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In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.
causes resistance
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 problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are.
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.
Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.
Be Stubborn Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.
You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more.
when I say “Don’t think,” what I mean is: don’t listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind.
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.
Cover the Canvas One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP.
Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.
I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?”
There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us.
The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.
When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.
Panic is good. It’s a sign that we’re growing.
In the belly of the beast, we remind ourselves of two axioms: The problem is not us. The problem is the problem. Work the problem.
No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash.
Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship.
When we ship, we open ourselves to judgment in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centered fantasies and self-delusions.
From the day I finally finished something, I’ve never had trouble finishing anything again.
I always deliver. I always ship.
In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent shared this thought, “Blessed is he who has found his work.”
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the
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