Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

by Steven Pressfield

What is Resistance? It’s our own tendency—yours and mine and everyone’s—to yield to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, impatience, self-inflation, self-denigration, distraction, laziness, arrogance, complacency, and perfectionism. It’s our inability to focus, our incapacity to press on through adversity. It’s our terror of finishing and exposing our work to the judgment of the marketplace. It’s fear of failure. It’s fear of success. Fear of humiliation. Fear of destitution. It’s our inability to defer gratification, to acquire and act with self-discipline, self-validation, and self-reinforcement. Resistance is our tendency to self-sabotage, fail to start, and fail to finish. In its most extreme forms, Resistance expresses itself as vice and even crime—abuse of ourselves or others, cruelty, addiction to substances, diva-ism, compulsive self-dramatization, self-aggrandizement and self-diminishment.

When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity. The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best? If I’ve done that, then I’ve put my butt where my heart wants to be. I can’t ask anything of myself more than that.

Why doesn’t everyone do it? In one four-letter word: FEAR.

Tremendous power lies in the simple, physical act of stationing our body at the epicenter of our dream. There is magic in putting our ass where our heart wants to be.

Leave the town or city where you live and move to the hub of the creative or entrepreneurial world where your dreams are most likely to come true. Let me repeat that. Pack up your total establishment—spouse, kids, dog, couch, treadmill—and move to the metropolis that’s the epicenter of your career or creative dream.

I realized, This is how you write a song! Not in one crazed pass, not scribbling notes and losing them in your jacket pockets or your glove compartment . . . but sitting down like a pro and working with the material, changing and improving the song over and over, until you had it exactly the way you wanted it.

When you move your material ass to the geographic site of your dream, your peers and potential mentors think at once, This person is serious. She has committed. She has burned the boats. She is one of us. Remember, the potential colleagues and decision-makers who can open doors for you . . . they’ve all already moved to Austin or Nashville or wherever the action in their/your field is hottest. They’ve moved to these places because they’re serious. Because they’re committed. Yes, technically, you can audition via Zoom or send in your demo from fifteen hundred miles away, but you and your submission will not be considered as serious. You will be perceived as half-in/half-out, as a part-timer and a dilettante.

“Keep working,” Ernie said. “Don’t turn anything down. Porn flicks, slasher movies, free stuff for friends. Don’t get precious. You’re young. You’re learning. Keep working.” Ernie cited three reasons: “One, working means you’re getting paid. Every buck means you’re a working pro. You’re toiling in your chosen field. “Two, when you work, you learn. Everybody has something to teach you. A grip will show you something about lighting, an editor will drop some pearl about what to keep and what to cut. Even actors know something. “Three, you’re making friends. Some kid who’s schlepping coffee today may be a producer tomorrow. An actress you do some free work for today may get you hired for a rewrite six months from now.” This is how any career really works—dance, theater, photography, financial planning. Even the military works like this. But before this network of friends and mentors can help you up the ladder, you have to be there. In person. In the flesh, where you can make these friends and find these mentors.

This is the test Frank applies at the start of any project—not just to himself but to anyone he will prospectively hire or collaborate with on a movie, a play, whatever. Frank asks himself, “Will this person commit unconditionally to the work? Is this someone I can count on in act 3, when the wheels come off and the faint of heart flee for the exits? Is this someone who will have my back in crunch time?” We’re talking now about the third-level meaning of “Put your ass where your heart wants to be.” Commitment over time. Commitment in the face of adversity.

Commitment = exposure. That’s why people don’t commit. They’re not stupid. They don’t want to risk falling off the mountain.

Don’t try to overcome your fear. Fear cannot be overcome. Instead simply move your body into the physical space you fear . . . and see what happens.

THE UNIVERSE RESPONDS It is not an idle or airy-fairy proposition to declare that the universe responds to the hero or heroine who takes action and commits. It responds positively. It comes to the hero’s aid.

At Sterling’s request, Tom had read the manuscript of Gates of Fire. His note to me said, among other kind things, “There is a first-rate novel in here. I am confident you will pull this off.” I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Tom Guinzburg barely knew me. There was no profit in it for him to reach out. He did it because he was a good guy with a generous heart. That note changed my life. I taped it to the screen of my eight-bit Kaypro and took courage from it every day of the six months it took me to get three hundred pages out of that manuscript. When you and I put our ass where our heart wants to be, the universe responds. We change. We see ourselves differently. But others, sometimes those we are not aware of (and whom we have no idea are aware of us), see us differently too. They may come to our aid in ways we could never have predicted and by some word or act of kindness change everything.

