Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 9

Thanks, Everybody!

I have to say, I was blown away by the responses to last week’s post, “A Poll.” Thanks to everyone who wrote in … and to everybody else who responded in their mind, if not with their keyboard.

To be brutally candid, there have been times, like when a post would get 10 Comments (or fewer), when I wondered if anyone was “out there” at all. I’d say to myself, “Why am I even doing this? I’m not helping anyone. No one’s even listening.”

Or I would wonder, as I said in the Poll post, “Maybe I’m writing these Wednesday posts to readers who are tuned in for completely different reasons than what I think they are. And I have no idea what those reasons are!”

So it was with great relief and gratification that I took in last week’s Comments. I read ’em all, carefully. It helps me tremendously because it fortifies me in my commitment to keep doing this thing, whatever we might call it.

And I hope it helps you, the reader, to know there is a real COMMUNITY of like-minded and like-aspiring souls. We’re all in the trenches together. I’m in favor of that!

Another way last week’s responses has helped me is this:

I’ve got lots of material that I’ve been holding back. Specifically, two “War of Art”-type books that have been written and proofed but that I’ve been reluctant to even mention, let alone publish, just because I didn’t want to keep putting stuff out BANG BANG BANG. And I was hesitant to believe anyone would even be interested.

I’ll revisit that now. 

But most of all, I just want to say thanks to everyone who took the time (and a lot of the Comments were very brave and self-revealing) and made the effort to articulate exactly where they stood on their own artist’s journey.

What we’re doing, all of us, takes guts. It’s solitary. It’s lonely. The interior challenges we deal with as part of the process are stuff that no school has prepared us for. Some of these challenges don’t even have a name, let alone a prescribed solution. And each of us is facing these dragons alone, without a road map.

So props to all of us! It’s an honor, speaking just for myself, to be in the trenches with such a community of intrepid and high-aiming souls. I’ll keep doing it if you will! 

The post Thanks, Everybody! first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

A Poll

I’m curious about something. Can you guys help me out?

I’ve been doing a bunch of podcasts lately, promoting the publication of The Daily Pressfield. A question I’m getting asked over and over is, “Who is this book for?”

Which in my mind equates to, “Who subscribes to Writing Wednesdays?”

The way I’ve answered the question is something like this:

I wrote the book for writers and artists (and entrepreneurs and other creative adventurers) who are attempting long-form works, i.e. something like a novel or a startup that will take at least a year and maybe significantly more) and who are essentially ALONE in this enterprise.

What I mean by “alone” is that the venturer is not supported psychologically, emotionally, or financially by any external structure like a company, a school, the military, whatever. In other words, he or she is in their room alone, facing their own Resistance alone, confronting without external support the same issues that I myself confront every day—self-motivation, self-discipline, self-belief, self-reinforcement, self-validation.

That’s the long version of my answer… and also, clearly, my conception of Who Reads Writing Wednesday Each Week?

My question to you, dear readers, is this:

Am I close? Wildly off? Would the description above apply to you? In part? Whole? 

And if not, what description would apply to you?

Thanks in advance for taking the time and thought. I’m really curious to see what responses come back. Please use the Comments section below so we can all see what’s what!

The post A Poll first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

A Practice and Resistance

Why do we have a practice at all?

I have my own reasons, some of which definitely go deep into the airy-fairy, but the most obvious and the most practical is this:

We have a practice in order to confront and overcome Resistance.

A practice by definition defeats Resistance because it produces work every day with total focus and dedication. And a practice is lifelong, so we know we’ll never quit.

Overcoming Resistance is a side-benefit of having a practice.

One could say that a practice is “habit.” But in truth a practice goes way beyond that. A practice enlists habit. It implies habit (if we have a practice, we do it every day, i.e. it can be called a habit) but it is habit only in the sense that giving birth is exercise.

Likewise, if we said the purpose of a practice is to overcome Resistance, we would be vastly understating the depth and effect of having a practice.

Overcoming Resistance is a side-benefit of having a practice. 

For myself, I was years into the act of having a practice before I even thought about its efficacy as a strategy to overcome my own Resistance. Resistance was (and is) a given for me. It wakes up with me. I know I will have to face it every day, and I know it will never diminish or relent or go away.

