The War of Art

by Steven Pressfield

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.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction.

Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

In other words, 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 will elicit Resistance.

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

Resistance arises from within.

Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

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

RESISTANCE IS FUELED BY FEAR

RESISTANCE IS MOST POWERFUL AT THE FINISH LINE

Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.

These aren’t diseases, they’re marketing ploys. Doctors didn’t discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance.

Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren’t sick, they’re self-dramatizing.

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.

What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.

Fear tells us what we have to do.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you—and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.

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.

Not only do I not feel alone with my characters; they are more vivid and interesting to me than the people in my real life.

the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.

Resistance loves “healing.” Resistance knows that the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have to do our work.

In fact, the more energy we spend stoking up on support from colleagues and loved ones, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business.

When your deeper Self delivers a dream like that, don’t talk about it. Don’t dilute its power. The dream is for you. It’s between you and your Muse. Shut up and use it.

It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.

Resistance is fear.

Because if Resistance lets us see clearly that our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel shame at this. And shame may drive us to act in the face of fear.

Resistance presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.

The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation.

Resistance hates it when we turn pro.

Principle of Priority, which states (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.

Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.

Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it’s for failure.

Resistance loves pride and preciousness.

Technically, the professional takes money. Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.

The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare.

A pro views her work as craft, not art.

The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.

A PROFESSIONAL ACCEPTS NO EXCUSES

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished. The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.