The War of Art – by Steven Pressfield

The Wars of Art shows us that if you’re looking to achieve anything, especially something creative, you almost definitely have the skills and abilities to be able to do it. For example, if you want to be a writer, based on the fact that you’re reading this, you have the ability to read and write. But being able to write isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of actually writing a book.

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t… It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

What keeps us from sitting down to write? The Resistance. This book is all about The Resistance, and is broken into three parts: Defining the Enemy, Combatting Resistance, The Higher Realm. For anyone who wants to pursue a creative endeavour but has never been able to actually sit down and do the work, this book serves as a great kick in the behind.

‘Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles’

The War of Art Summary

This same idea goes for most things that require some investment of willpower or emotional labour. It’s true for sitting down and writing, but also true for starting a new diet or exercise regime, launching a new entrepreneurial venture, overcoming an addiction, starting an education course of any kind, any undertaking with the aim to help others, taking a principled political/moral/ethical stand, or any activity whose aim is tighter abdominal muscles. The act itself isn’t that hard, but those first few steps can feel almost impossible to overcome. That’s because Resistance is standing in our way. 

According to Pressfield, most of us have two lives: the life we live and ‘the unlived life’. What stands between the two is the Resistance. The unlived life is everything you dream for, everything you wish you could tackle, everything you hope to accomplish. If you’ve ever bought a treadmill that’s now gathering dust, you know what the Resistance is. If you ever quit a diet or stopped going to yoga class or gave up meditation, you know what the Resistance is. If you’re a writer who doesn’t write, or a painter who doesn’t paint, or an entrepreneur that doesn’t start business, you know what the Resistance is. 

• The Resistance is invisible. It cannot be seen, heard or touched, but it can be felt. It’s a repelling negative force whose aim is to shove us away, distract, prevent us from doing our work.
• The Resistance is internal. It may appear to be outside ourselves – we feel like we locate it in our boss, spouse, kids or jobs, and we blame them for standing in our way. But the Resistance is actually an enemy that comes from within.
• The Resistance is impersonal. It doesn’t know you and it doesn’t care about you specifically, it’s a force of nature that acts objectively.
• The Resistance is Universal. We may think that we’re the only ones struggling against Resistance, but that’s wrong. Everyone that has a body experiences Resistance.  
• The Resistance is most powerful at the finish line. If it feels like you’re about to win, it bombards you with one last dose of negative force to try to stop you from getting the job done. It knows that this might be its last chance and hits the panic button to marshal one last assault and slam us with everything it’s got.
• Procrastination is the Resistance. We rationalise that we’re still going to do what we want to do, we’re just going to do it later. We don’t admit that we’re caving in to the Resistance, we just put it off a little We don’t say ‘I’m not going to write that song’, we just say ‘I AM going to write that song – I’m just going to start tomorrow’. 

That’s the bad news. The good news? Resistance can be beaten. If it couldn’t be beaten, there would be no Fifth Symphony, no Romeo & Juliet, no Golden Gate Bridge. 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.

That’s the problem: Resistance. But thankfully, there is a solution.

SOLUTION: Turning Pro

Now that we understand the problem, we can focus on the solution. Pressfield only presents one way to combat the Resistance: Turning Pro. Amateurs suffer at the hands of the Resistance, professionals can overcome it. Resistance hates it when we turn pro. 

When asked if she wrote on a schedule or only when inspiration struck, fames novelist Somerset Maugham said, “I write only when inspiration strikes… thankfully it strikes every morning at 9am sharp”. She doesn’t sit down to write because she gets the inspiration – she gets the inspiration because she sits down to write.

Thankfully, we already know HOW to turn pro. We’re all already pros in some area of our life. We’re professionals in our working life, so we know exactly what it takes to turn pro in our artistic endeavours to. It’s replicated the same things that we already do:

• Show up every day
• Stay on the job until the day is done
• Commit for the long haul
• Master the techniques required to complete your job
• Receive praise or blame in the real world (not in your own head)
• Have a sense of humour about your job – don’t take it as seriously as life or death
• Do no overidentify yourself with your job

We all do this already in our day-to-day job. If you could apply these same concepts to our art, we’d turn pro and be a few steps closer to beating the Resistance. The amateur doesn’t show up every day, he finds excuses, and he gives up too easily. You don’t hear him bitching and saying ‘writing this book is killing me’, instead he doesn’t write a book at all.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So grab yourself a mouthful and start chewing.

A few more ideas about turning pro:

• A professional accepts no excuses. The amateur underestimates the Resistance so he lets the flu keep him away from his work for a day. The Professional has learned better and she respects the Resistance – she knows that if she caves in today, no matter how plausible the excuse, she’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.
• A professional endures adversity. She reminds herself that 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 watching on in envy.
• A professional does not take failure (or success) personally. We all fear rejection and failure, and the Resistance will try to use this fear against us, but we must realise that it’s not a reflection on us. We can turn failures into lessons to continue to hone our craft. The Resistance will use our fear to try to get us to stop working, or it will use our fear to stop us from exposing it for public evaluation. But professionals do it any way, recognising the importance of feedback and criticism.

The hill is a sonofabitch but what can you do? Set one foot in front of another and keep climbing.

There is no mystery in turning pro. It’s a conscious decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.