But I have a practice. That’s all I need to know. I know at a certain time of day I will go into a certain room. I will enter with a very specific mindset, i.e. “Leave your problems (and your ego) outside.” And I will engage in a very specific (though infinitely varied in the moment) enterprise.

I have left Resistance outside as well. It is not allowed into the space where my writing practice takes place.

In an earlier post we cited my friend and mentor Paul Rink’s admonishment to me immediately after I’d finished a manuscript: “Good for you, start the next one today.” What Paul meant, though he didn’t express it in these terms, was:

“You have a practice now, Steve. A practice is engaged in every day. Don’t tell me you’re tired or you want to take a victory lap or you don’t have any idea what your next project will be. None of that matters. You have a practice now. Do it.”

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“Sell it somewhere else”

I can’t resist putting up one more ballet story from my great friend and mentor, David Leddick.

Remember, in last week’s post, David told us about dancing at the Metropolitan Opera and taking a class there from Miss Craske, who told her students, “Leave your problems outside.”

David as Worldwide Creative Director on the Revlon account at Grey Advertising, 1969

Here’s more from David’s book, I’m Not For Everyone… Neither Are You:

Miss Craske taught the Cecchetti Method, a ballet technique created by Enrico Cecchetti, who had trained the Russian greats: Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina and many others. 

She was an English lady with a high, piercing voice. She brooked no foolishness in her classes. One day my friend Betty Ann Paulin, who was a musical comedy dancer, was in the front row doing a combination.  

Miss Craske stopped the class and said, “Betty Ann, you wretched girl, what are you doing?” Betty Ann replied, “I’m selling it, Miss Craske.” 

Then came the reply: “Well, you can sell it somewhere else.”

At the Met, you were there to serve the music, the story, and the production. Never your own ego.

My first grown-up job was as an office boy at $105 a week on the Revlon account at Grey Advertising in New York. David was the Worldwide Creative Director. That was a big, big deal. He was such a great ad writer that his portfolio—the “book” you carried around to show what you’d done—didn’t contain his ads; it only held spoofs of his ads from New Yorker magazine cartoons.

David was around thirty-five then; this was probably ten years after his ballet career. Part of my job as an office boy was to carry the pages of ad copy from one star writer to another or to the art director they worked with. (Revlon was all star writers, mostly female.) I remember reading the stuff and thinking, “I can write this shit.”

One day, I gathered up my courage and knocked on David’s door. “How does somebody get to be a writer in this business?” David gave me an assignment. “Pick three existing ads that you like; then do the next one in the series. Then pick three you hate and do it right. This doesn’t have to be fancy, just scribble it on cocktail napkins.”

David introduced me to his friend Ed Hannibal, who was a creative director at Benton & Bowles. Ed hired me. So, whatever I’ve done or not done since then, it’s all David’s fault.

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“Leave your problems outside”

My great friend and mentor (and also my first boss), David Leddick, spent several years as a ballet dancer with the Metropolitan Opera. David trained with a celebrated teacher named Margaret Craske.

David Leddick in Metropolitan days

Here’s what he wrote in his book, I’m Not For Everyone. Neither Are You.

I studied ballet at the old Metropolitan Opera when Antony Tudor, the famous choreographer, was the head of the ballet school. In fact, Margaret Craske was the teacher most students considered to be more important.  She had danced with Pavlova in the ’20s. 

Miss Craske instructed us: “Leave your problems outside the classroom.”

Such good advice. And in that hour and a half of intense concentration on every part of your body, the music, the coordinating with other dancers—you really couldn’t think about your troubles and it was great escaping them. You emerged much more relaxed and self-confident.

We worked hard. We never had a sick day. You went on even if you had to lie down in the wings until you were needed. No one thought this was unusual. 

At the Met, the powers that be were only interested in two things: how well you sang and how well you danced. Your race didn’t count, your background, sexual preferences, family, none of that mattered. You had to deliver.  That was the sole standard. It was great.

In later careers, all of this has stood me in good stead. I never had to work that hard in any of the various worlds I entered. I knew the quality of the work I was doing. Dancing at the Met was a wonderful experience and a wonderful preparation for the rest of my life.

When we say, “A practice has a space and that space is sacred,” this is what we mean.

