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On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.
Our Enemies
Resistance (i.e., fear, self-doubt, procrastination, addiction, distraction, timidity, ego and narcissism, self-loathing, perfectionism, etc.) Rational thought Friends and family
activities that most commonly elicit Resistance:
In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.
Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.
Resistance will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man.
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 last thing we want is to remain as we are. If you’re reading this book, it’s because you sense inside you a second self, an unlived you.
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.
Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop. What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness.
Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom.
When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
Start Before You’re Ready
Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
1. Stay Primitive
stars and galaxies come into being amid the release of massive primordial cataclysms.
2. Swing for the Seats
don’t overthink. Don’t overprepare. Don’t let research become Resistance.
Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page.
Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.
Start at the End
Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.
Answer the Question “What Is This About?”
End first, then beginning and middle. That’s your startup, that’s your plan for competing in a triathlon, that’s your ballet.
Chatter is Resistance. Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline. Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak?
Stay primitive. Trust the soup. Swing for the seats. And our final-final precept: 4. Be ready for Resistance.
We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.
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.
Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.
Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect.
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.
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.
The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it. Can we hear it in our head? It exists, like a signal coming from a faraway radio tower.
Our job is to tune to that...
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Bob Dylan’s Chr...
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movie True Confessions, starring Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro?
What follows is what you need to know to get to the other side.
Principle Number One: There Is an Enemy
Principle Number Two: This Enemy Is Implacable
Principle Number Three: This Enemy Is Inside You
Principle Number Four: The Enemy Is Inside You, But It Is Not You
Principle Number Five: The “Real You” Must Duel the “Resistance You”
Principle Number Six: Resistance Arises Second
In Greek, the word is eros. Life force. Dynamis, creative drive.
Principle Number Seven: The Opposite of Resistance Is Assistance
