- How many pages I have produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it “All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance“
- “It’s not the writing part that’s hard, it’s sitting down to write”
BOOK 1 – RESISTANCE – Defining the Enemy
- Activities that most commonly hit by resistance- any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long term goals
- Writing, Painting, Music, Film. or any creative art
- Launching of any company
- Diet or health programs
- Meditation
- Any activity with the aim of tightening abs
- any course or program designed to overcome any habit or addiction
- Commitment of heart – like marriage, child
- Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work
- Everyone faces resistance even the best of the best (Universal)
- Resistance has no strength of its own …we feed it with the power of our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
- Resistance recruits allies: Couples or close friends will engage in tacit compacts where each member unconsciously agrees to continue wallowing in the same mediocrity
- Resistance and Procrastination:
- Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it is easy to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves. “I’, never going to write..”, instead we say, “I am going to write my symphony; I am just going to start tomorrow”
- So remember whenever we try to do something “tomorrow” it is easy to recognize resistance at work….do you ever say you are going to watch that Netflix binge and finish it tomorrow…i have watched breaking bad till 4 in the morning….resistance like it…do you ever say you will finish that chocolate bar tomorrow?
- We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
- NEVER FORGET: This very moment we can change our lives
- This second, we can sit down and do our work!
- Resistance and Unhappiness:
- What does resistance feel like?
- First unhappiness. We feel like hell… low-grade misery…bored..restless…no satisfaction..want to go to bed…of get up and party…do social media..feeling unloved and unlovable…disgusted…have our lives and ourselves…resistance become unbearable…at this point vices kick in: Dope, adultery, web surfing. Facebook, twitter.
- Resistance is proportional to the love of the project.
- The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.
- once you are in the flow…hours fly by.
- “Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product”
- Resistance and Support:
- Have you ever been to a workshop? What better way of avoiding work then going to a workshop? Ph.D. in Resistance to workshop! 😀
- SAME goes for happy hours, networking happy hours, etc.
- Seeking support from friends and family is like having your people gathered around at your deathbed. It’s nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye
- MOre energy we spend stoking up on support from colleagues and loved ones, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business.
- Resistance and Rationalization:
- Rationalization’s job is to keep us from feeling ht shame we would feel if we truly face what cowards we are for not doing our work.
- Resistance is FEAR. But Resistance is too cunning to show itself in this form…since if REsitance let us see clearly our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel shame at this..and shame may drive us to ACT in the face of fear…..So Resistance doesn’t want us to do this…so it brings in Rationalization. Resistance presents us with a series of plausible rational justification for why we shouldn’t do our work.
- Some rationalizations can be true of course…however, what Resistance leaves out is that all this means nothing!
- Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace
- Lance Armstrong has cancer and won the tour de France
BOOK TWO – Combating Resistance – Turning Pro
- Aspiring artists defeated by the resistance are amateurs…amateur Latin root meaning is “to love”
- Amateur plays for fun … Pro plays for keeps
- Amateur game is his avocation to the Pro, it’s his vocation
- Amateur plays part-time, Pro plays full time
- Amateur is a weekend warrior, Pro is there 7 days a week
- Amateur does not love the game enough, if he did he would not pursue it as a sideline (side hustle), distinct from his ‘real’ vocation.
- The Pro loves it so much he dedicates his life for it. HE commits full time
- Resistance hates it when we turn pro.
- The artist must love to be miserable just like a Marine!
- We’re all PROs already! In our jobs – use principles from regular jobs to apply to our art.
- We show up every day…might do it because we have to..to keep from getting fire..but we do it…we show up every day
- We show up no matter what…even in sickness
- We stay in the job all day…our minds might wander, but our bodies remain at the wheel…we do not go home till 5 pm!
- We are committed over the long haul…might change jobs…but we keep working until we have enough money to retire
- The stakes for us are high and real …about survival, feeding our families, educating our children…about EATING
- We work for $..not here for fun…we work for money
- We do not over-identify with our job
- We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on the weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur on the other hand over identifies with his avocation his artistic aspirations …he defines himself by it. The amateur takes it so seriously that it paralyzes him
- We received praise or blame in the real world
- Now consider the amateur …the aspiring painter…the wannabe playwright…how does he pursue his calling..he doesn’t show up everyday …he doesn’t show up no matter what…he doesn’t stay at the job all day..he is not committed over the long haul…stakes for him are illusory and face…he doesn’t get the money... You do not hear him bitching “This fucking Trilogy is killing me!” Instead, he doesn’t write this trilogy at all.
- A Pro 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 it can not sustain that level of intensity, We will hit the wall… We will crash!
- Pro understand delayed gratification..he is an ant, not a grasshopper,…the tortoise, not the hare.
- Pro knows whether its a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much…he accepts that and recognized as reality.
- So he conserves his energy and is ready for the long haul.
- The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear then he can do his work. The Pro knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread free artist.
- A Pro accepts no excuses
- The professional knows that if he caves in today, he’ll be twice as likely tomorrow.*
- The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished. The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.
- Pro doesn’t take failure or success personally
- Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts
- fear of rejection isn’t just psychological its is in our cells.
- Bhagavad Gita tells us we have a right only to or labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life, all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.
- The pro listens to the criticism to learn and grow but they never forget that resistance is using criticism against them on a far more diabolical level
- Pro can not allow the action of others to define their reality ..tomorrow morning the critics can be gone but the writer will still be there facing the blank page …nothing matters but that he keeps working.
BOOK THREE – BEYOND RESISTANCE – The Higher Realm
- As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it, They are our allies and angels.
- When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe artists don’t.
- NOTE: This part of the book is less actionable…and starts talking about a more spiritual side…ego…self…Jung…Muse…invoking the must. I have read it but did not gain anything useful. I will come back and reread this third section. I feel the book was already awesome without this third section.