We leave our problems outside.

We leave our egos outside. (We enter with aspiration and intention but not with ego.)

We leave our attachment to outcomes outside.

A practice has a space… and that space is sacred.

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A Practice Has a Space

Have you ever seen the books (and magazine) Where Women Create by Jo Packham? They’re prose-and-photo shoutouts to craftspersons—all female.

The books’ and magazines’ huge kick is to show in great and loving detail the studios and workspaces of women sculptors, weavers, potters, fine artists, quilters, writers, every craft you can imagine, and lots of stuff beyond craft.

Jo Packham, the writer and creator of “Where Women Create.”

It’s tremendously inspiring just to see these spaces. Why? Because there’s so much love, focus, and aspiration in them. You see racks of fashion artists with a hundred different sets of scissors… or a welding studio that’s as huge and complete as something out of NASA.

Why do I love to see these? Because they are sacred spaces.

The goddess smiles when she looks upon them. She goes out of her way to visit and returns with joy again and again. These spaces have been created by their artists like wombs or the nests of eagles… to bring forth soul work and soul art. You can’t look at them, even just photos, and not feel your heart leap with respect for the artist or craftswoman who has fashioned them and given them life.

A practice has a space.

And that space belongs to heaven. Like the dojo of a great martial arts sensei, we figuratively (and maybe literally) pause at the threshold. We place our palms together and we bow to the space. We may even take our shoes off.

We leave all that is temporal and mundane behind when we cross this threshold.

We leave our egos behind.

We leave our attachment to outcome.

Even my own little office, which is basically clutter, clutter, and more clutter, is a space that I enter gravely and with serious purpose. I have come to work. That work might be fun… I might laugh (or cry) as I’m doing it. But I’m doing it with the same level of purity (I hope) and devotion and aspiration as a Zen swords master or a craftswoman in jewelry or brocade or decoupage.

Even if we work on our laptops at a back table in Starbucks, our commitment and our passion render that space a personal hot spot that the Muse recognizes and to which she grants honor and respect.

A practice has a space… and that space is sacred.

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Having a Practice, #2

I was thinking about the activities that come most immediately to mind when we think of “having a practice.”

Meditation.

Yoga.

Martial arts.

I would certainly include running, fitness training, biking, in fact all athletic endeavors from Spartan races to Brazilian jiu-jitsu to dressage to golf. Advancing into the more esoteric, we can’t leave out calligraphy, swords training, flower arrangement, and the tea ceremony.

In my own lexicon, I would include any artistic endeavor—writing of all kinds, dance, filmmaking, photography, acting, all comedic pursuits, videogame design, etc. And I would not exclude crafts—everything from quilting to furniture making to blacksmithing… any aesthetic activity that takes place in your studio or your home office or out in the garden or the corral.

What do these activities have in common? Why do they seem ideal candidates for a practice?

All involve, as an aim or intention, the effacement of the ego.All require, to achieve their highest levels, a form of psychic surrender.All are—however we might define this—”spiritual.”

The aim of a practice, in my view, is to seek the spirit by way of the body. In other words, using the physical to attempt to reach the ethereal.

In Downward Dog, we put the body into a certain alignment, a specific posture with regard to gravity. The point is, yes, to stretch and strengthen. But more than that, it’s to take the mind out of the ego “I” and into the “Witness I.” And from there, to higher versions of consciousness.

That’s the point, I think, of any pursuit in the arts or the crafts (and entrepreneurship as well.) 

For sure, I consider my own writing a practice.

I’m trying produce a “work,” yes. And I want the work to be good and even to “succeed.” But the real intention is to seek a form of “the zone,” to achieve a state of “play” that is beyond effort and exertion and beyond the constraining and limiting ego.

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Seeing the Field

I was watching the Cowboys-Lions game on TV the other night, when one of the commentators, Troy Aikman—himself a Hall of Fame Cowboys quarterback from the 90s—made an observation in praise of the current Dallas QB, Dak Prescott. “He’s seeing the field really well right now,” Troy said.

Meanwhile, over the holidays, I was visiting my family. Watching my two-year-old nephew Logan (actually my great-nephew) bounce around from Christmas gifts to playing with his cousins to trying to negotiate a steep flight of stairs, I realized his whole world is about seeing the field.

