Do the Work

by Steven Pressfield

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

“Trust the soup,” she means let go of the need to control (which we can’t do anyway) and put your faith instead in the Source, the Mystery, the Quantum Soup.

When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

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.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

“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.

Stay primitive. Trust the soup.

Swing for the seats. And our final-final precept: 4. Be ready for Resistance.

Implacable

Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self.

The opposite of fear is love—love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.

In the belly of the beast, we go back to our allies: Stupidity Stubbornness Blind faith We are too dumb to quit and too mulish to back off.

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.

Then get back to work. Begin the next one tomorrow. Stay stupid. Trust the soup. Start before you’re ready.