Conquering Resistance: Steven Pressfield's Framework for Beating Resistance | Book Review

Welcome to the Social Chameleon Show where it's our goal to help you learn, grow, and transform at

a Christian point of view. It's book review time. This episode, this theme, it's a little different than I normally do. Normally, I just do one book. This time, I'm gonna explore a collection of books. And what we're gonna explore is Conquering Resistance by Steven Pressfield. This is a collection of books. We'll go through here, The Art of War Turning Pro.

Do the Work, The Artist Journey. Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit. Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants TO BE. And then what I feel like is a culmination of all this work into the daily press field, which is a daily a book, you know, one one page a day, one task, one thing. And we'll go through each of these. If you're not familiar with mister Steven Pressfield, absolutely one of my favorite authors. I don't read his his, fiction stuff. I I do love his nonfiction things, and I really, I've got pretty much everything he puts out there.

Steven Pressfield is the author of The Art of War, which is the first book in the series, which he introduced introduces this whole concept of resistance, which has sold over a 1000000 copies globally and has been translated to multiple languages. He's a master of historical fiction with Gates of Fire being on the required reading list at West Point and

the recommended reading list of the Joint Chiefs. And so which is

very funny, ironic, interesting is I faced so much resistance preparing this episode, getting getting ready to prepare, preparing to prepare to prepare.

It's very fitting that this creeps up. I think it's just one

of those things that no matter how much you understand it, you know it. If you guys are familiar with, Daniel Kahneman, he wrote the book Thinking Fast and Slow, and he said something along the lines at one point he's like, and a lot of the things we know about, psychology and behavior and all that stuff, he's kind of one of the grandfather, godfathers of all of these things we know of. And he said, I spent, I'm I'm paraphrasing, 30 years, learning all this stuff and doing these experiments and writing about it, and I'm still fooled by it all. So that's the funny part about some of these things is, you know, the amount of resistance I felt and and I thought about it. And I was like, why did I, you know, put this off? I mean, prepping, I put off for weeks prepping. And it's funny because when I when I decided what book we really wanted to do, I said, oh, this is good. I've been wanting to do the collection. I'm like I said, I'm a huge fan of Steven Pressfield.

He's on my dream list of people to talk to on the podcast. And I was like, I wanna do these books justice. I hope I I can. I definitely spent many hours preparing, and the notes are long. But it's just so funny that the very thing I wanted

to talk about was the very

thing that creaked its head up when preparing. And one another thing I was thinking about when I was getting this going was I think it's so important. I reread these books quite often every, I don't know, every couple of years or so. And I think that's that's, you know, something if you're familiar with the quote from Bruce Lee, it's, I don't fear the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that has practiced one kick 10000 times. And I think that's the philosophy we should use with rereading books, going through the books that you, at the time, that you, you know, you felt was transformational, foundational, whatever it was that really spoke to you. Picture or nonfiction, it doesn't matter. Go back and reread these.

Spend time. I don't know. Maybe pick a schedule. I like every year, I like to, you know, the beginning of or end of the year, I like to pick, through my, you know, catalog of of books I've read, what am I gonna reread this year and not pick out a few that I wanna I wanna reread because I wanna revisit them. Because you're never the person you were when you first read it. Your life is different. You're different. You're older.

You're wiser. Things happen. Good, bad, and all the things. And on top of that, when you're you're reading books or listening to books, your your mind wanders off on things. Right? So you you will reread a book and it's just so funny. You can read a book 3 or 4 times. I'm like, I never remember this in the first time. But because you're in a different place in life, different things are going on, these things are gonna speak to you now in a different way, and you're gonna have different memories, different experiences, and different things to pull for.

So I encourage everybody, find a couple of books that you you absolutely love. You know, like, on my bookshelves here behind me for the audience watching video, these are all I only buy books that I want a hard copy of. So these are the books that I typically pick through to reread because they're, they were so impactful to me. They were so maybe foundational, whatever it is, eye opening, mind expanding that I want them on my shelves to look at, which is why a lot of them are, are facing forward. A thing I thought was a brilliant idea I got from Tim Ferris. With the books you wanna look at, you want top of mind, you want top of conscious, have those books facing out. And so every time you walk by, you know, when I come into my office, I see this book. I see this book and, you know, some different things are going on.

You sparks ideas. Right? So that's just something I do. I like to use the, the app, Readwise, if you guys are familiar with that. If you're not, I'll link to it for you guys. I think it's great. You, you know, load up all your books. If you if you're on Kindle, you do audio books and stuff. There's ways Google Books and Apple Books and all those things.

You can sync your highlights from from the book, and then just resurface these in an email. It's nice to keep some of these con these concepts and topics that you like, you're interested in. Like I said, that maybe are foundational, transformative for you. Top of mind, this is, you know, how I like to use it. There's, you know, different ways of syncing things. You can also let it sync quotes from everybody that's read the book. Right? And it'll pull up it'll it'll pull in the the most popular highlights, and you'll have these supplemental highlights. And I think it's a great ray great way to are constantly rereading books.

Right? Constantly pulling up topics, pulling up quotes, pulling up passages from these books, constantly services, you know, every morning you get an email. I also have set up, groups of authors that

I like. So, I've got, you

know, I've got Ryan Holiday Collection, so all of his books he's wrote written, it'll pull up quotes from all that. I got, you know, Jocko Willink. I've got Robert Green and all these different people that, you know, in addition to the regular supplemental quotes that come through and passages from these books, even news articles, or or things like that, substacks, whatever you highlight, you can pull these quotes back back in and be reminded of them. And it's great. So I get the quotes from some of my favorite authors. I have, you know, several books and, like, you know, Nassim Taleb. He's got, you know, 6 or 7 books. I really, really like his work.

