STEVEN PRESSFIELD ｜ Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 12 minutes
Words per Minute
182.54465
Summary
Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, Gates of Fire, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and his newest book, Government Cheese, shares his incredible journey of not knowing a thing about writing to becoming one of the most recognized authors in the world in multiple genres.
Transcript
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All of us have dreams and ambitions, but too few of us are willing to act towards those desires.
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And even if we are, it's easy to get derailed, distracted, and sidetracked. My guest today is
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one of my favorite authors on the planet. His name is Steven Pressfield. He's the author of
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The War of Art, Gates of Fire, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and his newest book, a memoir
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about his life filled with ups and downs called Government Cheese. Today, we talk about infusing
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soul into our work, including a rebuke of the new AI technology, ChatGPT, the drive to
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quote unquote, make the kill, good shame versus bad shame, noble obstacles, why being stuck
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is often a good sign, and ultimately putting your ass where your heart wants to be.
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You
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are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This
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is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said
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Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler. I'm the host and the founder
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of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here. Welcome back. Got a really special
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one for you lined up today with Steven Pressfield. He's been on the show before, and we've had
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conversations, and I'm telling you, this guy is special, and you're going to hear that
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in the podcast today. We have some great discussions about one of my favorite books, which is The
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War of Art. Gates of Fire, we talk a little bit about. We talk about his newest books, Put
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Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be, and also his memoir, Government Cheese. So we'll get
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to that in just a minute. Before we do, just want to mention that we've got a really big sale
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going on for the month of February, 50% off in the entire store, 50% off in the entire
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store. So if you've ever wanted to order a man, hats, shirts, beanies, decals, battle
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planners, wallets, et cetera, et cetera, this month is the time to do it. We're just trying
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to clear out space and give you, give you a discount on the merch so you can look good
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and represent what we're doing here, which is to reclaim and restore masculinity. That's
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what we're doing here in the podcast is giving you the tools and the information that you
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need to become a better man in the walls of your home, in your business, and in your community.
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So let's get to my guest today. Again, his name is Steven Pressfield. He likely needs no
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introduction, but I'll give you a brief one anyways. As I said earlier, he's one of my favorite
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authors and his books are frequent on my list of books every man needs to read. Not only does
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he do a tremendous job in the self-development genre, including one of my all-time favorite
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books, again, the war of art, but his historical fiction is phenomenal, including gates of fire
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and a man at arms is another great book in his newest book, government cheese. He shares
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his incredible decades long journey of not knowing a thing about writing to becoming one
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of the most recognized authors in the world in multiple genres. So I hope you enjoy this
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one, guys. Steven, how are you doing? So great to see you today.
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Yeah. Thanks for having me, Ryan. Great to see you.
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Yeah. It's been, I don't, I should have looked, I don't know how long it's been since we did
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the last podcast, but I always enjoy our conversations.
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Yeah. A couple of years, three years, something like that.
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Yeah. It's, it's amazing how fast time goes. You know, I, I have to apologize ahead of time.
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I reached out to you what, three weeks or so ago. I said, Hey, let's have you on the
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podcast to talk about your latest book, which I, at the time I thought was put your ass where
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your heart wants to be. And then in the mail, you sent me this one. And I was like, wait,
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wait a second. I didn't know that you had come out with this book. And this, this is even,
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I won't say better, but this is just as good. It's like completely different than something
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obviously that you've written in the past. So, uh, I was pleasantly surprised and have been
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really enjoying the book. Oh, great. Great. Great. Thanks for, thanks for diving into it.
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Yeah. What made you want to write more about your own personal journey as opposed to
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fictional work and more of what I would call, you know, that, that self-help space.
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Um, it's really my, um, my better half, Diana, who sort of urged me to try this, you know, like,
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uh, she's heard all my stories, you know? So she said, well, you should, you should tell some of
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these things because they would help people, you know, cause people are sort of, you know,
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they, they've heard little bits about your passage in life, you know, but they don't know how one
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thing connects to the other. And I, I resisted the hell out of it. Of course I said, you know,
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everybody's got a million stories. Why is anybody won't care about mine, you know? But, you know,
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finally she talked me into it. And, uh, it's something that I've really wanted to do for a
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while because I'd never have done it before. You know, I've sort of alluded to various events in
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my life, but I've never actually spelled it out. So anyway, I finally got into it and it turned out
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to be a lot of fun. Do you, uh, so your reservation was that people wouldn't be interested. It wouldn't be
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worthwhile for people to read. Have you found that to be the case? Everybody's got a million
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stories in their own life, you know, most are boring as hell, but I finally thought that,
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you know, the book is really about my, my passage as a writer, you know, from first quitting a job
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to try to write and utterly failing. And then like, it took me like 27 years before I finally got a book
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published. And so I just thought that a report of that passage might be encouraging to people,
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you know, who think that they've been trying for two or three years and thinking that's a long period
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of time. Maybe it might, you know, buck them up to think that maybe it's going to take 30 years.
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Hopefully it doesn't discourage them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it would be helpful to people.
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So we'll see. No, I'm sure it will. I, I've written two books now, nowhere to the near to
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the success that you've had with what you've written. And maybe I need to put my 27 years in,
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but it always, I do share a lot of my own personal journey. You actually alluded to that
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before we even hit record here. And for me, it always feels a little presumptuous for me to put,
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I am trying to help with my stories, but sometimes I feel strange as in like, who cares about what I'm
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going through? But I found that so many people resonate with our real lives and it does help to
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improve theirs. Yeah. It's, I know what you mean. It's, it's, it's a risk because it sort of borders
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on ego mania, you know, it's like, you know, who are you? Who do we, why do we care? But at the same
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time, I know when I hear people's personal stories, it helps me, you know, when somebody says they had
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a health issue or they had, you know, you know, a personal crisis that they had or whatever, you
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know, I, I, I'm encouraged by that. And a lot of times the, the sort of techniques that they used
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or the mindset that they use to overcome it is helpful to me. I'll just, I'll use them as mentors
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and I'll take it in. So that was what, you know, I'm sure you hope that when you write
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about your stuff, Ryan, and I do too, I just hope it's helpful.
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Yeah. Now, is that the infamous typewriter there over your, I think that's your left shoulder?
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This is not, that one's in storage, but this is kind of a similar, you know, baby brother.
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Okay. Yeah. What an interesting thing it must be to see how far writing has come with obviously,
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you know, computer technology and word processors and, and to see that transition over the span
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of your career has probably been pretty interesting.
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Yeah. It's like, I was, you know, I started talking in the book, you know, about typewriters
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and I realized that people don't know what a typewriter is these days. You know, in fact,
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I saw a thing, it was a, I forgot the name of the show, but it was a thing where they had
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like eight or nine kids, like six year old, 70 year old kids. And they showed them a typewriter
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and asked them, what is this? And they just didn't have a clue. They were trying to feed
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paper in, you know, through the front of the thing. And so, uh, yeah, things have certainly
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changed, you know, and to, even to mention something like carbon paper, I mean, you know
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Maybe I, maybe I don't, maybe you can explain it for me. Explain it.
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Like when you're writing on a typewriter, if you wanted to have a copy of something, not just
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one page, you would put in one page, then you put a piece of carbon paper and then a
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second page. And as the key struck the first page, the carbon paper would transfer it to
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the second page as well. So you have to do a carbon paper was like inked paper, really
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thin filament type paper. And no, I just, to me, that's just a given, but I realized people
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today don't know what that is. So anyway, it was it, you're right. It's interesting how
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things have changed. So I didn't know that I was actually going to ask because when
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you're typing something that, I mean, a mistake, maybe you could have whited it out or crossed
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it out, but then you'd need to write the new word. I was like, okay, how do you get multiple
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copies of this? But now that you say that I had a really interesting experience. I must
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have been in, I want to say I was maybe in seventh grade and I got my report card in the
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mail and I can't remember what class it was. It's probably English or history. And I got
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a D on my report card and I got it before my mom got home. And I either, there was a
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piece of carbon paper with the report card, or I had some, and I actually changed the D
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to a B. I don't even know if my mom knows to this day, but I changed the D to a B using
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that same concept. So I am familiar with it now that you share it.