Work—day-in, day-out exertion and concentration—produces progress and order. That’s a law of the universe.

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

Can we put our ass where our heart wants to be if we’ve got a family, a job, a mortgage? Yes. The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands. James Patterson was creative director of J. Walter Thompson, the mega-ad agency of the fifties and sixties. His dream was to be a writer of fiction. He would come into the office every morning at six. He’d close his door and lock it. For two hours, he wrote fiction. When the advertising day started, he opened his door and became a regulation Mad Man. As of 2022, James Patterson’s books have sold three hundred million copies. One hour a day is seven hours a week, thirty hours a month, 365 hours a year. Three hundred and sixty hours is nine forty-hour weeks. Nine forty-hour weeks is a novel. It’s two screenplays, maybe three. In ten years, that’s ten novels or twenty movie scripts. You can be a full-time writer, one hour a day.

One day I said something to him about habit as it pertains to working out. He shook his head. “It’s not habit. It’s your life.” T.R. is right. At some point the practice of our vocation moves from being a challenge that we must will ourselves into accepting and enacting to becoming simply . . . our life. Like a mother raising her children or a farmer tending his crops. This is our calling. This is who we are. This is what we do.

The following is from my novel about Alexander the Great, The Virtues of War. The narrator in this scene is Alexander as a boy. “Telamon” is a sergeant in Alexander’s father Philip of Macedonia’s army.

The men under his command were to leave behind not only their individual problems, but every thought, belief, or attitude that would not serve them in the field. He meant, Leave your ego, leave your greed, leave your competitiveness with your comrades, leave your lust for glory and your fear and your self-doubt and your lack of belief in yourself. Leave everything but your will to victory.

COMMIT WITHOUT A PLAN B I’m sometimes asked, “How did you keep going all those years without any success?” I couldn’t have answered at the time, except to say that I had no choice.

THIS IS THE DAY Here’s my frame of mind as I sit down to work: This is the day. There is no other day. This is the day.

THIS IS THE JOB This is the job. There is no other job. This is the job.

COMMIT TO NO DISTRACTIONS It goes without saying, I have turned off all external sources of distraction. No phone. No e-mail. No Instagram. No Facebook. I am on an ice floe in Antarctica. I’m circling alone at seventy thousand feet. I’m on the moon. Barring a nuclear attack or a family emergency, I will not turn my attention to anything that’s not happening inside my own demented brain.

WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS I stop working when I start making mistakes. Typos and misspellings tell me I’m tired. I have reached the point of diminishing returns. Steinbeck said he always wanted to leave something in the well for tomorrow. Hemingway believed you should stop when you knew what was going to happen next in the story. You and I, as writers and artists, are playing always for tomorrow. Our game is the long game. When you’re tired, stop.

THE OFFICE IS CLOSED When I finish the day’s work, I turn my mind off. The office is closed. The work has been handed off to the Unconscious, to the Muse. I respect her. I give her her time. If I see family or friends, I never talk about what I’m working on. I politely deflect any queries. But beyond not talking with others, I refuse to talk to myself. I don’t obsess. I don’t worry. I don’t second-guess. I let it rest. The office is closed.

GETTING READY FOR TOMORROW The last thing I do before closing my eyes is to mentally prepare for the fight tomorrow. Indeed, I have put my ass where my heart wants to be today. That’s not enough. I am playing the long game. I am inculcating habit. I am deepening my practice and my commitment, day by day, day after day. I’m training myself and reinforcing myself every day.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD The seminal action of every pitched battle fought by Alexander the Great was his headlong charge, mounted on his great warhorse Bucephalus, into the teeth of the enemy. Alexander wore distinctive armor and a double-plumed helmet so that his rush, at the head of his sixteen-hundred-strong Companion Cavalry, would be missed by no one on the field. Why did Alexander risk his life like this? First and most certainly, to inspire his men. Alexander believed that the sight of their king charging fearlessly at the foe would compel the warriors of his own phalanx and auxiliary cavalry to emulation, that they would follow their champion’s example and attack with equal fire and passion. But Alexander believed something greater. His conviction was that heaven, witnessing his act of valor and fearlessness, would be compelled to act as well. The heart of Zeus (or whatever we might call chance, luck, fortune) could not look on unmoved. The Higher Dimension would intervene, somehow, some way, in Alexander’s favor. Fortune, Alexander believed, favors the bold.

absolutely. In Watashi’s lexicon, feel and feelings had no meaning in war. They had no meaning in competition. They had no meaning in life. “Watashi don’t give a shit how you ‘feel.’ The Marine Corps don’t give a shit how you ‘feel.’