It's really foundational for me. I have stoic things. You know, there's so many stoic, you know, just these stoics themselves, plus all the people that have written about stoicism. So I've got this thing and it constantly pulls these these things in. Like I said, it's

a great way to revisit a

lot of these ideas without necessarily rereading the books, and then, you know, you'll you'll you'll get a quote comes up from me, and then when where it's like, oh, yeah. You know, I haven't read that book in a few years. Boom. I put it on my list, and and then I go about rereading it. So what I'm gonna do for these these books here here is I'm just gonna pull through, a bunch of you know, a few different things, some key ideas and key things from each of these books. I've got my read by highlights, some of the books that, I don't have highlights for. I don't have passages that I've highlighted. You know, I, I got Goodreads pulled up here, and I went through and I I kinda pulled up a few, highlights from, you know, around the world, people that have read these and their highlights, just so we can get a sense of each of these books and which one, you know, kinda maybe resonates with you, what you wanna pick up, you wanna grab a copy, you wanna get in, you know, you know, on this.

So to start this off, what mister Pressfield says on his website is in in in, as far as these these books go, he's gotta order and it's interesting because, in the order that they're published, there's a slight flip between how he says to read them. So I thought that was quite quite interesting. I read them in the order they were published, yet, I think after some reflection and and whatnot, he has, kinda flipped a little bit. So let's go scroll through this here. So, of course, the the foundational book here, The Art of War, and what he says is, read this first. It identifies the enemy. What I call resistance with a capital r, I e, fear, self doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, and all forms of self sabotage that stop us from doing our work and relaying our dreams. He says, start here.

Everything else proceeds from this. And this is you can just stop here and just study this book, and it'll have a profound impact on your life. This is there you you you're gonna run through highlighters, you know, or whatever. Wear out your Kindle, you know, go going through this. There's so much amazing little nuggets in here. And I like to go, from this one, I wanna start with the book here, just from the

very beginning. The forward, it's so funny, you know. And like

I said, I can resonate with this as it's just preparing for this episode. Right? Not to mention all the work projects and different things. We'll talk about those as we go along here. The foreword by Robert McKee. Steven Pressfield wrote The Art of

War for me. He undoubtedly wrote it for you too, but

I know he did, especially for me because I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I might be at least a silver medalist, if not a bronze medalist myself. I can procrastinate thinking about procrastination problems. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating, thinking about my procrastination problem. And then he goes on a little bit and says, at the last possible hour, I did write the foreword to this book is what he's talking about. And as I leaf through book 1, defining the enemy, I saw myself staring back guiltily eyed from every page. But then book 2 gave me a battle plan. Book 3, a vision for victory.

And as I closed The Art of War, I felt a surge of positive calm. I know now I can win this war. And if I can, so can you. And can I not agree more? And that's funny. And then I'd like to just, hip skip ahead a little bit here into book 1. I just wanna, set the tone for this a bit, give everybody an idea what we're talking about. If you're not familiar with this, if I, you know, have done a poor job so far of understanding what resistance is. And here, he starts off book 1 with resistance, resistances, greatest hits.

The following is a list in no particular order of those activities that most commonly elicit resistance. 1, the pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional. 2, the launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise for profit or otherwise. 3, any diet or health regimen. 4, any program of spiritual achievement. 5, any activity whose aim is

tighter abandon abominals. Sorry.

6, any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction. I have that problem. I I love me a a cigar, and the stories I tell myself about why I can have a cigar, not have

a cigar are very, very funny. If I were

to say them out loud, you would think I was crazy. But we all do this. Right? We all have our our thing. We'll we'll get we'll get into more of that here. 7, education of every kind. Isn't that the case? How many of us have courses and things that we bought and we're ready to go and we're ready

to do it and then boom, we resist all.

8, any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or con conduct in ourselves. And that's hard too. Right? I mean, we're so wrapped up in I am this. I am a whatever. I am a painter. I am a construction worker. I am this. When you introduce yourself, hi.

I'm Tyson. I am a. Right? So we identify these things, and when you challenge that, that really gets to the core of of our beings and challenges, who we are. You know, possibly, you know, I I believe you're you know, that challenge is your ego, which is a very strong force in resistance. Number 9, the undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others. That's funny. Right? Seemingly, hopefully, supposedly, a selfless act, yet

we experience resistance. 10. Any act that entails

commitment of the heart. The decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky path in a relationship. 11, the taking of a principled stand in the face of adversity.

It's a tough one. Right?

In other words, any act that injects immediate gratification in the favor of long term growth, health, or integrity, or expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower, Any of these elicit resistance. Now what are the characteristics of resistance? And he goes on to, everything. Resistance is invisible. Resistance is internal. It's insidious. It's it's impersonal. It's impractical. And he goes on and on and on.

He he shows and lays out every every instance of resistance. Because the funny thing is, you know, it's it's everywhere. Right? And and like I was saying earlier here is it's not not enough to to necessarily know it, which does help. Right? When you become aware of these concepts, you become aware of these fallacies, of these, you know, brain tricks. So you've ever seen the, you know, the lines that, look, you know, one's a little tilted, one of those little things are or which is longer and shorter.

When you know the trick, even though you look at

the lines and go, man, that one is longer, but you know that's not true. Right? So these things help, and and that's the fun part about it. Right? This is the power of books and and different things is is knowing what's happening.