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Oh, great. Great. That's a great memory to bring back.
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I'm going to have to see if she knows that I did that. I don't know if she knows to this
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day. Uh, speaking of technology though, are you familiar with, uh, AI programs like
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I've been reading about it in the paper, but I've never actually seen it work or done
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Yeah. I I'm interested because I, so I typed in a question the other day and I said, uh,
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write me a 1000 word article on the best fitness tips for men. And within 30 seconds,
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it had cranked out seven or eight tips that were all legitimate. It sounded professionally
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written. I didn't see any weird computer lingo. It all looked like somebody, it was very generic,
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but it was pretty good. And I was curious about your thought with some of this AI technology
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with when it comes to journalism or even just authoring a novel. If you look at that as a
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threat, if you look at that as advancement and what your perspective on something like
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I think it's the work of the devil. It's the spawn of the devil.
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And, and like you say, it is so generic that, uh, thank goodness. I don't feel threatened by it at
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all, because I think, uh, the definition of that is that there's no element of soul in anything,
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you know, that it's just sort of culled from other stuff. And, uh, I even a friend of mine,
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like, um, sent me just for fun. He, he, he said, give me a review of my last two books of my books,
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right. Including the one you have government cheese. And the first one, I think it was of
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gates of fire or something like that. And the, the AI review was pretty realistic, you know,
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but because they had somehow culled it from various reviews or whatever, but the new one,
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since it was brand new was completely wrong and out to lunch. Then they were just, I don't even know
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the AI was just sort of making it up or whatever, but it was totally wrong. So that really encouraged
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me that they ain't that smart yet. Yeah. And I heard it is scary. It's scary. And, you know,
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I heard something interesting today with these things is we call it AI artificial intelligence,
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but it's, it's really not completely artificial or intelligent. Uh, there's parameters, right?
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There's somebody is dangling the strings and saying, okay, well, you know, we don't want to talk about
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transgenderism, for example, or we don't want to talk about, I don't know. There's parameters that
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people are entering. Yeah. You're right. They're touting it as, as completely objective
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when it comes to the, the returns or the results that you're going to get back.
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Yeah. Which it's not, like you say, because somebody has to establish guidelines and
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guardrails and that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's okay if you have, uh, obviously if
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there's, there's people who disagree with you or see it differently, but I just want to know that
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you're biased towards your perspective. Don't tout it as something that is unbiased when clearly
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it's not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has, it has to be biased. Some, it's like the editors at a newspaper
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are going to skew the newspaper one, one way or another. What is truth, right? What is objective truth?
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Yeah. How have you found to get to the root of that, including some of your, your past works where
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it's, you know, gates of fire, where it might be some historical fiction. How have you found in
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your research to get to the truth of the matter when you're, when you are writing a book like,
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like that? That's a great question. I think that, uh, you, you have to have a point of view
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in everything, right? Um, like one book of mine is, uh, the lion's gate, which was about
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the 1967 Arab Israeli war, the six day war. Okay. As I was putting that together, you know,
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I did a bunch of interviews in Israel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just, I, I had to
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write in the, in the introduction that this book is not objective, that I'm taking it from the Israeli
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side. I'm not trying to give a balanced perspective. And, you know, as you read it,
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dear reader, just be aware of that. This is not a tent. This is not an even handed account. This is
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seen through one particular lens. And I think, you know, you just, you have to do that in anything,
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any, any work that you're doing, you have to have a point of view. And that like a newspaper,
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like the New York times has a slant one way and Fox news has a slant another way. And they just,
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they have to, otherwise it wouldn't be what they are. Just like you and I have a slant, right?
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Yeah. I think that goes back to your comment about soul. If you don't have a point of view,
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you don't have an assertion or a perspective. Does it really, it lacks, well, it lacks courage,
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I think to not take a side, to not stand for something. And it lacks something to contend
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with something to debate about. And I think it does lack a lot of soul if it's so generic that
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it's trying to appease everybody. Yeah. I think that's, that's a, that's a great way of putting it.
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There's nothing to contend with, you know, like your stuff definitely has such a point of view
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that somebody could react against it and say, ah, this is a bunch of bullshit. He's really pushing
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some kind of agenda that I don't think is possible or that kind of thing. Or they could say, wow,
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this is exactly right. This guy's talent. Like it is, this is exactly what we all need to hear.
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And you have to have that. Otherwise you got nothing. Otherwise you have that AI. That's what AI is
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without that. Although I'm sure they're working on it. I'm sure. It is funny when people say you're
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pushing an agenda. Yes. Correct. And I'm very clear about the agenda that I'm trying to push.
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Like I'm not hiding the ball on that one. Yeah. So over time then, you know, throughout your career,
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uh, what, what are the things that have, you also talked about hope a lot in this book. What,
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what are the things that have given you hope when it feels like you have this,
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this dream and this desire to do something and you're met with just constant setback or,
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or resistance as, as you would call it. Uh, what is it that gives you hope in the face of that?
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Yeah. I've thought about that a lot actually. And it's almost like there's no alternative to hope.
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It's, it's sort of like swimming in the ocean. It's like, what's the alternative? If you stop
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swimming, you gotta be in the bottom of the ocean, you know? So I think you just, the, the alternative
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is death. You know, you just got to keep going forward one way or another. Um, yeah, it, it seems
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as simple as that. I agree with that answer. I, I don't know how many people are, are content with
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that answer. It doesn't make it any less true or relevant. I just, I I'm hearing people in the back
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of my mind that, that still struggle with, you know, throwing in the towel or, or, and I guess
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that's one option, right? Is to say, Hey, maybe this isn't for me. Or one thing I hear a lot is people
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will say, uh, you know, if, if it's God's will, or if it's meant to be, and that a lot of the time
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seems like an excuse not to continue doing the work that they have a desire to do or a
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dream, a dream that they want to pursue. Yeah. I I'm, I'm not sure what kept me going
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all the time. I felt like really like I sort of started like at the bottom of the pit, my
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odyssey started, you know, uh, an utter failure of my first shot at writing and my life kind
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of falling apart, marriage exploding, et cetera, et cetera, falling out of, uh, any kind of work,
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you know, no money. So I sort of, the challenge was to survive that. It was like, how was I going
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to get out of that, that, uh, tunnel? And I, for some reason, I felt like the only way I can get out
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of this is to write my way out of it. I just, I've got to, you know, succeed at that one way or
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another. And, uh, I don't know where that idea came from, but that was, that sort of was unshakable
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for me. Um, what, so with writing, so I told you I've authored two books now and, uh, you know,
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I'm, I'm happy with it. I, I, I'm proud of the work that I put out. I try to put a lot of effort
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into it, but it isn't something that I particularly enjoy. I really don't like when this last one in
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particular, I really had to grind through it. And I don't mean grind like, oh, it's challenging,
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but I really want to do this. It was like, I don't want to do this, but I know it's going to
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do good for people. What does writing do for you? Is it therapeutic? Is it, does it help you work
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through ideas? Like what has got exactly does writing do for you that you find so much joy in it?
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Well, it's, it's really, it's my calling, you know, like some people are born to be dancers or
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some people are born to be musicians, right. Or performers of some kind, right. They just have
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to get up on the stage or some people are born to be comedians or moms or whatever, but that's,
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it's just my, it's my calling. You know, uh, I, I even think of it, uh, more as a storyteller than a,
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than a writer, you know, it's what gives me, um, you know, they say is a, is an activity
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battery charging or battery depleting for you. Right. And for me, it's a battery charging thing.
