I know a lot of what I’ve been sharing on this blog lately have been quotes and excerpts from books that I’m reading which strongly resonate with me. They’ve been hitting such strong chords and creating such shifts of consciousness, and often validation, that I am putting them out there as a sort of map/log of my Internal Journey.
The three excerpts below are also from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (who also wrote the Legend of Bagger Vance). I finished this book in less than 24 hours and will bringing it with me on my trip to Arizona next week to read it again. It contains similarities of ideas in Julia Cameron‘s The Artist’s Way, but perhaps with a more aggressive, poignant, and less delicate approach. One of biggest changes in my consciousness regarding acting and art that has occurred during the past year+ is how I think about the work and what is of utmost importance to me in its approach. The internal conflict that I’ve had with this change has been one of my biggest causes of Resistance. This book is so in alignment with those changes, it’s as if the Angels above dropped this book directly into my hands and gave me a big “thumbs up, you’re actually right on the money.” The Art of War then took this understanding of mine and with lifeblood, expanded it into something far greater than I was expecting. Without getting too much into the exact details of my own personal internal evolution, I will just say that it has helped me to understand my own Resistance, why it is there, what it is doing, and what, without question, must be done about it.
So without further ado:
Resistance and Being a Star
Grandiose fantasies are a symptom or Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, come as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
For the Love of the Game
To clarify a point about professionalism: The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.
The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action. Playing for money, or adopting the attitude of one who plays for money, lowers the fever.
Remember what we said about fear, love, and Resistance. The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. The payoff of playing-the-game-for-money is not the money (which you may never see anyway, even after you turn pro). The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail mentality, the hard-core, hard-head, hard-hat state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.
The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots. He looks in the mirror and sees GI Joe. Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.
Resistance loves pride and preciousness. Resistance says, “Show me a writer who’s too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”
Technically, the professional takes money. Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.
A Professional is Patient
Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare. Have you heard of the legend of Sylvester Stallone staying up three nights straight to churn out the screenplay for Rocky? I don’t know, it may even be true. But it’s the most pernicious species of myth to set before the awakening writer, because it seduces him into believing he can pull of the big score without the pain and without persistence.
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.
The professional steels himself at the start of a project, reminding himself it is the Iditarod, not the sixty-yard dash. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull in to the Nome.
Related articles
- the Truth versus Sneaky Seductive Sally (redheadjourney.wordpress.com)
- Good Stuff From Books: Steven Pressfield “The War of Art” (longcitywalks.wordpress.com)
- Interview with Steven Pressfield: Author of the War of Art | Goins, Writer (mysoulsonice.wordpress.com)
- Resistance and Self-Sabotage (edbatista.com)
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (mysoulsonice.wordpress.com)
- Do The Work (savasanaaddict.wordpress.com)
- A word on resistance (renewableenthusiasm.com)
- Living as a warrior (marilynlamoreuxblog.wordpress.com)
- Resistance and the War of Art (conversationagent.com)
- Julia Cameron (drawinghand.wordpress.com)
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