Right? And that gives you

the ability to kinda go through and conquer. I want to kinda go through a couple of quotes here that I really like from this book here, give you guys a sense and a feel for the book, maybe a little wig little nugget of wisdom to to, you know, go through your day and until you get your hands on these or maybe if you've already read them, you're inspired to reread them again. So from the Art of War here, where the the paradox seems to be as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is only free to the extent of his own self mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find mastery to find masters, excuse me, to govern over

them. So this is how it is, right? You don't have self discipline, Jocko talks

a lot about this. You don't have self mastery, right? You don't have a direction. You don't have a thing in your head or you don't have a thing you're doing. The others will give it to you. Right? Somebody will give you something to do. Somebody will give you a direction to go. Right? So that's why this is very important. And when you're coming up against these things, and I know we'll get to it later on here, these are the reasons why you don't do things because of resistance

is here. Right? Rule of thumb, the more important a

call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we'll feel toward more resistance we will feel toward pursuing. Let me say that again. Rule of thumb, the more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution,

the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. This is what

I was trying to talk about just a second ago here. Right?

Most of us live two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the 2 stands resistance. Maybe this

is you, maybe this is somebody you know, but they always wanted to to do this thing, start this company, write a book, whatever it is, but they never do it. Right? A 100% guilt. I got a massive list of things I wanna get done. And what stands between me and this? A lot of times is resistance. I'm in my own head. I'm in my own way. And we go back to the rule of thumb. The more important a call or action is, the more resistance we feel.

Right? So this is like a litmus test litmus test for something you're thinking about or pursuing. Right? The more you feel resistance tugging at you, the more you feel this, the more you need to be doing it. The more conviction, the more convincing whatever it be that you need to say this is something that's important because every time I think about it, every time I try to get started, bam, resistance is in my face. Right? That's the fun thing about this stuff. Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from

us. We feed

it with power by our fear of it, master that fear, and we conquer resistance. That's the thing, right? These are the things that are scary when we think about failure and different things or whatever it is, whatever excuse, whatever way resistance is presenting itself. Right? This is this is the things we have to learn. Practice. Right? That's the thing is about practice, deliberate practice. Like, there's a great story thing I I know I said on show many times. Right? What is it you fear? You know? Do do you fear the the scant clothing and and not having a house and a bed to sleep on and and and warm and what are all these things? Right? Go do that thing and and realize it's not it wasn't that scary. Like, I can go camping, and I don't need all these things.

I can sleep on the floor tonight and I don't need all these things. I can have beans and rice for dinner. I don't need all these things. Like, what are we scared of? Right? What have we put into existence? What have what roadblocks have we put up? Right? That when you challenge it a lot of times, I'd say most of the time, these things are just our brains is so funny. The stories we can copy and and and in reality, it's nothing like we imagine. It's never as bad. It's hardly even anywhere close to what we imagined. Right? Well, our brains play these amazing tricks on us.

The more we learn about these things, the more we know about them. Right? The more we can recognize them in the moment, the quicker we get to recognize them. Oh, oh, I know

what that is. Right? And that's a

that's an essence of power here in all these things. And then here we go. Couple more quotes I want from this book here. This book has got so many bangers. Right? The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. Right? At this point, resistance knows we're about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it's got.

How many of us, as raised, that's me. Oh, yeah. You you get a project 80, 90% done, and then that's never to be finished. Oh my lord.

Right? Again here, remember our rule of thumb, the more sacred we are the more, excuse me, the more scared remember our rule

of thumb, the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. What an what a great frame of mind. If we could frame that, like, woah. Why am I saying, like, like, making this episode? Why was I experiencing this? Right? Because I wanna do mister Pressfield justice. Right? I wanna I wanna you guys to to experience these books, love them, get to know them, have these tools at your disposal. Right? So that was my resistance for doing this episode. Weeks, I procrastinated. Weeks, I stopped things.

I I found every excuse to clean to do the thing. Right? Because I was worried about how I was able to present this and I'm hoping I'm doing a good job. 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. Right? And that's that's that's another thing too.

A lot of

times we're we're worried about what other people think, what other people might say or to so we don't do it. Fuck them. And then they'll do it you. A lot of times, that's their own resistance. Right? That's their own things that they have, their own whatever they're going through in their life, whatever they've been through

in life that they're and a lot

of times, they mean so well. Your mom, your auntie, your cousin, your friends, or whatever, they mean well. Listen. I I know how that turns out for me. Don't go down that road, and it's it's protect you. You gotta look at that and say, fuck this. I need to put this out and do the best job I can. And it's out in the world.

Whatever happens, happens. That's out of your control. Right? Only thing you can control is a product you put out, the thing you put out. What are

you putting out there? Is it the best

you can do? Right? Did you put everything into it without letting resistance hold you back for too long, right? Rationalization is resistance's right hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.

You ever get that feeling after the end of

the day, like, oh, dang. I didn't do the thing I was supposed to do. I should've done it. And you feel that. Right? And then we talked about that with, a couple episodes back with, the leadership coach. I'm sorry. I'm blanking his name.

But we talk we talk about that. Right? That feeling of shame, a feeling of guilt and different things. Right? I'm keenly aware

of the principle of priority which states, a, you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important and b, you must know what is important

first. Priorities, like we spoke about with,

Lisa, right, on on the to do list and getting these things done. Right? Priorities, I've spoke about this, you know, many times. This this appears many places. Right? When you have your priority list and you have your priorities in order, what's most important? A lot of times, you you'll find out some of these other things will drop off. It's easy to know, you know, what you gotta do when you work in your office, when you come to work, whatever. You you you know what to do. And at the end of the day, even if you really didn't get nothing done but that one thing, you don't have the sense, like we talked about just a second ago here, of of shame because I worked in a gun because you know I got the most important thing done today. And things happen.

