Do the Work

by Steven Pressfield

any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these acts will elicit Resistance.

Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others.

The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on this earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.

Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious.

The deeper the source we work from, the better our stuff will be—and the more transformative it will be for us and for those we share it with.

The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They

With some exceptions (God bless them), friends and family are the enemy of this unmanifested you, this unborn self, this future being.

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s 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.

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don’t think. Act.

Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.

When we’re stubborn, there’s no quit in us. We’re mean. We’re mulish. We’re ornery. We’re in till the finish. We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance’s ass and not let go, no matter how hard he kicks.

Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel. Resistance wants to rattle that faith. Resistance wants to destroy it.

You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

Resistance is the shadow, its opposite—Assistance—is the sun.

our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is Resistance.

The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.

W. H. Murray said: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.

The most highly cultured mother gives birth sweating and dislocated and cursing like a sailor. That’s the place we inhabit as artists and innovators. It’s the place we must become comfortable with.

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.

The old saw says there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting. This is true. Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all. 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. If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your lover to. Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.

Your movie, your album, your new startup … what is it about? When you know that, you’ll know the end state. And when you know the end state, you’ll know the steps to take to get there.

End first, then beginning and middle. That’s your startup, that’s your plan for competing in a triathlon, that’s your ballet.

Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.

Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.

Research can be fun. It can be seductive. That’s its danger. We need it, we love it. But we must never forget that research can become Resistance.

Any project or enterprise can be broken down into beginning, middle, and end. Fill in the gaps; then fill in the gaps between the gaps.

Ideas come according to their own logic. That logic is not rational. It’s not linear. We may get the middle before we get the end. We may get the end before we get the beginning. Be ready for this. Don’t resist it.

Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time. The Definition of Action and Reflection In writing, “action” means putting words on paper. “Reflection” means evaluating what we have on paper.

Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be)—and then bring it into being.

When an idea pops into our head and we think, “No, this is too crazy,” … that’s the idea we want.

Assistance is the universal, immutable force of creative manifestation, whose role since the Big Bang has been to translate potential into being, to convert dreams into reality.

Principle Number One: There Is an Enemy

In our feel-good, social-safety-net, high-self-esteem world, you and I have been brainwashed to believe that there is no such thing as evil, that human nature is perfectible, that everyone and everything can be made nice.

There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us.

Principle Number Two: This Enemy Is Implacable

Principle Number Three: This Enemy Is Inside You

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. It does not arise from rivals, bosses, spouses, children, terrorists, lobbyists, or political adversaries. It comes from us.

Principle Number Four: The Enemy Is Inside You, But It Is Not You

Principle Number Five: The “Real You” Must Duel the “Resistance You”

There is no way to be nice to the dragon, or to reason with it or negotiate with it or beam a white light around it and make it your friend. The dragon belches fire and lives only to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom, which it has been charged to guard to its final breath. The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.

Principle Number Six: Resistance Arises Second

What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us. Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self.

before the dragon of Resistance reared its ugly head and breathed fire into our faces, there existed within us a force so potent and life-affirming that it summoned this beast into being, perversely, to combat

Resistance is not the towering, all-powerful monster before whom we are compelled to quake in terror. Resistance is more like the pain-in-the-ass schoolteacher who won’t let us climb that tree in the playground.

Principle Number Seven: The Opposite of Resistance Is Assistance

Test Number One “How bad do you want it?”