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When I'm done with a day, I feel like I've paid my dues to the planet for that day. I've done what
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I'm supposed to do. And, uh, and if I don't do it, then I really feel depleted. I feel like I've let
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myself down. And, you know, so it's just, people have callings. Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to be
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a bodybuilder and a, an actor or whatever he, you know, governor or whatever. Um, and, uh, for me,
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writing is that doesn't sound like you're a pure writer, Ryan, like you may use writing in, in as
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part of, uh, one tool in your kit, but, uh, it doesn't seem like it brings you, you know, the joy
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and satisfaction, not to say for me that it isn't hard. It is hard. Sure. You know, it's a killer,
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but at the end of the day, you know, I feel like, uh, I paid my dues and I've earned my place on the
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planet. I feel that way about podcasting. I feel that way about having these conversations. It's,
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uh, it energizes me. I learned new perspectives. I do like to speak, but that's different than,
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so I love communicating. I just don't want to do it in that medium. I found another medium that I feel
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is my call. I'll give you a pass. You don't have to do it only when you want to. Well, that's good.
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That's good to know actually too, because I think there are a lot of people who see your success or
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they might look at my success or anybody they're inspired by and think, well, in order to be
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successful, I have to do it just like Steven did. Yeah. Well, of course that's not true of anything,
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right? We all carve our own path, whatever it is. And mine's completely different from yours or from
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anybody else's. Yeah. Can you, uh, can you explain a little bit when you say you've said, you said it a
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couple of times, uh, paid my dues to the planet or paid my dues to be here on this planet? Can you
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expand on that a little bit by what you mean that you have some debt that you owe to the planet or,
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or for being alive? Can you explain that? I think, you know, it's weird. I'd never thought about this
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as a kid, but as an adult, it's sort of, it, it really, uh, somehow insinuated itself into my
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consciousness. And I completely believe it that just like if we're, uh, a hawk or an eagle,
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we wake up in the morning, we know we got to get up there and hunt, right? We got to get up there.
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We got to don't cruise around. And, and at the end of the day, if we don't do that, first of all,
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we're starving and our little birds, our little baby hawks are starving, but also, I mean, a hawk must
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feel pretty bad if he doesn't do that. And I'm the same way. I think you, and I'm, and I'm sure you
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are too, Ryan, we got to make a kill during the day, you know, or one or two or three kills.
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That's just part of it. And so I found when I'd done other things, like when I've worked straight
00:22:33.180
jobs that I, at the end of the day, I feel guilty. I feel, um, I haven't paid my dues. I
00:22:41.920
haven't earned my place on the planet, but even if I'm just sitting home alone, which I did for years
00:22:47.460
and I've been writing that day, even if nobody sees it, it's no good. It's never going to go
00:22:53.420
anywhere. At the end of the day, I feel like I paid my dues and I've earned my right. And I feel
00:22:59.180
peace of mind. I can go to sleep. That actually leads into something I wanted to ask you about.
00:23:04.300
You know, when I look at people who have been in, in anything, uh, and have displayed some level of
00:23:10.840
mastery towards that thing, in your case, writing, I often wonder if it's that they're goal oriented
00:23:17.460
or strictly process oriented, and they find joy in the process and the outcome really isn't all
00:23:26.220
that important relative to them feeling the win is in the process. I mean, I'm definitely from the
00:23:32.760
process school. You know, um, I think of, of, of my own journey as a writer, as a practice,
00:23:41.960
you know, like if you have a yoga practice or a meditation practice, it's, uh, something that you
00:23:48.300
do every day. It's ritualistic. It's a dedicated thing. It's, it exists for its own sake and not for
00:23:57.280
any kind of finish line. No, when you go in to meditate, it's not like you're saying, well, I,
00:24:01.940
I got to come out of this with $500 in my pocket, right? You're just doing it for the activity alone.
00:24:07.480
Right. And there's a certain sacred quality to it. You know, you're, if you have a martial arts
00:24:14.080
practice and you go to the dojo, you know, you enter the dojo and you, you take your shoes off
00:24:20.600
and you bow to the sensei, you know, and, and it's a, it's a sacred space, right? You don't curse in
00:24:25.980
there. You don't act in a certain way. You always act respectful. And, and, uh, those are
00:24:31.920
kind of the qualities of a practice in anything. So I think, you know, that when I sit down in front
00:24:37.480
of this thing, it's a practice for me. And, uh, not that that's an easy attitude to maintain
00:24:45.480
because I have an ego like everybody else. And I hope when I write a book that people are going to
00:24:50.100
buy it. Of course, if they don't, that's okay. I'm, you know, I'm moving on to the next one and
00:24:56.680
the next one after that. So I'm definitely from the process school.
00:25:01.560
You're, uh, you're alluding to a level of, uh, you use the term respect and, and I've,
00:25:06.860
I've looked at it as a level of reverence towards an activity as well. I remember when I was young,
00:25:11.520
I must've been maybe in sixth grade or so I got into a fight and got a bloody nose and my mom
00:25:18.900
freaked out and decided that she was going to get me into karate lessons, which I think was an
00:25:24.620
inappropriate response. You know, she didn't get mad. She's like, Hey, if you're going to fight,
00:25:27.380
you got to learn to defend yourself. So props to my mom on that one. So I went to class,
00:25:32.420
it was a Kempo karate class. And I went to class and I had the, the gi that I was supposed to wear.
00:25:37.840
And I had my pants on and I had a, like a, some sort of t-shirt and I was holding my gi in my hand
00:25:42.960
and I came in and I put it on. And I remember, I'll never forget the instructor pulled me aside.
00:25:46.900
He said, Hey, now Ryan, with, I just, I want to talk you through something. When you come in here,
00:25:51.760
it needs a level of respect and you don't walk in here without your gi top on tied up and ready to
00:25:57.820
go so that when you come in, you're a hundred percent ready. And even at, well, I must've been
00:26:03.160
11, 12 years old. Even then I recognized, Oh God, this is a person who takes this very seriously.
00:26:10.580
And I appreciate it even at that age. Yeah, that's great. I love that story. Yeah. That's so true.
00:26:15.980
What does your, what does your level of respect and reverence towards the writing process look
00:26:21.440
like? Is, is there a room dedicated? Are you in it now? Is there a certain time of day that you
00:26:27.020
write? What does that look like? Yeah. I always write at about, at the same time,
00:26:31.780
about the same time. Of course it depends on like right now I would normally be writing and not doing
00:26:36.960
this podcast. Okay. So I, but so I can adjust. So I'll go, I'll move down the clock a little bit
00:26:43.800
farther, but this is, this is my room and I, my, and it's a sacred space to me too. I say my prayer
00:26:50.760
to the muse when I come in here and, uh, I turn everything off. There's no distractions. And, um,
00:26:59.200
I'm, I'm trying to do the absolute best that I can, you know, I'm trying to work as hard as I possibly
00:27:06.100
can without working so hard that I drive myself insane, you know? And, um, and, uh, when, when the
00:27:15.220
day's over, you know, which may be two hours or three hours, um, if I've done that, I'll sort of
00:27:21.740
judge myself on that. And if I've done it to my own, to my own satisfaction, if I've tried it hard
00:27:27.940
enough, then I don't judge the work at all. You know, that, that time will come maybe a month from
00:27:34.980
now, two months from now, six months from now when I'm revising something or whatever. But I just, uh,
00:27:41.020
I just try to like, like entering the dojo. I want to have my gi on when I enter and be respectful of
00:27:48.160
the sensei and do the absolute best I can all, all the way through there. And it's energizing,
00:27:54.160
you know, it's energizing. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree. When, and when you pay it that level of
00:27:59.700
respect, you treat it differently, which means you enjoy it more. And then the outcome is usually
00:28:05.740
more favorable that way too. Yes. And to go beyond that a little bit, to get into slightly deeper
00:28:12.660
waters, I'm definitely a believer that this as a writer or any creative person, that the stuff that
00:28:20.860
comes out on the page is coming from some place other than your conscious mind. You know, you are
00:28:29.000
not, when all is said and done, you can't stand up and say, I did this, you know, I, I helped do it,
00:28:36.840
but it's coming from some other, some other place. And that, and that the skill of the artist really is
00:28:44.480
the skill of opening the pipeline to that place, you know, and making oneself an instrument that can
00:28:53.560
handle it, you know, that can handle a voltage and that can do it, do it right and do it as a
00:28:59.380
professional, you know? So there's an element of respect that way too. That there's, there's,
00:29:08.200
there are other forces in play that we can't define and that we have to respect that, that are
00:29:15.420
really providing all the meat and potatoes to the, to the activity. Is, is that what you referenced
00:29:22.000
earlier when you said the muse, you said you pray to the muse? Exactly. Yeah. Is the muse, is that
00:29:27.680
different than God? Because the way you're explaining it, I would say God personally. In fact, I made a
00:29:31.960
post on Twitter the other day and I said, why do people, and I was being genuine about it. I think
00:29:36.100
people may, may have thought I was saying it controversial, controversial, but I wasn't.
