This is Part 1 of Heroic Artists, an ongoing series on how prolific artists work. You can also check out the series introduction here.
What’s standing between your current life and the life you want to live? According to Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, the answer is Resistance.
What is Resistance?
In a nutshell, Resistance is the self-sabotage that prevents us from pursuing our dreams.
Resistance may take the form of doubt, procrastination, rationalization, addiction and personal drama. Resistance is all of the alleys we run down to avoid the hard work of building a better life for ourselves. The good news is that Resistance is also a wonderful guide, a neon sign pointing toward the work we need to do.
How do we defeat Resistance?
Pressfield’s answer can be summed up in two words: “turning pro”. He writes, “Aspiring artists defeated by Resistance share one trait. They all think like amateurs. They have not yet turned pro.”
For Pressfield, going pro is about attitude, about adhering to an ideal and setting standards of conduct. A pro shows up to work every day, no matter what. She constantly works to improve her craft. She accepts real-world feedback. She doesn’t become so attached to her work that she becomes paralyzed. She overcomes adversity and fear, committed to the long haul.
Most of us would agree that daily dedication to a goal is a key to achieving it, but Pressfield goes so far as to say that you must work on your dream full-time. Why so extreme? Why attach money to your avocation and turn it into a vocation? He explains:
The payoff of playing-the-game-for-money is not the money (which you may never see anyway, even after you go pro). The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. In 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.
[…] To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.
So how can we turn pro? Pressfield claims it’s simple: “There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a 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.”
The Big Picture
Just as there is an invisible force holding us back in life, Pressfield argues that there is also a benevolent force pushing us forward: the Muse.
This force can be thought of as natural (talent) or supernatural (angels). The point is that you have hidden allies when you sit down to work. As Pressfield explains, this is why it’s so important to put in the work:
Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
Pressfield theorizes that Resistance is a product of the Ego and is rooted in fear, particularly in what he sees as the ultimate fear: the fear that we will succeed. This is the worst fear because success would cut ties to the identity created by the expectations of ourselves and others; “we become estranged from all we know.”
As terrifying as it is, it’s only by pushing on with our work in spite of our fears that we shift from listening to Ego to listening to Self, the voice of the Muse.
In Closing
At just 165 pages, The War of Art is a quick read, easily digested in one sitting, but it’s also the kind of book that invites multiple readings. With most of the chapters between two paragraphs and two pages long, the book is written more as a series of meditations, making it ideal for bedtime/morning coffee reading. This format does a lovely job of taking you behind the words and intellectual concepts and into a more reflective, intuitive mindset – the mindset of the artist who has “gone pro”.
While he uses the artist, specifically the writer, as his primary example, this book could be applied to almost any daunting endeavor. Pressfield closes with this:
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.
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