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Resistance Is Infallible

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others. 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.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.

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Rational Thought

Next to Resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneur’s worst enemy. Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious. Homer began both The Iliad and The Odyssey with a prayer to the Muse. The Greeks’ greatest poet understood that genius did not reside within his fallible, mortal self—but came to him instead from some source that he could neither command nor control, only invoke. When an artist says “Trust the soup,” she means let go of the need to control (which we can’t do anyway) and put your faith instead in the Source, the Mystery, the Quantum Soup. The deeper the source we work from, the better our stuff will be—and the more transformative it will be for us and for those we share it with.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.

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Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway. How do we achieve this state of mind? By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think. A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.

Be Stubborn

Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop. What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness. I like the idea of stubbornness because it’s less lofty than “tenacity” or “perseverance.” We don’t have to be heroes to be stubborn. We can just be pains in the butt. When we’re stubborn, there’s no quit in us. We’re mean. We’re mulish. We’re ornery. We’re in till the finish.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.

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Start Before You’re Ready
Don’t prepare. Begin. Remember, our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is Resistance. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.

Start before you’re ready. Good things happen when we start before we’re ready. For one thing, we show huevos. Our blood heats up. Courage begets more courage. The gods, witnessing our boldness, look on in approval. W. H. Murray said: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now. A Research Diet

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.


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That’s Why They Call It Rewriting The old saw says there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting. This is true. Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all. Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later. Next question: How do you get it down? Start at the End Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish. If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your lover to. Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there. Yes, you say. “But how do I know where I want to go?” Answer the Question “What Is This About?” Start with the theme. What is this project about? What is the Eiffel Tower about? What is the space shuttle about? What is Nude Descending a Staircase about? Your movie, your album, your new startup … what is it about? When you know that, you’ll know the end state. And when you know the end state, you’ll know the steps to take to get there.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.

The Process

Let’s talk about the actual process—the writing/composing/ idea generation process. It progresses in two stages: action and reflection. Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time.

The Definition of Action and Reflection

In writing, “action” means putting words on paper. “Reflection” means evaluating what we have on paper. For this first draft, we’ll go light on reflection and heavy on action. Spew. Let ’er rip. Launch into the void and soar wherever the wind takes you. When we say “Trust the soup,” we mean the Muse, the unconscious, the Quantum Soup. The sailor hoists his canvas, trusting that the wind (which is invisible and which he can neither see nor control) will appear and power him upon his voyage. You and I hoist our canvas to catch ideas. When we say “Stay Stupid,” we mean don’t self-censor, don’t indulge in self-doubt, don’t permit self-judgment. Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child. Why does this purely instinctive, intuitive method work? Because our idea (our song, our ballet, our new Tex-Mex restaurant) is smarter than we are. Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be)—and then bring it into being. The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it. Can we hear it in our head? It exists, like a signal coming from a faraway radio tower.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.

Fill in the Gaps, Part Two

Ask yourself, “What’s missing?” Then fill that gap. What’s missing in the menu of your new restaurant? What have we left out in planning our youth center in the slums of São Paulo?

Did you ever see the movie True Confessions, starring Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro? The story is set in 1940s Los Angeles; De Niro is a rising-star monsignor for the L.A. diocese; Duvall plays his brother, a homicide detective investigating a Black Dahlia–type murder. The script was great, the direction was tremendous. But in mid-shoot, De Niro’s instincts told him something was missing. The audience had seen his character wheeling and dealing on behalf of the Church, hosting big-money fundraisers, getting schools built, playing golf with L.A. heavyweights. De Niro went to Ulu Grosbard, the director, and asked for a scene where the audience gets to see where his character sleeps. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? The result was a simple sequence, without dialogue, of De Niro’s monsignor returning home in the evening to the dormitory (a former mansion) he shares with other senior priests of the diocese. He mounts the stairs alone, enters a room so bare it contains nothing but a bed, a chair, and an armoire, all looking like they came from the Goodwill store. De Niro’s character takes off the cardigan sweater he is wearing and hangs it on a wire hanger in the armoire, which contains only one other shirt and a single pair of trousers. Then he sits on the bed. That’s it. But in that one moment, we, the audience, see the character’s entire life.

Pressfield, Steven. Do the Work (p. 15). The Domino Project/Black Irish Entertainment. Kindle Edition.