00:29:41.700
And I was asking, why do people say the universe? And then the way they describe it is the same way
00:29:49.080
I would say God. It's just, it was just, it's just kind of an interesting perspective. So I'm really
00:29:54.160
curious about your relationship with the muse versus God. Is that, is that different? Do you see it as
00:29:58.820
being the same and you're calling it something different? I think they're probably different names for
00:30:02.840
the same mysterious force that we can't really say. I mean, like, let me, I'll talk a little bit about
00:30:11.260
the muse here for a second, because I'm sure a lot of people are not familiar with this. But in, in Greek
00:30:16.960
mythology, there were goddesses, nine muses. They were sisters, daughters of Zeus, the king of the gods,
00:30:26.580
and mimosony, which means memory. And the muse's job was to inspire artists. And there was a muse for
00:30:34.960
every form of art. There was a muse of dance and a muse of epic poetry and so on and so forth. And
00:30:41.380
the, the kind of the classic image that we, from, from antiquity that we have would be something like
00:30:48.320
Beethoven sitting at the piano and whispering in his ear would be this kind of goddess, right?
00:30:55.680
And she would be sort of humming the tune that he was then going to play on the piano. And I think
00:31:02.000
that, that there's a lot to be said for that, you know? I mean, the Greeks like to anthropomorphize
00:31:09.380
something, right? They gave it a human face, their gods and goddesses. Whereas if we say God,
00:31:14.680
you might think of, I don't know what, but, or somebody says the universe, maybe they're thinking of
00:31:20.740
the quantum field or something Einsteinian. I think it's, it's all, it's all a different name
00:31:27.540
for the same thing, that there's a level above us, a level of reality above us that somehow penetrates
00:31:35.160
this reality that we live in, this material reality. And that that's where magic comes from,
00:31:43.120
you know, that's where a great song comes from, or a great architectural building or, or anything,
00:31:48.880
you know, great mother, um, comes from, from that somehow.
00:31:53.760
You don't believe that it's just some culmination of experiences and cultural conditioning and beliefs?
00:32:01.360
No, I don't. I don't. And I'll tell you why, for whatever this is worth. Like, um,
00:32:06.340
my, I have like five books that are set in ancient Greece, like Gates of Fire and,
00:32:11.860
and Tides of War and a couple of others that came out of, it followed up. And when I started to write
00:32:17.280
those, I didn't, I didn't know anything about Greece. I didn't have any interest in it. Well,
00:32:22.660
maybe a little bit of it, but those books came out of nowhere, came out of absolutely nowhere as far as
00:32:28.440
my conscious mind is concerned. And, and they immediately resonated with a whole shitload of
00:32:37.240
people, you know, and so that I could say to myself, something's going on here, you know, and,
00:32:44.380
but, and it was definitely very clear that it wasn't really me. It was coming through me. Now,
00:32:51.060
in, in some way I was, maybe I had a previous lifetime there or something, but in some way it
00:32:58.420
was very congenial to me. When I found myself writing about something 2,500 years ago, I felt
00:33:04.300
like I was really in command of it, that it was easy to imagine what it was like and how people
00:33:09.220
thought. So that really showed me that, uh, uh, it's not just your own personal experiences that
00:33:16.800
you had as a child or whatever. It's, we, we have a depth of, of, of consciousness or, or experience
00:33:25.380
that comes from, I don't know where, but it's, it's not entirely from this lifetime.
00:33:32.020
You, earlier you used the word, I think you used it, or maybe I just thought it in my mind and
00:33:36.420
attributed it to you. You, I think you said instrument, you said to be an instrument.
00:33:39.840
Yeah. And so if that's the case, have you identified what
00:33:45.840
your purposes and what I think, I'm hope I'm saying it the way you would say it, what the muse
00:33:53.420
would use you for as an instrument? Um, well, here, here's what I, here's what I mean by that,
00:34:00.240
Ryan, if I can, it's, you know, they say sometimes people who are serious meditators and I'm, I'm not
00:34:07.080
one, but people say that, uh, that you have to be in, in good physical shape and in good psychic
00:34:16.700
shape because the voltage that's coming into you when you meditate can overwhelm you if you're not
00:34:22.920
ready to handle it, you know? And I, and so I use that sort of as an analogy, like if, like when I,
00:34:30.000
the first book that I tried to write where I completely failed and was just an utter disaster,
00:34:36.360
my instrument, meaning the skills that I brought to the table, the skills as a, as a writer of
00:34:44.860
putting words on, but also the skills like, how do you start something? How do you finish something?
00:34:50.360
What happens when you get in the middle and you're lost? What happens when people are rejecting you?
00:34:55.080
I had none of those, you know, that's, those are, that's what I would define as the instrument that
00:35:00.800
a writer brings to something. Like if you and I are going to play music and we're going to write a song
00:35:07.360
together and we're going to perform, first of all, we have to know how to play our instruments, right?
00:35:12.540
We got to know how to play the guitar or the keyboard or whatever it is. Then we got to know how to perform.
00:35:18.000
We got to know how to take care of our bodies and our, and our brains so that at the end of each day,
00:35:24.120
we don't just go off with whoever's going to invite us off to do whatever terrible things we're going
00:35:28.980
to do. And we also have to know how to, how to continue this over time. That we're not just a
00:35:35.760
one hit wonder and that, and that we have a point of view. We're not just popping out some stupid song
00:35:41.540
and then we don't know what the next one's going to be. Right. So that's sort of, those are the skills
00:35:46.620
that you can work on consciously in the real world. You know, you can increase your physical
00:35:53.320
fitness. You can teach yourself to be more patient. You know, you can learn how to not be
00:35:58.980
afraid to start something and how not to be afraid to finish. You can learn how to, how to deal with
00:36:03.840
rejection. So those are this kind of the skills of the instrument. It's like, if we look at it,
00:36:09.140
if you follow my model of the goddess, the muse looking down at you, right, you're going to write a
00:36:14.260
book and she looks down at you and she asks herself, can this guy handle the workload? You know,
00:36:20.760
is he going to crack under pressure? Does he have the chops? If I give him something really
00:36:26.220
complicated to do, can he pull it off? And what if it takes four years to do it? Is he going to crack
00:36:31.840
in a year or two? And she's sort of, you know, judging us on, on that basis. And I think we need
00:36:39.420
to, to mold ourselves or to train ourselves, to prepare ourselves to be able to do what the
00:36:47.280
assignment is to handle the workload. Hey man, let me step away from this conversation.
