When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen… Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
STEVEN PRESSFIELDDon’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.
More Steven Pressfield Quotes
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The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
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The last thing we want is to remain as we are.
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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.
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The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
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The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
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What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.
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When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
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Put your ass where your heart wants to be.
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We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.
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A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.
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The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
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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’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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Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.
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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.
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The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone.
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Our greatest battle is to become ourselves, in the face of adversity.
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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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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.
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I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.
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The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.
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As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.
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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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Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
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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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The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.
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