📙 The Book
I actually started reading this book thinking it was about design 😝 but it ended up being an easy to read book about beating the Resistance.
📖 Summary
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art . Black Irish Entertainment LLC. Kindle Edition.
This quote kind of resumes what the book is about. All the things we do that are not moving us towards where we would love to be. Our dream job, our ideal life, our definition of hapiness. Or as Steven puts it:
[…] any act that rejects immediate gratification in 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 will elicit Resistance.
Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art (p. 6). Black Irish Entertainment LLC. Kindle Edition.
It’s all about not letting that resistance win over us, it’s about rejecting the immediate gratification in favor of all actions that makes us grow personally, professionally or in health.
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. The War of Art (p. 12). Black Irish Entertainment LLC. Kindle Edition.
One interesting distinction he does is between professionals and amateurs on this, where the professional never takes these Resistance as something light, it is something that he knows will be there always, every morning at 6am when you get up for the morning run, or at 6pm when all you want is chill and watch a Netflix series, and nevertheless the professional runs over this Resistance without thinking, without a second of hesitation, as if his life depended on it. Nobody got nowhere without sacrifice, with profesionalism around these actions. Don’t think, just act.
Finally, I’ll finish with this quote, hopefully pressing that spot that push us to be better and don’t give up.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”
Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art (p. 122). Black Irish Entertainment LLC. Kindle Edition.
Cheers!