00:36:53.000
I know it's riveting. I want to get right back into it. But again, I want to mention that we've
00:36:56.740
got that huge sale in the store going on right now. So if you've ever wanted to pick up some
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00:37:18.880
enter the code five zero five zero. That's 50 at checkout. And you're all set guys. I really
00:37:25.900
appreciate the support over the years. And I'm also glad that we're able to give you a huge discount
00:37:31.280
items that you guys want the most again, head to order a man store, which is at store.orderman.com
00:37:38.000
and get your savings. Do that right after the conversation. Cause you're going to want to hear
00:37:42.660
the end of it and we'll get right back to it with Steven. Yeah. I think you and I are very
00:37:47.580
much in alignment on that, especially that last component. I think that, and I say God,
00:37:53.360
so I think that God is, is looking at us and he's giving us opportunities to test our metal
00:38:00.200
because of what's to come. And I found that if I'm dealing with something particularly challenging
00:38:06.560
in my life, if I can get through this test, like a man would get through it, then that unlocks the
00:38:13.940
door to something bigger and greater. I, if I'm not being challenged, I don't feel like there's
00:38:21.040
something on the other end of it. And I think God presents opportunities for us to struggle for us
00:38:26.780
to overcome hardship because he's preparing us for what's to come next. I mean, I would definitely
00:38:32.540
agree with that. And certainly it's very, uh, old Testament, you know, it's like the prophets
00:38:37.760
when God would talk to, you know, Jeremiah or something like that, he'd say here, I want you
00:38:42.900
to go preach. And the prophet would always say, not me, not me. Right. Why, why are you putting
00:38:48.380
this load on me, God? I can't handle this stuff, you know? And, and, uh, or like, um, Jesus said to
00:38:55.800
the apostles, right, that they sends you out as, as sheep among wolves, right? And don't be afraid
00:39:01.720
when you don't know what to say, just start to speak and I will provide the words for you,
00:39:08.220
you know, which is really exactly what I'm talking about in terms of a writer or an artist or a
00:39:14.560
musician or a songwriter or something like that, that the muse or some other force will provide the
00:39:21.200
words for you. And it is a test. And, and, uh, if you fail it, you got to go back and try again,
00:39:27.420
right. Until you can get it right. Yeah. But there's no real alternative. You know,
00:39:32.300
the alternative is to quit and to die. I've thought about that when I do something I've
00:39:38.300
done before and it didn't work and I continue to make the same mistake. I'm like, you know,
00:39:42.560
I bet if I learned this lesson and apply it, I won't have to go through this same thing over and
00:39:47.460
over and over again. Yeah. And I can tell you for, in my experience, like what was my real demon at
00:39:56.680
the beginning of this odyssey for me was being able to finish something. I would get right to the
00:40:01.960
end and I would just choke. I would be overcome with panic and I just couldn't finish something.
00:40:07.360
And, you know, as you know, in, in the book, in Government Cheese, I talk about this time when I was,
00:40:13.680
I just rented this little house that was cheap and that I could work for two years, blah, blah,
00:40:19.060
blah. And I was just determined to finish something that I'd never done. And when I did finish,
00:40:26.140
I've never had that trouble again. You know, I've never had a problem finishing anything ever again.
00:40:32.860
So it's, it's just, I'm just sort of repeating what you said, Ryan, that once you sort of learn
00:40:38.040
that skill, whatever it may be, you got it. With finishing, I think that's something that
00:40:44.200
plagues a lot of men, myself included. Um, I've, I, I start so many projects and tasks and I have
00:40:49.440
noble and great intentions of finishing all of them. And, you know, it's easy to say, I just got
00:40:53.340
distracted or, you know, that things came up. Uh, what, what was it for you? Do you know what it was
00:40:59.400
that kept you from finishing these things? And then how did you work through that?
00:41:02.980
Um, I think I was just too young. I had never learned the skill as a, I was naive. Uh, I, I had
00:41:12.200
never really learned the skill growing up. You know, someone might have an athlete on a football team
00:41:18.280
might've really learned that, you know, might've had a coach that said, you know, you got to take
00:41:23.660
it to the end of the game, et cetera, et cetera. I'd never, never learned, had really learned that.
00:41:27.600
So when, so my instrument wasn't ready, I didn't have the skill to finish it. I didn't know how
00:41:34.040
hard it was going to be. I was taken by surprise by it. I wasn't ready for it, but after I'll give
00:41:42.340
you, I'll give you an analogy here. They say in marathons that around the 24 mile mark, you quote
00:41:50.760
unquote, hit the wall. Right. And, and what that is, is muscle glycogen running out, you know,
00:41:59.280
the source of, of energy that you carry in yourself and the body at that point has to switch
00:42:04.500
to generating energy from stored fat. And so the, the transition is hell on a right, on a, on a runner,
00:42:13.220
right? The legs go turn to lead, et cetera. So if you're not aware of that, at the start of a marathon
00:42:21.700
and you're hit by that, you're going to collapse, you're going to crash, right? On the other hand,
00:42:27.840
if you are aware of it, when that moment hits you, you say to yourself, oh, this is the wall.
00:42:34.200
This is my glycogen reserves are gone. But if I can just keep running for another 90 seconds,
00:42:39.780
my fat stores are going to kick in and I'm going to be okay. So I think for me,
00:42:46.420
I spent like two years or something working on this book that never got published, but all I wanted
00:42:52.440
to do was finish it. And I knew from my prior failure, I said, when I get to the end of this
00:42:59.000
thing, it's going to be a motherfucker. You know, my, my demons are going to rise up and be,
00:43:05.200
and so I've just got to gear myself up just like a runner when they hit the wall. And sure enough,
00:43:12.460
that's exactly what happened. And I just said, do or die. I got to finish this. I don't care how
00:43:17.460
bad it is. I got to finish it. And so I was able to just by willpower and also from the shame that I
00:43:25.940
felt from failing the first time and all of the pain that I'd caused other people and myself,
00:43:32.460
I thought shame kind of drove me. I just said each day, you just got to keep going. I don't
00:43:37.880
care how bad it is. Just keep going. And that did work.
00:43:43.020
I think the concept of realistic expectations is powerful. That's what you're talking about.
00:43:47.520
You had, because we have faulty expectations like, Oh, I'm going to write a book. You know,
00:43:51.000
I'll write a thousand words per day. It'll take me 60 to 90 days and everything will be beautiful
00:43:55.120
and it'll be done. And that sounds great. That's not really how it goes.
00:43:58.940
Exactly. You think that's what's going to happen. You're already teeing yourself up for failure
00:44:04.440
instead of a realistic expectation so that you can address it accordingly.
00:44:09.500
Yes. And plan mentally so that when the shit hits the fan, you can just say, okay, I expected this to
00:44:18.060
come. I've got to dig in and weather this storm, you know, which, you know, coaches tell, you know,
00:44:24.960
their teams all the time, right? If they're going up against another team, that's a real fast starter,
00:44:30.260
they'll say, look, we're probably going to be down, but let's say it's basketball.
00:44:33.560
We're probably going to be down by 18 points by the end of the first quarter because these guys
00:44:38.100
are going to come out of the gate. And so just weather that storm, you know, and we'll come back
00:44:43.880
in the second quarter to the third quarter. And it does work to know that, you know?
00:44:49.360
Yeah. I think it keeps you in the game when maybe you would have tapped out long before.
00:44:52.480
Yeah. It's interesting. You're talking about shame. I I've been thinking a lot about this
00:44:57.300
concept lately. These are, these are words and feelings that modern culture says that we should
00:45:03.100
not feel right. Don't, don't be ashamed. Uh, you see this in the body positive movement, you know,
00:45:08.600
some, some man or woman who's severely obese shouldn't be ashamed of that when I think probably
00:45:13.780
a healthy dose of shame would actually be a good thing and hopefully drive them to changing into a more
00:45:18.540
healthy lifestyle. Uh, why do you think shame is so taboo and how have you harnessed shame?
00:45:29.320
Like you were talking about earlier in order to drive you towards results?