All that mattered to Watashi was that you do your job—on time and to the best of your ability—whether you “felt” like it or not. How do I apply Watashi’s wisdom today? If I don’t “feel” like getting out of bed in the morning, I hear and see a Little Watashi in my mind’s eye. I dismiss that “feeling” and get up. I dismiss positive feelings too, at least as they affect work. If I’m self-satisfied or in soaring good spirits and want to celebrate or take the day off, I place those feelings as well in quotation marks.

Surely on the night before a battle, Alexander the Great in his private heart must have thought something like this: Am I crazy? Do I really intend, tomorrow, to charge into the teeth of the enemy, mounted on my warhorse Bucephalus, who is recognizable on sight by every man of the foe while I myself am dressed in distinctive armor, wearing a double-plumed helmet so that every warrior on the opposing side knows it’s me? Every enemy arrow is going to be aimed at me, every javelin, every lance, every sling bullet. The greatest champions of the foe will all rush straight at me, seeking to win glory by being the one to slay me. Am I out of my mind to put myself in such a position? Surely Alexander’s comrades seconded this. “Don’t risk yourself, Sire! We need you! What will the army do if you are killed?” That was reality. Objective assessment. Who could argue with it? Yet . . . Yet there existed simultaneously—and Alexander, beyond all others, was aware of it—a second reality. In this second Reality, Alexander’s seemingly reckless charge made absolute sense. Its audacity would strike terror into the hearts of the enemy. Its valor would inspire his own men and incite them to charge alongside him. And, in Alexander’s mind, the boldness of the stroke would invoke heaven’s aid and intercession. What proof do we have that Alexander’s Reality possessed substance? He survived and prevailed in four of the greatest battles in history—the Granicus River, Issus, Gaugamela, and the Battle ...

My friend Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL sniper who made the transition, seemingly seamlessly, to bestselling thriller writer (The Terminal List, Savage Son, In the Blood.) When I asked Jack how he did it, he said, I decided if I was going to enter the space, I was going to enter it in full force. What we’re talking about here is breadth of commitment. It’s not just put your ass. It’s put your whole ass. And put it across the full spectrum. My own weakness, forever, has been promoting myself and my books. I’ve been great at putting my ass into the writing part, but I’ve dropped the ball big-time in marketing and self-promotion. Not so with Jack. He has entered the space with all guns blazing. Jack doesn’t just write the books. He has a podcast, he has a blog, and he has a store. You can buy a mug, a hat, a crossed-tomahawks wallet, a T-shirt. When a new novel appears, Jack is on the road, virtually if not physically. He does interviews, he runs contests, he gives away samples of the new book, and he creates VIP packs complete with souvenirs and cool little premiums. Jack appears regularly on cable news. He has made himself a go-to authority on issues involving the military, especially the mindset of the warrior and the transition of veterans to civilian life. Jack is present constantly on social media—and always “on-brand.” Even his beard is on-brand. You will see him on Instagram and Facebook at outdoor or shooting events, in extreme weather and endurance conditions. He ...

There is no worse feeling for a writer or any artist than to see her book, her film, her music go out there and die. Or worse, be launched into the world and nobody even knows it exists. I’ve experienced this more than once and it’s heartbreaking.

From Ryan Holiday’s Perennial Seller: You can cut back on a lot of things as a leader, but the last thing you can ever skimp on is marketing. Your product needs a champion . . . That must be you. Marketing is your job. It can’t be passed on to someone else. Even if you’re famous, even if you have a million Twitter followers, even if you have a billion dollars to spend . . . it’s still on you and it still won’t be easy.

We get a huge benefit from making a simple commitment: Don’t miss deadlines. The benefit is that once we agree to the deadline, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. We don’t have to negotiate, come up with excuses or even stress about it. It won’t ship when it’s perfect. It will ship because we said it would. Once this is clear, the quality of what we ship goes way up. Instead of spending time and energy looking for reasons, excuses or deniability, we simply do the work. And over time, we get better at figuring out which deadlines to promise. Because if we promise, we ship.