The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He’s petrified.
Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
When we’re living as amateurs, we’re running away from our calling – meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experince it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential… Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: 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.
Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.
If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.
A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous.
![Steven Pressfield Quote - We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/we-feed-it-resistance-with-power-by-our-fear-of-it-683x1024.jpg)