00:45:33.440
Uh, I mean, it's a deep subject because I think there's sort of bad shaming, you know,
00:45:40.340
fat shaming people or something like that, or doing it to ourselves. That is just judgmental and just,
00:45:47.380
you know, cuts our, uh, our motivation out from under us, but then there's good shame and good
00:45:53.900
self-shaming. Like if you think about the, the Spartan culture, ancient Sparta was totally shame
00:46:01.620
based in the sense that it was really all about producing warriors who would face the enemy shield
00:46:10.840
shield to shield hand to hand in what must be one of the most scariest possible ways of fighting,
00:46:17.020
you know? And so everything in that culture was about making the individual warrior feel that
00:46:25.260
as bad as death might be, it's better than what we're going to do to you. If you crap out in that
00:46:33.840
moment, really like for one of the things that they used to do, if somebody, uh, if a warrior showed,
00:46:39.800
uh, uh, uh, cowardice in the face of the enemy, when he would come back to Sparta, the young girls
00:46:47.300
would surround him and sing these songs of ridicule, follow him through the streets, singing
00:46:53.660
these songs. And further to that, if a, if a young man was engaged to a woman, to a young girl,
00:47:01.540
and he showed cowardice, the other family would break off the engagement. And in fact, if he,
00:47:07.380
that, if that warrior had sisters and they were engaged to young men, those young men would break
00:47:13.700
off with the sisters. And even there are many, many stories of mothers utterly shaming their sons,
00:47:21.580
you know? Um, I mean, the famous story of the Spartan mother who gives his son his shield for the first
00:47:28.580
time as he goes off to war and says, come back with this or on it. Right. So in that sense,
00:47:36.660
um, it was about overcoming fear, using shame as a weapon to overcome fear or particularly fear of,
00:47:45.580
of death. And, uh, so you can say that, you know, maybe that's cruel, but it certainly works.
00:47:53.100
And I think that, uh, you know, there's a certain way that we can harness it ourselves and just say,
00:48:00.940
I'm not going to fall below this level of aspiration or of expectation myself, no matter what,
00:48:08.100
you know, the shame that I will put on myself in my own head is worse than whatever pain it's going
00:48:15.400
to take. And, uh, you know, I was just watching that Kobe Bryant's muse here. Have you seen that?
00:48:22.520
Uh, no, I haven't. No, I haven't, but I need to watch that.
00:48:26.260
You can imagine, you can imagine what it is. It's great by the way. And, uh, you can,
00:48:31.360
he never uses the word shame, but you can see that he was just driving himself from the time he was,
00:48:38.740
you know, 11 years old, that he was not going to fall below a certain level of aspiration.
00:48:46.100
And that, and, and he even says at the very end of this thing, he said, like to, to fail is like
00:48:51.500
worse than death. And, and, uh, you can tell that he means it and he believes it. And it worked for
00:48:58.660
him, at least on the basketball court. It did. Do you, do you think that we could stand to use a
00:49:04.900
little bit more of that, even public shaming, like you're talking about in Spartan culture than we
00:49:09.900
have today? Do you think that would be a value add to society as a whole?
00:49:13.240
I certainly do. And particularly, I mean, some of the things that politicians are doing and saying
00:49:19.520
these days, where you look at it and you go, have they no shame whatsoever? Can they just stand up
00:49:25.820
and just like this guy, George Santos, the fake congressman, right? That made up his life story.
00:49:33.160
Where does he get the balls to stand up in front of people and, and, and tell these lies,
00:49:38.940
like his family survived the Holocaust. The guy isn't even Jewish, right? And that he, he went to
00:49:44.960
whatever, whatever. And we, even when he's caught in these utter lies, he won't back down, right?
00:49:51.600
He won't give up his seat. So we could use a little shaming, but in fact, I think what's going wrong with
00:49:57.020
this country lately is that people are shameless. That you can't, you, you, you could say to somebody,
00:50:04.120
where do you get the balls to say that? And they just stand there and look you right in the eye
00:50:08.780
and won't back down from some lie they've told or some, you know, you know, abuse they've done of
00:50:15.500
other people. Yeah. We need a lot more of that, but I don't know how you bring it back once it's been
00:50:20.300
lost, you know, and people get away with stuff. I don't know.
00:50:24.800
Well, and then, and part of the problem is, is let's say you call that behavior out and it should
00:50:30.960
be called out by the way, publicly shamed. Then you become the villain because you're now bullying
00:50:36.960
that person who is on this, this hierarchy of victim. Yeah, but you're really not. You're just
00:50:43.060
trying to restore humanity. No, you're not, but that's what's being portrayed though, right?
00:50:46.620
Is that you are the bully. Well, that's another sign of what's crazy in this society that people look
00:50:51.000
at it, that you're bullying somebody when you're really just telling, telling the truth, you know?
00:50:57.020
Yeah. Well, I think there's a lack of sanity. Yeah, I would agree. I think there's a lack of,
00:51:02.660
of consequences for this behavior. So bringing consequences back would be important. And I also
00:51:08.620
think it's very easy to, to hide certain behavior. And I also think we're easily distracted.
00:51:16.500
So if I can just hold out for a little bit, everybody will forget about this.
00:51:21.000
It's true. It's true. It works. And I'll be fine.
00:51:23.380
It's terrible, but it works. We're so easily distracted.
00:51:26.840
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back to what you were talking earlier about being stuck.
00:51:35.240
Because I've been stuck, you know, I have goals and desires and ambitions and places I want to go
00:51:40.480
and things I want to do. And then I get stuck. It might manifest itself for you as maybe writer's
00:51:45.400
block or something even more than that. How do you overcome feeling stuck in your life? Is that part
00:51:53.880
of the muse's inspiration that you're receiving? Or is that, hey, I'm just going to plow through this
00:51:59.080
and get through the other side? What do you do when you're feeling that way?
00:52:02.520
I'm definitely a believer in plowing through, you know. I just think that sometimes when we're on a
00:52:14.100
path, we'll come up against a wall of some kind. And almost always, in my experience, it's when we're
00:52:23.520
just about to break through to a higher level. You know, we've reached a point where we're just about
00:52:29.460
to go to the next level. And then resistance, capital R resistance, doesn't want us to break
00:52:35.840
through to that level. So it'll kind of really hit us hard, hard, hard, you know, give us all kinds
00:52:41.880
of excuses why we should stop, try to distract us, come up with all kinds of rational reasons why we
00:52:48.900
shouldn't go forward. And I've just found that if you, if I, let me just say myself, if I can just
00:52:55.380
rally and just keep put my head down and just keep ramming it into that brick wall, that leap will
00:53:04.860
happen. You know, you know, it may take a week, it may take two weeks, it may take a month. But
00:53:10.740
suddenly I'll wake up one morning, I'll say, you know what, I'm actually better than I was. And then
00:53:15.760
I'll sort of reassess and go, what did I, what did I learn there? And I'll almost always, I'll find
00:53:21.160
something. Ah, I learned whatever it is. So I think when, when we're stuck, I think, Ryan, it's a good
00:53:27.640
sign. It shows that we're on the brink of a breakthrough. And it's just resistance amping up
00:53:37.880
its force against us to stop us from breaking through to that next level. And I think there's
00:53:43.140
no answer other than just pure willpower and stubbornness and mulishness of just keep going
00:53:49.620
forward. I don't know that we talked about this when we addressed your book, The War of
00:53:54.940
Art, but obviously we're, we're tiptoeing in that territory now with, with this concept of
00:53:58.940
resistance. Since we were talking about the spiritual component, the muse as being a sentient
00:54:04.400
force or being working towards your development and good, is the resistance then something that's
00:54:11.340
aware and sentient that's actively trying to derail you and sabotage you?
00:54:16.380
Absolutely. In my opinion, absolutely. And I think the two of them are equal and opposite. It's like
00:54:21.760
Newton's law, you know, an equal and opposite reaction that as, as, as powerful a positive force
00:54:28.820
as the muse is, as whatever dream, whatever aspiration we have, the, that's equally powerful
00:54:35.580
is, is, is the resistance against it. And it is, in my opinion, in my experience, an active,
00:54:42.860
intelligent, diabolically intelligent, nuanced living thing that will adjust to your weaknesses
00:54:52.740
and knows your absolute weaknesses better than you do. And we'll go right after them every time.
00:54:59.960
I actually like that framing better than believing it's some, you know, arbitrary, just random bit
00:55:08.140
of happenstance, because I think it makes you more assertive in the way that you deal with it.
