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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.

Steven Pressfield

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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Amateur Call Live Meaning Run True Work
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Cure Destroy Fusion Hurt Planet Symphony Writing Yourself
The professional will not tolerate disorder… He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Appearance Clothes Professional Tolerance
Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Attitude Inspirational Quit Stubborn Success
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Exploration Himself Professional Project Water
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Art Contribution Himself Professional Recognition Respect Superior
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Brain Enemy Preparation Production Resistance Start Yourself
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Call Scare Work
It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Believe Lying Ourselves
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Enemy Resistance Rise Rival
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Attitude Day Game Mindset Night Play Production Professional
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Alone Army Legs Man Production Strength Victory Win
When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Face Fears Run Stop
Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Act Brave Fear Inspirational Scare Yourself
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Reality Resistance Secret Writing
A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Animal Home Man Smart

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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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