Right? People, you know, come into your office. People come in. There's emergencies. These things happen. People get sick. There's There's accidents. Whatever. There's lots of things done.

But when you hit that first thing because you know it's urgent and, you know, you know, the difference between what's important and all these different things, when when things come up, when there's delays, when whatever it is, you know, at least I got the thing I need to get done today done. Right? My top priority on my priority list of things to do. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some idea we imagine we ought

to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Now how many of us are out there trying to please our parents, trying to please our family? You know? And maybe that's noble pursuit. You know? A lot of times, you know, your your parents or your family or whoever it is, your grandparents or something, sacrifice a lot for you to come to a new country or to to go to school or whatever it is. Right? So you feel that, you know, I well, yeah. I gotta be a doctor. I gotta be a lawyer. I gotta do this. I gotta do that. Right? And then you really you live that second life that, you know, you didn't necessarily want versus living, you know, the life you wanted to live.

Right? Something we wanna examine there. Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don't do it. If you're doing it, stop. We've got a lot that's a seems to be like a trend nowadays. You know, Everybody's a victim of something. We we constantly are are are one upping victimhood. You know? Oh, yeah.

You're that, but, oh, I'm this, which is more victim than you're victim. Right? And there's so much of it. It it messes with our brain. It can lead to, you know, depression. It can lead to, you know, sleep problems and so many things. Stop doing it. Right? It sounds easy. It's gonna be tough.

There's gonna be resistance. You know, it's it was one of those, that we talked about there. Right? I mean, these, you know, personal pursuits, these these things you wanna change. Your brain doesn't like change. Your brain doesn't wanna change things, and resistance will rear its ugly head and and stop you. And you gotta understand, you know, maybe you didn't win today, but you're like, I know what happened. Know what went wrong, living that examined life. Right? Not beating yourself up and like, okay.

I know what happened. Shit went down today. I let resistance win, but I've examined what happened. I understand why I was procrastinating or I was doing whatever I

was doing. And tomorrow, I'm gonna make my best effort to be better than I was yesterday, right?

That that microdose of improvement, right, that 1% better that leads to massive changes over the long haul, right, versus trying to, you know, 30 x something or whatever it is. The the crazy is if you try to 30 x something versus just doing 1% every day, you're actually better off 1% every day than just the 30 x chunk at one time. You actually have a greater increase at the end of, you know, a 1 year period or or whatever it'd be. Right? The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops, rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces, all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level. The professional understands only in heaven. Right? How many times we make an excuse? All of this, all of that, all of the Chiefs, all the refs, all the whatever.

Right? But the professional knows. I go out there, and I can control what I can control and I put my effort out there and I do the work and I do the prep and I do the

things I gotta do, the field is level. Right? A lot

of times that I've talked about in the past here, the bar is

also low. Right? Because of all these things that other people are doing, they're letting their resistance conquer them every day. Right? And you just step above that, not in

a bad way, not in a, you know, malicious manner. But just go, listen. I'm a professional, and I understand what I gotta do and I gotta get done. Right? Procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance because it's easy to rationalize. Things that we say are to ourselves sometimes, crazy.

Right? We don't tell ourselves, I'm never going

to write my symphony. Instead, we say, I'm going to write my symphony.

I'm just gonna start tomorrow

or on the first or Monday or whatever it is. Right?

Next month, next quarter when I'm ready.

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't and the secret is this. It's not the writing part that's hard. The heart what's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance. This is what I was with this episode right here. Once I sat down and I got to work, it flowed. It went. It everything came.

It it was easy. Sitting my ass in my chair was hard, which is a crazy thing. Right? Once we once you get to the gym, once you start lifting weights, once you start doing this stuff right, you're like,

what was, like, what was the story I had? Right? Did all that melts away. Right? Never forget, this very moment, we can change our lives. There never was

a moment and never will be when we are all without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.

Right? This is what I'm talking about. Just because you had a

bad day today, just because things didn't go well, just because when you're focused on this micro, when you're focused about such a a short time frame, right, you can get in this mindset, you can get overwhelmed by this. A great illustration of this is in Calport's newest book, Slow Productivity, where he talks about. So when you have a longer plan, you have a grander plan, you have you know what you're doing. Right? You're like, today didn't matter. When I had a shitty day, things happen, whatever had came up, whatever happened because it's just today. I'm working on

a quarterly project. I'm working on a year thing. Right? And you just gotta stacking up

of those days where it it culminates in the completion of the work.

It's one thing to lie

to ourselves. Boy. Boy. Boy. It's another thing to believe it. We gotta stop, right? We can't tell ourselves these lies, convince ourselves of these things. Let resistance win. And that's all I got from that book.

Like I said, this this is this is obviously the foundation, but nevertheless, you could just stick with this book and just study this, wear it out, buy a

new one, wear that out, and you're gonna solve a lot of a lot of problems. Right? And then the ancillary benefit, which is so great, is people are gonna see you like, oh, dang. What is he doing? Like, man, he is crushing it all of

a sudden because that's how it's gonna look like. Right? Every overnight excess has been 10 years or more in the making, right? And then people

are gonna start to emulate you. Maybe they'll ask you. They'll ask for help, right? And this is when this becomes very powerful. Imagine in your organization at any level you're at, you suddenly are the guy that doesn't do these things. Right? Gets these things done, knocks out the list, knocks out the projects, and, dang. And we kinda get whatever this guy's doing, we gotta just go. Right? So this is the power of these things. The next book, mister Pressfield says to go with here in this series is turning pro, tap into your inner power and create your life's work.