00:55:13.200
Yes. You, I mean, you have to be, and the best thing that you can have, again, we're talking about
00:55:18.840
sort of like the wall as a, in marathon running, that if you can be aware that this force is there
00:55:26.500
and that it's going to hit you at predictable points in whatever project you're doing or whatever
00:55:33.240
aspiration you have, then you can at least call it out. And you can say to yourself, ah, this is
00:55:40.160
resistance. This is not any real reason. It's not that I really do need to reassess my financial
00:55:47.720
situation before I, I take this leap in my career. It's just the voice of my own self-sacrifice,
00:55:56.500
sabotage, trying to stop me from, from going forward. And then you can dismiss it and say,
00:56:00.960
ah, it's bullshit. And I'm just going to go forward.
00:56:04.000
But how, how do you know, because, so let's take your example. The fact that you need to make sure
00:56:09.900
your finances are in order are certainly a consideration of taking a leap into a business
00:56:14.940
venture, for example, and quitting your job. So how do you know it's resistance, which is actively
00:56:21.140
working against you, if I'm understanding you correctly, and just prudent calculation to make
00:56:26.880
sure you're addressing things that need to be addressed?
00:56:28.420
Like I said, it's really is tough to know because resistance is so diabolical that it will latch on
00:56:40.720
Bank account, you don't have enough money to go and do another business. But in the real world,
00:56:46.980
how many stories are there of people that made the leap, you know, against all odds and it,
00:56:53.620
and it worked for them. So, I mean, in, in, you know, I, not that I want to advise everybody to
00:57:00.100
quit their job and do whatever they're doing, but you do, we do have to be aware that resistance
00:57:07.060
will use that against us. Absolutely. And, and although it may be objectively true that we have
00:57:16.300
to, you know, spend more time with our family or, but worry about our financial things or so on and
00:57:21.320
so forth, it's also objectively true that if we have some kind of calling or some kind of dream that
00:57:28.720
we got to do and we don't do it, we're letting ourselves in for even worse trouble, you know,
00:57:34.300
on the soul level, as it goes down the pike. I, it, I also have a little rule that I tell you to
00:57:41.480
myself, Ryan, it's like, when in doubt, it's resistance. So that's your default answer is that
00:57:48.700
it's resistance working against you. And almost always it's true for me. Yeah. Yeah. I like that
00:57:55.460
you're talking about it latching onto something that has an element of truth. It's very easy.
00:58:00.080
It's, it's, it has to disguise itself and cloak itself with some truth. Otherwise you'd recognize
00:58:05.840
it easily and would be able to deal with it effectively. Exactly. Cloak is a great word.
00:58:11.900
Yeah. It disguises, it cloaks itself. I think for example, somebody might say, well, you know, I, I,
00:58:18.820
I want to stay here and be present for my family. And if it wasn't able to cloak itself, it might say,
00:58:26.080
yeah, but you should go out and get, you know, drunk and, and belligerent and go, you know,
00:58:30.980
cheat on your wife. And we would all say, okay, well, yeah, I'm not doing that. That's what you'd
00:58:36.720
say. Yeah. But instead it, it, it will, it will cloak itself and say, well, you know, yes, your
00:58:43.080
family's important, but you need to, uh, you need to go ahead and go work out because you're planning
00:58:48.020
for this thing and you need to put way more hours than necessary at the gym, which is true. You should
00:58:52.720
take care of yourself, but that might, they're called, I heard somebody call them, uh, noble
00:58:57.700
obstacles. They're, they're obstacles that keep you from doing what is good and right and what you
00:59:04.220
should be doing, but noble in that there is some truth to what it's being tied to. Yeah. Yeah. That's a
00:59:10.760
good one. Noble obstacles. When you talked about, uh, banging through it, plowing through the
00:59:18.820
resistance and coming, coming through that as hard as you can, have there been times where
00:59:23.320
banging your head against the wall or into the resistance that it hasn't served you and that
00:59:29.000
pulling back and regrouping has okay. Explain that. No. Um, I have found that anytime I complete
00:59:37.800
something, you know, even if, and most of the time, let's say a project, it might be a screenplay,
00:59:43.700
it might be a book or something like that. Most of the times they don't sell or they don't succeed,
00:59:49.560
but just the fact of finishing them really goes into your psychic bank account. You know, it,
00:59:59.800
you get stronger from that. Um, so, uh, no, I don't think anytime that I plowed through something,
01:00:08.200
it's always been good, even if nothing, you know, I didn't make any money, but in, in other terms,
01:00:15.500
in psychic terms, it's always been a plus. And I feel like I'm getting stronger and I'm, I'm building,
01:00:22.320
um, I'm building my instrument, you know, a little bit better. Yeah. I, I can't remember if it's a
01:00:27.980
story in the Bible. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, or if I just, I heard a, an anecdote where,
01:00:32.720
uh, there was either a stone, a man was supposed to roll up a hill or a stone in front of a cave.
01:00:37.940
And he was to open the cave and move the stone. And so every day he went and he pushed and pushed
01:00:43.420
and pushed and pushed for hours and hours, pushed every single day and never moved the stone. And
01:00:48.160
then eventually he got frustrated with it because the stone wasn't moving. And he, you know, cried
01:00:54.140
out to God and said, Hey, you commanded me to move this stone and it's not going anywhere. And God said,
01:01:00.280
I didn't tell you to move this stone. I said, you, I said to push on the stone.
01:01:05.460
Oh, I never heard that. That's great. And so he pushed on the stone, but then he was
01:01:10.360
shown that through that effort, he saw his physique and he saw his mental fortitude and
01:01:16.300
his discipline to do this thing had all been developed by, um, a misunderstanding of what
01:01:22.220
the task or the goal was. Yeah. I mean, in a way that's like what we were talking about earlier
01:01:27.960
about a practice, right. Where it's not a goal moving this, you know, if the stone doesn't move,
01:01:34.860
it doesn't mean you failed, right? You've succeeded by showing up every day
01:01:40.140
and putting your shoulder against that stone and trying as hard as you can.
01:01:46.180
Can you give me the story meant, but that's what I know that's, that's exactly right. Now
01:01:51.100
I'm going to have to find out again. I don't, I don't, I don't think that's in the Bible,
01:01:54.060
but, but I heard that story. It was very, it was very interesting. Uh, can you give me
01:01:58.140
a synopsis too on not, not government cheese? Uh, we're going to make sure everybody knows
01:02:02.840
that and knows where to get it, but also your, your book before that, which is put your ass
01:02:08.160
where your heart wants to be very intrigued by that concept as well.
