- Author: [[Steven Pressfield]]
- Type: Kindle
- I probably want to read this book once more - knowing what I know now, and taking the right kind of notes instead of highlighting aimlessly. [[How To Take Smart Notes –– Sonke Ahrens]]
- Your only goal everyday should be to overcome resistance. The more important and true to our calling something is, the more resistance we feel towards it.
- Resistance seems to come from outside ourselves. We locate it in spouses, jobs, bosses, kids. But resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated.
- If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything.
- The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. [[free will]]
- Highlights:
- The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it into her work.
- [[The Attention Deficit Trait]] - "ADD, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases - they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did, marketing departments did, drug companies did."
- How controversial is this and how true is this? Were these discovered or invented?
- Depression and anxiety may be real but they can also be Resistance.
- What makes life tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that's acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it - by selling us a product, a drug, a distraction.
- The artist is grounded in freedom.
- When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
- The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
- Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.
- The amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his "real" vocation.
- Maugham: by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his.
- "You're where you wanted to be, aren't you? So you're taking a few blows. That's the price for being in the arena not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful." That's when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success, but I had a real failure
- A pro understands that all creative endeavors are holy, but she doesn't dwell on it. She knows if the thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. She she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how and leaves the why to the gods.
- Professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
- The professional recognizes his limitations: He gets an agent, gets a lawyer, gets an accountant. He knows she can only be a professional at one thing. He brings in other pros and treats them with respect.
- The professional is prepared, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage. She understands that Resistance is fertile and ingenious. The goal is not victory, but to handle herself, her insides, as sturdily and steadily as she can.
- By toiling beside the front door of technique, you leave room for genius to enter by the back.
- The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.
- But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
- "Eternity is in love with the creations of time" –– William Blake. (Reminds me of immortality and [[Sum]])
- In some way these creatures of the higher sphere (or the sphere itself, in the abstract), take joy in what time-bound beings can bring forth into physical existence in our limited material sphere.
- Sustain for me. Homer doesn't ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going. [[Odyssey]]
- This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle, and it's implications are staggering.
- When Pressfield is done writing for the day and takes a hike, his mind is still reeling from the day's work with corrections as the surface mind empties, another part chimes in. Different words on different pages, sentences that need to be rearranged. This is self-revision - organization.
- The principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits, rivers make their way to the sea.
- This is why artists are modest. They know they are not doing the work, they are just taking dictation. This is also why "non-creative" people hate "creative people". They sense that artists just tapped into some grid of energy and inspiration that they themselves can't yet seem to find or connect with.
- [[There are no unique messages, only unique messengers]]
- We're all creative, we all have the same psyche. The same everyday miracles are happening in all our heads day by day, minute by minute.
- "You're supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth."
- When we deliberately alter our consciousness in any way. we're trying to find [[The Self]]
- School, advertising, the entire materialist culture drills us from birth to define ourselves by others' opinions.
- The best thing you can do for another artist is serve as an example.
- A victim act is a form of [[passive aggression]]. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one’s experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants.
- Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.
- The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of selfconfidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world.
- The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx. Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.
- 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.
ALSO REFERENCED IN:
- More Notes on Mastery
- [[The War of Art - Steven Pressfield]] To attain mastery, you must adopt what we shall call Resistance Practice. The principle is simple—you go in the opposite direction of all of your natural tendencies when it comes to practice. First, you resist the temptation to be nice to yourself. You become your own worst critic; you see your work as if through the eyes of others. You recognize your weaknesses, precisely the elements you are not good at. Those are the aspects you give precedence to in your practice.