He says here, amateurs have habits have am excuse me. Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits.

Read this book right after the war of art.

It gets deeply into the question, exactly how do we overcome resistance? This I have this phrase, on my whiteboard here that I jot down different ideas is the it's always there. Be a pro. Right? Pros do pro things. Right? Professional athletes, professional whatever. Right? They do pro things. And I think this is very a great mind shift, a great philosophy, a great principle. Right? You're doing things. You know? Well, how would it how does a pro do this? How would how would a pro do this? How would a pro approach this? How would somebody be this? Right? That's why we wanna turn pro.

We wanna leave our amateur status. We wanna turn in the amateur card. We wanna get our pro card. Right? Some select quotes here from this book I absolutely love. Ambition, I have come to believe is the most primal and scared fun fundamental of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon the ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.

That's there's a lot there. Right?

The difference between a amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. Right?

Every everything we do in our life is habitual. Right?

when you change your habits, you evolve your habits from this amateur, you know, not getting things done, whatever it is, right, to the professional habits, then you have a different lifestyle. You have a different philosophy. You have a different you have different principles. I don't do these things. Those are amateur things. I I don't skip workouts. I don't I don't not do the required reading. I don't not prepare because those are what amateurs do.

Amateurs are the ones that wing. Amateurs are the ones that show up in upcoming practice. Whatever the thing is, right, whatever your in your field is. Right? Who's the top performer? Who's the top person in your thing? What are their habits? Right? What are their principles that they're living by?

Right? Figure out what those are. Emulate those. Become professional.

The true the sure sign of an amateur is he has a 1,000,000 plans

and they all start tomorrow. Sure. We've got those. I know I do. Right? But when you are aware

of this stuff, like I said earlier,

you can examine what's going on and find out why everything starts tomorrow.

What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self respect. We become who we always were but had until then been afraid to embrace and to live out. When we convene day upon day in the same place at the same time, a powerful energy builds up around us. This is the energy of our intention, of our dedication, of our commitment. He refused to that as the muse, and the way he talks about it is, like he's saying here, when when you come to the same when I when you could when I get to my office, everything. Right? When you get to this thing, Cal Newport also also kinda talks about this. Right? When you go to a certain space for a certain activity, your brain associates.

We're going to my reading nook. This is where we read. Right? We go to our bed. This is

where we lay down or do procreation. When I

go to my office, this is where I do work. Right? And so when you you associate these things in these places with these activities, the way mister Pressfield talks about it is you summon the muse. Right? When you sit down to do your work, you sit down to write, you sit down to to do your your business, when you sit down to do these things, the muse knows it's time to work. The muse comes, and they help you. They guide you. These things come from the ether, it seems, and your solutions and ideas and all these things come because you've respected the thing. You're the pro. Right? You show up at the field.

You show up on the court. You show up at the office, and the universe knows it's time to get to work. It's time to bring your thing into this world. And goes on here, sometimes when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue to a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for a real career. Its shape is similar. Its conquerors may feel tantalizingly the same, but

a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you doing that?

Do you have the safe job, the safe career? Maybe you took it because it was high paying or whatever, and then you were starting a family. You needed money. Next thing

you know, boom, you're here. Right? Can we find an exit plan? Can we

start building an extra strategy? Maybe can we start, something on the side or whatever it is while you keep this shadow career going? Maybe it's writing your novel. Maybe it's doing your painting. Maybe it's whatever. Starting your business. It's doing your app. Whatever your thing is. Right? What is the real thing you should be doing? You know? I know somebody that works in the real estate field because they wanted to be a realtor. I think maybe even they really want to get into development.

That is the shadow career. Right? I'm in the field, but it's scary. Resistance is conquered. The now living in the shadow career, right? And these are scary, right? These are simple. They're not necessarily easy. However, don't let resistance make

it harder than it needs to be, right? Figure out what it is

that you can do to make these things less risky, mitigate risk, protect your downside. Not I don't want you guys going out there and be like, oh, I'm in my shadow career and I'm gonna quit everything, leave your thing, and you got a mortgage and kids and a house and a husband or a wife and it's

like, maybe that's not me.

You should maybe, like, hedge a little, protect some of that things. Right? But take the leap nonetheless. K? Don't just don't put yourself in a crazy situation for no reason. Resistance has 2 qualities above all others, concentration and depth. Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed. Right? It's that switching into your brain and it's it's very tough if you are out of practice with this. Like, these deep works and these things, they take practice if you're not you've never done it or if it's been a long time, right, especially in the in the modern work era, like I said, Calport, Newport, I think he really talks well on this thing. I'll link his books and his things to you guys.

A great introduction is his podcast. He talks about all these things. Right? So much distractions at work. So much things things going on. It's easy to stay in a shallow place. Right? It's easy to stay there. Maybe in your shallow career. Let's just stay here.

Right? Let's stay shallow. You know? And then if you do that for so long, you lose the ability to do deep work, to get into that flow state, to get down into the nitty gritty where the real shit happens, where the action happens, where failure can happen, where success can happen. Right? So take your time. The way I understand it and I think the way I've kinda been able to increase my deep work time is small steps of the time. Get your brain used to it. Get your brain and your body understanding, like, this is gonna be good. We're gonna be fine. We can get this done.