01:02:11.980
Um, that's a book that's, uh, you know, government cheese is like a full blown big
01:02:17.460
book, you know, a memoir, but put your ass where your heart wants to be is sort of like
01:02:21.440
the war of art. It's kind of a short, um, book, um, in, in the vein of, um, uh, being
01:02:29.360
about the creative process. And the, the, the simple version of put your ass where your
01:02:34.280
heart wants to be is if you can, like people will say, I want to be a writer. I want to be
01:02:40.920
a dancer. I want to be a musician, but I just don't know where to start. How do I
01:02:44.360
get going? So the answer to that in my, in this book is take your physical body, put
01:02:51.260
your ass, you know, if you want to be a writer, put your ass in front of one of these
01:02:57.120
things and stay there for four hours a day. If you want to be a dancer, get into the
01:03:03.180
studio, right? If you want to be a bodybuilder, put your body in the gym. You know, if you
01:03:07.900
want to run, get your body out on the trail. And then the book really goes on to what
01:03:14.560
happens kind of emotionally. And also what I was talking on the level of the gods, when
01:03:20.520
you do that, when you really commit and you put so that when I say put your ass
01:03:26.740
there, it's really about the idea of commitment that you're, you know, you're
01:03:31.320
not dabbling, you're not fucking around, you're, you're really committed. And when
01:03:36.600
that happens, this is kind of the short version of the whole book. Not only do
01:03:42.920
good things start to happen on the material plane in the sense that mentors may
01:03:49.520
appear in your life or a good, good breaks may come your way out of, out of
01:03:54.960
nowhere, but also on, on the higher plane, I believe that whether we call it God or
01:04:01.340
the universe or whatever you want to call it, it will start to intervene too, and
01:04:05.980
good things will happen. I really believe that, that when we commit to something on
01:04:12.740
some energetic level out there in the universe, you know, in a mysterious world
01:04:17.940
that we can't explain, forces that we can't name come to our aid, you know, and if
01:04:25.100
we sit down and start to write a novel, let's say, ideas will start to come to us,
01:04:31.880
you know, day eight, a new character will appear on the page that we had never even
01:04:37.720
thought of and we'll go, oh, holy shit, this is really good, you know, and then, and
01:04:42.040
so what is that except something out there in the universe coming to our aid? So the
01:04:49.240
bottom line, when all is said and done, I think, is, oh, excuse me, put your ass on
01:04:56.460
the line, simple as that, commit and do the motherfucking thing and, and good things
01:05:03.040
will happen, and conversely, talking about it and thinking about it and planning it and
01:05:09.140
rehearsing it and researching it is bullshit, you know, start and do it, put your ass where
01:05:16.500
you're, and when I say where your heart wants to be, I mean, what, where your dream is, you
01:05:21.140
know, that vision of yourself that you would put as the highest version of yourself, where
01:05:27.760
you say, oh, if I could be that, if I could do that, I'd be really proud of myself. That's,
01:05:33.140
you know, kind of where, where your heart wants to be.
01:05:36.200
I get this question. I'm sure you get it way more frequently than I do, where people will
01:05:40.400
say, hey, Ryan, you know, I'm thinking about writing a book, like, but I don't know how,
01:05:44.660
how, how would you suggest? I'm like, well, I don't, I don't understand the question. Like
01:05:49.900
you, you write like that. How do you write a book? You, the answer is the question you
01:05:57.260
write a book. And I think what they're doing is they're looking for some magical formula
01:06:04.220
or maybe even an excuse not to do it in some instances. And like, how do I publish it on
01:06:09.860
Amazon and get a publisher? And I'm like, bro, you haven't even written the book yet. You
01:06:13.840
haven't even written the synopsis of what the book is going to be like. Don't even worry about
01:06:18.240
that. Just start writing and then we'll get to that stuff. Yeah, I would agree completely. It's
01:06:23.640
sort of the answer to me is always action. Now, of course, once you, I can understand somebody
01:06:30.740
saying, how do you write a book? Cause you got to know something, you know, it's like, how do I
01:06:34.740
compete for Mr. Universe? You know, you have to know something about, you know, going to the gym and
01:06:40.640
how you train and that sort of stuff, but that will come to you, you know, as you, once you're
01:06:46.600
in the gym, you'll meet people, you'll get a trainer, you'll learn, you'll watch, you know, and, and
01:06:52.560
your own body will sort of teach you, but you'll, the, the, the technical stuff will come, but it's
01:06:58.920
the action from the start that makes that happen. Right. Yeah. I've thought about that with the gym
01:07:04.580
or jujitsu is a question I get a lot is like, Hey, do you have any advice? I'm going to jujitsu
01:07:08.880
tonight for the first time. Do you have any advice? I'm like, no, no advice. Like you're,
01:07:13.220
you're taking the right steps now go and then go tomorrow and the next day and the next day,
01:07:18.360
and then you'll get better and you'll learn something and then you'll fail and you'll get
01:07:21.720
better. Like, it's just a very simple formula. At least God bless that person for going that night.
01:07:27.660
You know, that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, Steven, I really appreciate our talks
01:07:33.060
and our conversations are always interesting and we take a lot of different veins and avenues and I,
01:07:37.200
I enjoy, enjoy that. Um, tell people where to pick up a copy of government cheese and also put
01:07:43.120
your ass where your heart wants to be. Um, they're both on Amazon or any of the online bookstores.
01:07:48.380
They're probably not in stores. You would have to order them. That's just kind of the way it
01:07:52.860
works. Um, and also on my website, which is just my name, stephenpressfield.com. You can order
01:08:00.980
from me a signed copy and, and we'll, we'll send it to you. Uh, that's what you want. You guys want
01:08:08.080
a signed copy. So do it that way. In a way, this is a book because it's so personal for me that I do
01:08:15.900
think a signed copy is important, you know, cause it's my sort of my story. So it's a cool thing to
01:08:20.860
have it, you know, signed, but that's, so that's, uh, that's one place they can get it on my website
01:08:27.400
at Amazon or any of those things, or follow me on Instagram. And I'm always talking about that
01:08:32.560
and other stuff. Perfect. We'll sync it all up. You've got that Spartan mug behind you. I actually
01:08:37.900
use mine. You gifted me one and I actually have that Spartan mug and I use it every single night.
01:08:43.460
I have some, uh, sleep time tea every single night. And that mug right there, that this,
01:08:49.040
the story, just to tell you the story on this, this comes from a, a master potter named Joel
01:08:53.360
Cherico. And, uh, that there's a passage in Plutarch from the ancient world where he says that
01:09:02.940
the Spartans had the, the ancient Spartans had a famous mug that was that they always would take
01:09:09.180
with them on campaign when they would have to drink out of streams and rivers. And this mug was
01:09:14.500
shaped in such a way that the, the mud would settle to the bottom and it had a lip on it.
01:09:19.720
So you wouldn't be, so in other words, you could drink crappy water and you wouldn't know it,
01:09:23.540
but nobody knew what the mug looked like. You know, they're, they're gone. Right. So Joel
01:09:29.800
Cherico, who does not, he said, uh, let me take a crack at this thing and I'll see if I can,
01:09:34.560
if I can recreate something. So, um, that's the story behind that mug. It's a, it's a Spartan
01:09:44.380
Write that down. I'm going to look into that. Awesome. Well, Steven, thank you. I really
01:09:49.140
appreciate our talks, our conversations, uh, the books and the information you share. It's
01:09:53.620
been impactful in my life and I really, really appreciate your work.
01:09:56.600
Yeah. Thanks Ryan. It's great talking to you. You always have great questions and we have a
01:10:01.820
So my best to you on all fronts. Thanks for having me on the podcast and, uh, until next time
01:10:08.100
we'll do it again. Thanks my friend. All right. All right, you guys, there you go. My conversation
01:10:14.300
with the one and only Steven Pressfield. I hope that you enjoyed that one. Uh, we had an interesting
01:10:19.420
discussion about a lot of different things. I really didn't know that it would go in some of
01:10:24.100
the directions and veins that it did, but I'm glad that it did. Uh, and that's, that's what we're
01:10:27.940
trying to do here is just have conversations. And sometimes conversations have an overarching
01:10:32.680
theme that threads it all together. And other times it's chaotic and sporadic and all over
01:10:39.000
the place. And I feel like, uh, we hit a little bit of both of that. So regardless, I hope it
01:10:44.440
served you. If it did take a screenshot right now, share it on the socials, Instagram, Twitter,
01:10:49.660
Facebook, uh, tag Steven Pressfield and let him know, send him a message. Let him know that
01:10:54.440
you heard him here on the order of men podcast. Uh, that goes a long way and letting them know
01:10:58.820
that it was worth their time and valuable to them to be on this show. And, uh, a great way to say
01:11:03.320
thank you to our guests. And also thank you to me. Uh, also if you would last thing, 50% off huge
01:11:09.720
sale at the store. So store.orderofman.com, you can get hats, shirts, decals, planners, everything
01:11:16.080
that we've got over there. Uh, and we're just clearing out the shelves. So if you head to
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store.orderofman.com and use the code five, zero at checkout, you'll get that 50% off discount
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and we'll get your merchandise to you as quickly as we can. All right, guys, that's all I've got
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for today. We'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action,
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become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.
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You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
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We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.