The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.
STEVEN PRESSFIELDResearch can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.
More Steven Pressfield Quotes
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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.
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To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.
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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.
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Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.
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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.
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Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It’s nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.
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We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perserverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.
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As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.
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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.
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Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.
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It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.
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It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.
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Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
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Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance.
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The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.
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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.
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Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.
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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.
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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.
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It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
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Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.
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The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
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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.
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We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.
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The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
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The amateur tweets. The pro works.
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