Set maybe a, you know, the pomato pomato tomato timers, whatever whatever it's called there. And, you know,

you do 20 minutes, and the timer goes off,

and you can be, oh, thank god. You take a break or you can be like, I'm a keep blowing through this. I'm in a zone right now. I'm a slow. Right? And as time goes on, you'll be able to do, you know, 25 minutes. You'll be able to do 50 minutes. You'll be able to do an hour. Somewhere in the 3 to 5 hour range is what seems to be the maximum amount our bodies can sustain deep work.

So when you get to a point, you're gonna notice where your your productivity drops off, your errors start to become more frequent. That's gonna be your your your cutoff point. Like, hey.

I don't you

know, shut this down for the day. Save everything up. Wrap everything up. I might head back up to those less cognitive, demanding things, right, where I can come up back out of the focus, and I can get my other things done. Right? And like I said, over time, you're gonna be able

to build that up, and you're

gonna find your your maximum amount of time.

A professional does not wait for inspiration. He acts in anticipation of it. Right? How do you get lucky? Right? Preparation.

You identify opportunities. Right? If you wait for inspiration, inspiration is never gonna come.

Right? Motivation, it's fleeting. Right? We've got

an episode on that. My analogy, I think

of cars. So it and so I think it right. Torque,

if you have an electric car, this is what you that that feeling that shoots you back in your seat. Right? Every car, torque gets you going. That's how I think about motivation. Right? Motivation is like the torque, a little kick in the ass. It just gets you going. Right? But you need the horsepower. Right? You need to be a pro. Do the things that keep you moving.

Horsepower keeps you going. Right? Work, motivation, inspiration, that just kicks you off the starting line. You need the horsepower, right, to keep moving forward, to keep this vehicle in motion. Right? The fear is the primary color. Fear excuse me, not the fear. Fear is the primary color of the amateur's interior world. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking foolish, fear of underachieving, and fear of overachieving, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of death. I I struggle with, fear of success.

I struggle with fear of underachieving because I wanna put out good things. I wanna put out good high quality products. Right? I wanna put out the best that I can do. And when I let resistance creep in too much, that's when these things take too long. That's when project is only 85% complete. Right? We all have these things when we like I say, like, the theme here is when we recognize, we can identify, we can examine, we can make corrections, and we can make adjustments, we can adjust our heading and we can continue on our course. I think that about wraps up the quotes I want to share from that book. Now moving on to the next in the line here in the series here, do the work, overcome resistance, and get out of your way.

Get out of your own way. Excuse me.

It's funny. This book came out first, do the work, and then

came out. Next, mister

saw the need to to swap the order you should be reading them in. So he says read this third. It takes the principles of the Art of War and Turning Pro. Let me get here a couple of quotes here. And then these these are short books, guys, too. You can easily start and read them in an hour, maybe a couple of these other maybe just a tiny bit thicker in an afternoon. Instead of binging 17 episodes of Netflix, bang one of these out first. Then, like we talked about earlier, you can enjoy only 12 episodes of whatever you wanted to binge, right, knowing I got the important thing done.

Right? I'm learning about resistance, and I'm gonna put this genie back in the bottle.

Right? That's my thought on that. Rule of thumb.

The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, more resistance, we will feel toward pursuing it. Going back to the art of war. Right? This is the theme. I've I I see this in myself so much. And when I feel this, when I have this fucking great idea, this great project, this great, whatever, and then I'm like, yes. Oh, yeah. And I start and I go,

oh, did I do the laundry? What's for dinner? I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm on to something. Right? Recognizing this

is how this is how we we evolve. We'd be a better at this. Right? Research can become resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work. Right? Do the research in nonprime work hours. He talks about that a little bit more. I believe it's in this book, if not in one

of the others. Right? When it's work time, we can't be researching and learning this stuff. It's time to work. So, you know, typically, I

will get into that mode in the second half of my day when a lot has gone on and I kinda feel like, okay. I just kinda had enough for today, and then I'll get into this mode of the research work of the learning mode or whatever it be that's I'm outside of prime work times now. I'm outside of these prime areas. I also like to set, Monday mornings. Every Monday morning, I like to set a little time aside in the morning to to to, you know, kinda get any reading I wanna get done, any any classes, everything. So what I was feeling what I was finding was I would, you know, during work times different times, I would, you know, be doing a course or reading a book or taking a class, and then I was using that I was doing that during work time. And then what else happening was at the end of the day, I was like, oh, man. I kinda feel guilty about this.

I should've been doing this and this and that, but I was, you know, I'm learning. I'm working. I'm I'm getting it better. Right? I gotta learn this thing so I could do that thing. And it's just bullshit resistance. So if I wanna do some one of those things and my week is maybe a little a little packed, a little whatever is going on, I know always know I have that Monday morning block to to to do that. And then what I find for me is I don't feel guilty about taking that time in on Monday mornings to to get some of that stuff done. And then the rest of the week, I just I just bang through things, and I'm not thinking about it.

I think, like, I need to finish that that course. I need to finish that class. I need to I need to turn in this thing. I'm not thinking about it the rest of the week because I spent that Monday morning knocking it out, right, instead of using sometimes what what happened with me is I'll I'll use that as a reason to procrastinate. I'll use that, resistance for the, hey. You should finish that project. You were you know, that thing you gotta turn in, and I'll use that as, you know, a means to not do do what I'm supposed to do.

