Here is a shout out to all of my artist, writer, and entrepreneurial friends….and anyone else who really wants to do create something. Read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This is my second go around with this little gem. It originally came to me from Hansel and Gretel-ing around Robert McKee. So good, I had to go back for seconds….
This book is priceless for anyone who yearns for a dream that is not becoming a reality. It’s a must for anyone who has a song to sing, a symphony to write, a novel to finish, or a canvas to paint….for anyone who feels a burning in their soul to give something to the world or to start something new…for anyone who wants to do something. Anything. At. All.
This book is about Resistance. Yes. Resistance. With a capital R. The thing that keeps us from being…from doing…from claiming all that is ours to be, do and have. Mr. Pressfield hands Resistance up to you in a way that will make you sit back and say ‘ah-ha!’…sneaky little devil looks like that? Who knew….?
It is a remarkable little book that is packed with wisdom. When I finished it, I felt like I had been let in on a secret…a secret that had plagued me most of my artistic life….and I felt relieved.
There had been times past when I thought I was lazy, a consummate procrastinator, a jack of all trades-master of none kinda’ gal…now I know it was none of those things. It is and always has been the same thing that plagues all creative-types (and others too, you know who you are)…but you’ll have to read it to truly get it.
I’ll taunt you ever-so-slightly with a snippet of the chapter entitled, Resistance and Self-Dramatization:
“Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you can get just as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record? Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: nobody gets a damn thing done.”
Yea. That’s what this book is like. Sharp, witty and to the point but oh so much more….bite off one of those snippets or chew through the whole thing at once. It doesn’t really matter how you get this one down….but if you do, maybe then, you’ll be kickin’ Resistance where it counts and making that date with destiny that was yours all along.
Unthink this: what if the only think keeping you from your dreams was to say no to the next distraction?