This is The Ember Studios Podcast #4 with Mike Brown and we go over The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.

Grab The War of Art on Amazon and Audible: https://amzn.to/3uP2UND

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Contact me at michael@emberstudioscreative.com

Full Show Notes: www.emberstudioscreative.com/esp004

A.I. Generated Transcription:

Hey, it is episode number four of the Ember studios podcast, the war of art by Steven Pressfield, identifying and overcoming resistance.

Hey, before we actually get started with this, I just wanted to pop in and say, I recorded this episode a couple of weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it. I read some stuff online about the book and it is very polarizing. This book is not for everyone, the stuff I didn't like. I just kind of rolled my eyes and moved on some people aren't going to be able to do that.

There's just a lot of stuff that either isn't going to jive with you or. Maybe some of this stuff even makes you feel angry. I'm not sure. I tried to extract some of the important stuff while leaving the other stuff behind. There's a lot of religious themes and a lot of shame and guilt in this book. And if you've ever seen me live, you know, that I have an entire section of, one of my presentations dedicated to how shame and guilt are garbage and they don't want.

Yeah. So I just wanted to come out ahead and say that, listen to this show, decide if you want to read the book, but I'm going to try my hardest to get the most important stuff into this episode, so that if you're not the kind of person who this book is for that, you could still get the ideas from it without having to sift through all of the stuff that you're really not vibing with.

Yeah, that's just my little disclaimer. I'm still gonna release the episode. I still got a lot of help from the book, but I will admit maybe the execution. Isn't great, but it's a self-help book. It's a motivational book. A lot of people in that space, like to make you feel like garbage in order to do what you say you want to do.

So that's not me. So I just wanted you guys to know that that if you do pick up the book, I'm not going to do any of those parts of the book. So. Check it out. And, uh, I'll see you in the main episode. All right. So a few years ago I wrote a book on the recommendation of a content creator that I was following called the war of art by Steven Pressfield.

I got it on audio book. It is a super quick listen. I'm used to hearing things faster than normal. And so the book is less than two hours on audible. For me. I listen at 1.5 speed, which is not that bad. Once you get your. And I want it to just talk about it a little bit, because I think this book has really shaped the way I think about a lot of things in terms of creation and creativity and inspiration and stuff like that.

So before we get started, I do just want to say, I don't agree with every word in the book. There's some stuff that I just don't really buy into. Some of the stuff can be kind of polarizing, but as Graham Cochran says, if you're not offending anyone, you're not saying anything. Graham Cochrane author of how to get paid for what you know, and we to have the recording revolution and the grand Cochran show.

Great dude, follow him. But today we're talking about the war of art. You should read this book. You, you should not consider this to be a whole entire compendium of the information in this book. Again, like I said, it's less than two hours. If you listen to 1.5, meaning it's a little under three, if you listen to normally.

So you should listen to it. I would find a good price on it. I blew a whole audible credit on it. And when I found out, I mean, great content, great content. But when I found out it was only like three hours long, I was like, could have gotten something bigger for this, but yeah, very important. I don't regret it, but if you can find it for a lower price than an entire audible credit, grab it like that, I'll be including links to the audible and the Amazon version for you in the show notes to check there.

If you are interested in picking this up in a. So in this book, Steven Pressfield starts out by talking about the fears we have of becoming an outcast when we succeed. And basically he's just talking about the idea that honestly, the really true idea, that the more you become successful, the more people see your success as an affront to their complacency.

They're offended by your success because they're angry. It's not that. They're offended by your success because your success Buck's the norm. Right. So that's just how he kind of frames this entire book. And I think that's a really good framing to have as you're going into this listen or read. Right. So he also uses.

Some of the most dramatic language I've ever heard in a nonfiction book. I mean, it's flowery, it's fire and brimstone. The dude wants to get his point across and he's willing to use any words in the English language to do so. So just be prepared for that. It's interesting. So the book in general, Is about something.

He calls resistance. Now this is, I call it capital R resistance, which just to me means the idea of the resistance that he's speaking about. It's not generic, it's resistance, the idea, and he calls it the most toxic force on the planet. And he'll go on to define it in a second, but he also says a professional writer knows it's not the writing.

That's hard. It's sitting down to write. And what keeps us from sitting down is resistance. So let's break into what resistance really is. The book is separated into parts, but part one starts out with resistance, defining the enemy again, back to that dramatic language. He's not playing around. The beginning of this section talks about, he calls it resistance, his greatest hits, but he's just talking about the types of activities that most commonly elicit resistance.

I'm just going to say them out loud for you really quickly. And those are the pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, just artsy stuff. Any creative art, also the launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise for profit or otherwise, any diet or health or regimen, any program of spiritual advancement, any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals by that?

I think he means working out and stuff. Any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction education in any kind, any act of political, moral, or ethical code. The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others, any acts that entails the commitment of the heart and the taking of any principle to stand in the face of adversity.

So those are the things that Steven Pressfield says will usually elicit a response from resistance. He also says resistance is never satisfied and it's nondiscriminatory it's for everyone and no amount of giving. Is enough until you give in completely resistance is infallible. And by that, what he's saying is resistance shows you where you need to go.

You don't get resistance when you're thinking about doing the easy thing, the easy thing is almost, always not the best thing for you. He says resistance is universal. It's eternal. It's fueled by fear resistance. However, Only opposes you in one direction. If you have resistance, it's only opposing you in one direction.

You can move any number of ways. Resistance is keeping you from moving up. Okay. Lateral moves. Fine. Downgrades. Fine. Resistance wants to stop you from moving up in the. And it recruits allies. Again, those people where you're talking about at the beginning, who see your successes in a front to their complacency, those people are going to make you feel like you are wrong for trying this.

One's really hard to get over either. You're going to have to let go of these people, or you're going to have to convince. It's a come along for the ride. And that doesn't mean, you know, bring them in on your business or your podcast or whatever it just means. You're going to need to convince them to just let you do your thing.

And they will seek resistance will make you choose between the instant gratification and the longterm improvement. For example, let's talk about diet. You know, when you're dieting, what you're supposed to do and you know, you want the results, but it's hard because the result is far in the future and it's a long term improvement.

The cheesecake is instant gratification, right? So you grab that cheesecake. You feel better. You're you're back on the diet tomorrow. You knew the whole time what you wanted to do, how you want it to accomplish it when you want it to accomplish it. But resistance. Got you. Had you eat that cheesecake. So in essence, resistance is just going to get in your way.

And then another big thing about resistance is that it ramps it up right before the finish line. The closer you are to finishing something the heavier, the resistance gets. And I know, I know some of you out there have, let's put this in the frame of podcasting. I know some of you have gotten. Gotten everything you needed, you sat down, you recorded an episode, you opened up an account on Libsyn, you uploaded your episode.

And when it says release date, you kinda, you kind of freeze and you just leave it in your drafts and be like, ah, I don't know if it's ready yet. Let me sleep. Great. That's resistance giving one last push at the very end, because you are so close because once you upload and distribute that episode, now you've done it and