When we experience panic, it

means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. How has we felt that? Right? When a breakthrough is about to come, funding is about to come in, you know, that person you were trying to hire, the book is getting near. I I noticed this in, attics where things are going really good? It's been, whatever, months, years, I think. And then, like, you self sabotage. Right? So when we learn this and we have awareness of it, I think it has the ability to help us. Right? And to know, like, we can reframe this. Right? So sometimes a lot of times, what we think is panic, what we think is is something like that, is actually excitement.

Right? We just have it mislabeled. So when we can relabel things, we're like, when you it's like, oh, are excited about it? Oh, no. So I have a panic. You're on the doorstep of a higher plane. Reframe it like this. Next time you have this feeling, I want you to reframe that. No. No.

No. No. No. I'm about to cross the threshold. That's why this is scary. That's why I'm feeling this way because, you know, resistance is is strong and it's coming to stop you. Right? The little the little devil or something. Right? It's coming, and it's gonna pull you back.

You say, fuck that, baby.

go. K? That's how I think about it.

Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

I know I talked about

this several times in the show. Right? Think about the things that you're telling yourself in your head. Right? I I I I would, encourage you to maybe write those down or record yourself telling that and listen back and be like, what logic are you using? How was this a good idea to me to not go to the gym, to not do the thing, to not whatever, right, or to to to have the ice cream or to have a drink or to have, you know, smoke or whatever it is that's your thing. Right? Listen back to yourself telling you why it's such a great thing, why it's okay, why well, I was, you know, on a treadmill for 17 minutes and I burned a 103 calories, so I deserve a frappuccino. That's 1200 calories. Right? You're like but, like, you listen back to that dialogue from, like, an observer's perspective, you're gonna realize how crazy that sounds. Right? There's zero validity to that. But internally, we're like, yeah.

It makes sense. Right?

Start before you're ready. Don't prepare. That's one of

the hardest ones. Right? Starting before you're ready. We don't feel right. We don't feel like we have enough information. We don't feel like we have enough thing. But what you're gonna learn is what I have to keep learning about this is you're gonna feel better when you're doing it, when you make the mistakes, when you learn from these things, when you start to doing. That's when you're gonna feel better about this, and that's when you're gonna learn and grow from that.

K? Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is stop. Right? That momentum, right, put pushing that boulder is in a snowball or whatever.

So it starts going, when it starts rolling, that's when it comes out of control, and that's when you can't stop it. Right? That's when these things happen. Right? Keep that in mind. I think that's all I want to highlight for.

You're where you want to be, aren't you? So you're taking

a few blows. That's the price of being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful. Isn't that right? Like, this is I believe, in this story here, this quote comes from, Steven is complaining to a friend about the resistance and the work and stuff, and this is the the friend's rebuttal to him. Right? Aren't you where you wanna be? So you're taking a few blows. Things aren't going the way you thought they were. They whatever, whatever. That's the price of being in the arena.

That's the cost of being on the field. There's sacrifice. There's things. There's a embrace it. Embrace it that you're on the field. You're not on the sidelines. Embrace that. Be grateful because you're gonna only get better.

You're only gonna become the thing, the person that you wanna be.

And that's all for that one. And then the next one in line here is

The Artist Journey, The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning. What he says about this one is our hero's journey is our youth, our quest, our search for our calling. Read the artist's journey when you've entered the next stage of your creative odyssey. The truly productive years when the challenge is no longer to find your destiny but to fulfill it. I read this, some years ago and this book didn't resonate with me in any way. So, what I've decided is I got to reread it. Right? I'm in a different place in my life. It's been many years.

I don't know how long have I read this book. And so, this to me, thinking back on this book, I don't really have much thoughts on it is because it didn't resonate with me because I think the stage of my life and the things I was doing, I wasn't

here yet.

Right? I wasn't where he suggests we pick this book up again. So I was just consuming this the whole series because I found it very intriguing. I don't I don't think I have any highlights from this book. I don't have I don't even have any highlights from this book. But if you're in that position, don't don't listen to me

on this. Right? If you're

in this stage of your life, if you're in this spot, check this out. Right? The truly productive years when the challenge is no longer to find your destiny but to fulfill it. This one's for you. This is this is the you're there. This is the time for that. K? And the next one here, nobody wants to read your shit. Another tough love truth to make you a better writer. I haven't read this one yet.

I have it on order. I just ordered it. I I think I dismissed it because I I'm not a writer writing anything. About this. But then as I started to as I'm preparing for this episode, as I think, I was

like, well, I do a lot

of writing. Right? You know, I I got a newsletter. I got the, you know, the show. I've got my businesses. I've got emails and all this stuff, and I'm like, how naive of me because I I think of writer in this box, published books, right, published these things versus we're all writers. We're all writing all the time every day. Right? Can we become better writers, better communicators? Would there be less problems, back and forth emails, miscommunications? Of course, there would. And one thing that comes to mind when

I think about this is is thinking. Right? To clarify your thinking, you

need to write it down.

Right? So for better writers, we can think better. When we think better, we can do more things. We can do better. We can do all these different things.

We need these projects done, all these things done. So this one I have on order, and I'm a get to that. But I did pull up from Goodreads, a couple of, one passage from this book that I I really liked and resonated with, and I'm gonna share that with you guys here. A real writer or artist or entrepreneur has something to give. She has lived through enough and suffered enough and through deep and thought deeply enough that her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others even if only as entertainment. A fake writer or honest entrepreneur is just trying to draw attention to himself. The word fake

may be too unkind. Let's say young or evolving. Just not alone

right there. Right? I'm like, oh,

I gotta read this. Living in that shadow self. Right? Living in that those that shadow realm.

the next one in the collection was this is one of my favorite titles, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. Oh, boy. Doesn't that just make you say, yeah. That's exactly what I should be doing.