Life is the field for him.

At one point, he was struggling to get the wrapping paper off a gift. His grandmother reached in. “Do you want some help, Logan?” Logan immediately and forcefully pushed her hand away. He was not only impelled to make sense of the field … it was fun for him. You couldn’t have stopped him if you tried.

You and I as artists and entrepreneurs live to see the field. It’s our job. Our calling. But what field(s)? The field of the material world, of course. But then fields beyond that. The field of the future, of potentiality, of time forward and back …

We struggle to see the inner fields as well. The field of our calling, of our dreams, of our imagination. What is our art? How do we reach the level beyond this one … and levels beyond that? What is being? What is honor? What is death? What is the soul? 

We live in the field of our imagination. But what is that? How many limiting beliefs are we carrying that are preventing us from seeing what’s right in front of us? How would our lives be different if we could see those fields? If we could operate within them? 

I thought, watching Logan under the Christmas tree, that of all the fields that I should or could be seeing, I’m probably not even aware of .0001 of them.

I’m like my little nephew, struggling with my baby fingers just to get the wrapping off the package. 

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“Do you work over the Holidays?”

I don’t. It’s a “lane thing” for me. On a normal working week (or working day), I definitely psych myself  into a working lane, by which I mean a narrowly-focused channel that excludes all serious distraction.

Right now I’ve dropped out of that lane. I’m hanging with the fam 500 miles from my work desk. Both banks of the lane are open.

This is not necessarily easy for me. I like being in the lane. But every now and then it’s good to drop the intense and narrow focus and just be a regular person.

That’s my wish for you and every one of us soldiers in the trenches during this Holiday Season. A few extra hours in the sack and a few superfluous calories won’t kill us. I give myself and I give all of us permission to chill with the people we love and get fat for a few days.

Have a great Holiday Season, whatever your persuasion. We’ll get back into the trenches in the New Year!

The post “Do you work over the Holidays?” first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Boundary Boss

I did a podcast last week with psychotherapist Terri Cole. Do you know her?

She’s the author of Boundary Boss (which I highly recommend) and a powerful and insightful voice on social media and the web. She’s also a good friend. Terri’s husband, Vic Juhasz, is a great illustrator who did all the visual work on The Daily Pressfield.

That, in fact, was the main thrust of our podcast conversation.

Psychotherapist Terri Cole

But I noticed in the prep materials that Terri said she always asked guests, at the program’s end, the same question:

“Personally, what has been your most challenging boundary struggle and how did you overcome it?”

It turned out Terri didn’t ask the question that particular day, but the subject got me thinking. How would I answer?

“Boundary Boss” by Terri Cole

When we think of boundary issues in the psychological sense, we’re usually referring to excessively intrusive words or actions between people—the boss who takes liberties with our time or our person, the spouse or lover whose comments always seem to undermine us, the loudmouth uncle who insists on ruining Thanksgiving.

But, I realized, my most challenging boundary issue isn’t with another person.

It’s with me.

It’s with that voice in my head that is constantly telling me I’m not good enough to tackle the project I’m about to begin, that it’s all been done before (and better than I’ll ever do it), that I’m too old/too young, overeducated/undereducated, etc., etc.

In other words, the voice of Resistance is the same in my head now as it was in 1974 (and no doubt the same in your head too.)

Thinking of this from Terri’s “boundary boss” perspective, I thought, “This is where DRAWING THE LINE is mandatory.”

This is where the real voice in my head has to say, “Listen, you! You do not have the right to say those things to me. You don’t have the right to use that tone. And you sure as hell don’t have the right to do it over and over … and never, never stop. Back off! Take your trash somewhere else, but don’t dump it on me!”

The struggle against our own self-sabotage, fear, self-doubt, tendency to procrastinate, perfectionism, etc, is really, I realized from Terri’s question, a boundary issue.

It’s a question of drawing the line. It’s about standing up for ourselves and protecting the best and most vulnerable parts of our psyches. “You, Voice in my Head, where do you get the nerve to say those things to me? And to say them in that arrogant, condescending tone of voice? Stop right now. I dismiss you. I am getting to work!”

P.S. Signed copies and Special Edition Gift Boxes of “The Daily Press” are still available here.

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