone else.

Be it said, all of us crave approval and validation. We’re human. Our DNA was formed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution where survival meant life in the tribe, in the primitive hunting band, where exclusion from the group meant death.

It’s in our blood, the need for Third Party Validation. 

That doesn’t make it any less of a vice.

Can you read your own stuff and form an objective opinion? Can you screen your film and know which parts work and which don’t?

We can collaborate with editors and producers. We can listen deeply and heed their counsel. But in the end, we must develop our own nose for the truth.

The film director must have the final word on his picture. He and he alone must be the judge of when it’s ready for release to the world.

The post Third Party Validation first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Have you read Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit? I quoted a passage in one of my books and she made me pay 250 bucks. It was worth it because the passage was so great. Here it is:

I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.

Twyla Tharp is one of the world’s great choreographers. Her day is spent in the dance studio, doing tough, hard physical work. Yet she starts before dawn at the gym. Why? Again, it’s about the Inner Game, the Mental Game.

Twyla Tharp is not so much preparing her body as readying her mind. With each repeated motion—a hamstring stretch, a shoulder press, a Downward Dog pose—she is reinforcing for herself the conviction that “I am a professional, I am a warrior, I am an athlete,” all three of which translate directly to “I am a dancer, I am a choreographer, I am an artist.”

In a way, Ms. Tharp is brainwashing herself. Deliberately. She is using habit and ritual to reinforce her identity as an artist and to power her for the day as a creative force. When she leaves the gym and heads to the dance studio, she can honestly tell herself, “Nothing I’m going to do for the rest of the day will be harder than what I’ve just done.”

That’s power. That’s the mindset of the professional, the warrior, the artist.

The post Twyla Tharp first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

It’s 4:30 in the morning and we’re on our way to the gym. This is six days a week, rain or shine, Christmas, Fourth of July, your birthday. I hate it. Everybody does. We’d all rather be home in bed munching bon-bons. Why do it then? For me, it’s not because I imagine I’m going to be the next Mr. Universe.

It’s about the mental game.

Yes, the fitness and health aspects are important, even indispensable. But what this pre-dawn expedition is really about for me is the Inner Game. I am preparing myself mentally and emotionally for the day’s work that will start for real in a couple of hours.

Maybe you’re a runner, maybe you’re a biker, maybe you practice martial arts or yoga or tai chi, maybe you train for the Ironman or the Spartan race. It’s all great! And it’s all for the same reason—to rehearse, to prepare, to beat into our thick skulls the mindset of embracing adversity.

When we work out physically, we are doing three things that are superb rehearsals for creative work.

We’re doing something we’d rather not do.We’re doing something that resists us.We’re doing something we’re afraid of.

In the gym or on the track or the trail, we experience moments of real physical fear. A weight we don’t think we can handle. A hill we’re not sure we can climb. Watch the faces of men and women at CrossFit or any other serious venue of training. See them going deep within, psyching themselves up to overcome the fear, to ready themselves for the pain, to anticipate the level of effort and intensity they’re going to have to summon.

That’s the artist’s way. That’s the mindset of the professional, the warrior, the independent operator.

The post Going to the Gym in the Dark first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

I got a note this morning from Phil Britton about the Wednesday 8/6 post, “Empathy.” Phil writes, “I’d love to hear your take on how to balance this with the idea of ‘never play to the gallery.'”

Great question. I can see I haven’t been clear enough in the past couple of posts. 

What I DON’T mean, and DON’T lobby for is “giving the fans what they want.” Forget that. The artist’s role is to lead. Nobody in Liverpool in 1962 was waiting for “Love Me, Do.” But when the Beatles released it, suddenly everyone went crazy.

“Give the people what they want” is legitimate, I think, if we’re debating where to locate our new frozen yogurt store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Answer: where there is no frozen yogurt store now.

But for you and me as artists, that concept is creative death.

Jeremy Allen White as “Carmy” in THE BEAR

Here’s what I DO mean when I say the artist must put herself in imagination in the place of the reader/viewer:

I was watching an episode of “The Bear,” Season Two. The opening scene took place in a hospital room. The character of Marcus was standing bedside with his mother or father (I forget which) in the bed. The director of the episode, Christopher Storer, had to decide where to put the camera for the opening shot.  He decided to put it at bedside level, beside the bed, looking up past the side of the patient’s head, toward Marcus standing beside the bed.

How did he make that decision?

He knew what the scene was about. He knew what he wanted the audience to feel, to understand, and to take away from the scene. He asked himself, “What’s the best way to achieve this? Where should I put the camera? Behind Marcus? Outside the room looking in? What rhythm should the scene be in? Do we need music? What music? How should Marcus play the scene? Etc.”

Christopher Storer put himself in imagination in the place of the viewer. He thought, “This is the opening scene of this episode; the viewer won’t know where the episode is going. I have to set this scene up so that it makes sense, it hooks the viewer, it leads on into the next scene, and so forth. Where do I put the camera?”

That’s what I mean by empathy. That’s what I mean by being aware of who our readers or viewers are—what they know of the story, what emotions have hooked them, etc.

We’re not pandering to them or “giving them what they want.” They don’t know what they want. We’re giving them WHAT THE STORY WANTS, which equates to what (we hope) is the most interesting, most fun, most entertaining, most moving, most enlightening version of the ten bazillion possible versions we could give them.

That what I mean by creative/narrative empathy. It applies in all fields and to all of us all the time.

Hope this helps.

The post To Pander or Not to Pander first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

We said in last week’s post that Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. And that as soon as you and I grasp this concept, we have made a primary Artist’s Breakthrough.

We have acquired empathy.

When we understand that nobody wants to read our shit, our mind becomes powerfully concentrated. We begin to understand that writing/reading/painting is, at its most fundamental level, a transaction.

The reader or viewer donates her time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you and I—the writer/artist/poet/singer/dancer—must give her something worthy of her gift to you.

How do we do this?

We work to develop the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in our imagination from our own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of our reader/gallery-goer/customer.

Is she following where we want to lead her?

We say to ourselves, “Recognizing that no one wants to read our shit, we must therefore stop at nothing until our shit is so interesting, so eye-catching, so funny/sad/sexy that the reader would have to be CRAZY not to jump at it.”

We learn to ask ourselves with every sentence and every visual image:

“Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she following where I want to lead her?”

The post Empathy first appeared on Steven Pressfield.