Right? He goes on and

say here, can you commit unconditionally to your dream? Can you set your ego truly at the service of your highest calling whether it's artistic, entrepreneurial, or spiritual. This book shows you how to make that magic happen, how to change your life by making this soul level shift. I'm just starting to get into this one. I have a couple of quotes I pulled off of Goodreads that, I thought I'd like to share on this book here. This is a new one. I just got this one, so I haven't fully gone through it. So let's see here. When I sit down and write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or the day's work.

My goal is to put in 3 or 4 hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don't judge myself on quality. Don't hold myself accountable for quality. The only question I ask I ask are, did I show up? Did I try my best? And that's the thing we talked about way back when. Right?

Showing up, getting in your spot, summoning the muse, and getting to work. Right? We can always edit, but like we talked about earlier, the hardest part of writing is in the writing, is sitting down. Right? So we sit down and we can

be let judgment and ego go and just do the work

and then come back, refine, and then ship. Right? That's what I like about this. That's why

I'm really excited to dig

more into this one. Whenever you whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin now. Damn. That's that's powerful right there. Tremendous power lies in the simple physical act of stationing your body at the epicenter of our dream. There's magic in putting your ass where your heart wants to be. Summoning the muse. Right? Getting in that zone, getting that mind frame, being in your space where your brain recognizes your brain understands we're in the workplace right now.

We're in the the learning place. We're in the real place. Setting up your environment. Right? Setting up your your things so you can summon the muse. And then lastly, which the way I feel about it is if you took all these books and you put them into 1, you get this. You get the daily press field. The daily press field is 365 days plus a bonus week of motivation, inspiration, and encouragement. It's a year's worth of kick in

the butt and pats on

the back that will console, support, and guide you day by day from the start of your project to a successful completion. I love these daily books.

It's so great to just, you know, go through

a little bit every day. I when I sit down on my desk and I before before I start my day, boom. I like to read the the little daily thing. It's just a short little paragraph, 2, maybe 3. Gets you in that mindset, gets you in the frame of mind, kinda it's a nice signal that's time to start work, especially if you work from home or something like that where you, you know, it's kinda nice to have, you know, a signal, a jumping off point to start your day. If I have the the limited edition one, if this is in your budget, I would really recommend getting that. It comes with these really awesome illustrated cards and, it's like a little notebook and stuff in there and different things. I I really like if it's in your budget, I would recommend getting that or maybe saving up for it.

But this is great. This is not about it's not, you know, just about, you know, the traditional creative type. Right? This is this is just wisdom and things from what we talk about. Right? I'm trying to think I'm trying to, you know, pull this together here. I think a lot of times, what but at first, when I when I was thinking about these things, when I first came across stuff, I'm like, well, I'm not an artist. I'm not that. I'm not into writing books. I don't do street lists.

I'm not an actor. I'm not write these things. Right? Is that resistance? Well, it boils. Sounds like it. Right? And then when I grab this, I'm like, wait a second. Like, what? Why am I crazy? This is for everybody. This is for every situation. Right? You may say a painter, but just because you're not a painter doesn't mean it doesn't apply to you.

Right? So don't be discouraged by this if you're just thinking it's for only a writing project or only a thing like that. I think definitely that's how it's it's framed, but it's not what it's about. Right? It's about a guide to getting these things done to write. The the culmination, I think, of all these books, a little snippet of every day to get you thinking about something that could just take action and get get you moving on through that. And as always, guys, I will link to all the books, mister Pressfield's, socials and his site. If you sign up on his website, I I just found out about this. This is really cool, is you can get the Art of War, the 27 minute mini course for free. The course is 5 audio lessons will ground you in the principles and characteristics of the artists in your battle.

So if you go ahead and grab one of these, you don't have a copy, in the meantime when you're waiting or before you start, if, you know, you do an audio book and go to library or something like that, check out this free mini course. I signed up for it. I think it's cool. I love to learn more about this especially from the, you know, horse's mouth here per se. I'll link to all these things for you guys, so don't worry too much about that. And of course, this week's challenge, find your resistance,

then be a pro and do the work. It sounds simple, and it is. It's not always easy. And to end here, I'd like to start

a conversation about this. Share your resistance, you know, either with us or talk to a family and friend about it. I think a lot of times, these help get breakthroughs. You start to verbalize in things. You start to talk about these things. You might find out that, you know, like I said earlier, that sounds a little bit ridiculous when you say it out loud. Right? None none in that bad or negative way.

You know? Or, you know, it's not as complicated as

you thought. It's not necessarily maybe as hard or as involved as you thought. So have these conversations. And if you'd like to share it with us, you know, throw it in the comments wherever, you know, on socials, YouTube, and all these different places. And as you guys know, there's no paywall premium content to subscribe to. There's no Social Chameleon Plus or Social Chameleon Bundle. We give you everything upfront. Only thing we ask is if you found value from this episode or any of the others, share it with these 2 other people.

Have the conversation and get this conversation going. Connect with us all week long in between episodes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. For past episodes and links to everything we've discussed here today, head over to the socialchameleon.show. Until next time, understand resistance, understand the fight, conquer that bitch, and keep learning, growing, and transforming to the person you wanna become. Connect On Social This podcast is available on… You can listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Pocket Casts , Castbox , YouTube Music , Amazon Music , Audible , Substack, or your favorite podcast platform .