The Art of Manliness - #281： Overcoming the Resistance

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in today's episode

00:00:18.940 i'm welcoming back one of my all-time favorite guests writer steven pressfield steven's the

00:00:23.040 author of several popular novels including the legend of bagger vance gates of fire and the

00:00:27.320 virtues of war he's also written several popular non-fiction books on the creative process like

00:00:31.500 do the work and the war of art which covers how to overcome what he calls the resistance in any

00:00:35.740 creative endeavor steve's got a new novel out called the knowledge it's based on his early days

00:00:40.260 as a writer in 1970s new york city and provides the backstory of how he learned to overcome the

00:00:44.260 resistance in his own life today the show steve and i discuss how the resistance rears its ugly

00:00:48.980 head in our lives and how to overcome it by transforming from an amateur to professional

00:00:52.780 we then talk about steve's early days as a writer and the struggles he went through in becoming a

00:00:56.880 pro if you're somebody hope to be a writer or artist or an entrepreneur you're going to love

00:01:01.580 this episode it's filled with insights on the mindset you need to adopt in order to thrive in

00:01:05.360 any creative endeavor after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is slash the knowledge

00:01:10.900 all right steven pressfield welcome back to the show hey it's great to be here brad thanks for

00:01:23.640 having me uh so we've had you on the podcast before to discuss uh your works of fiction that

00:01:29.500 deal with greek history gates of fire uh the art the virtues of war some of my favorite books but

00:01:35.800 you have a new novel out uh called the knowledge a too close to true novel and we're going to get

00:01:41.900 into the details of the novel here in a bit because the story is fantastic it's a bit of autobiographical

00:01:47.420 fiction there's some crazy stuff that happens the books i want to know if this actually some of the

00:01:51.280 stuff actually happened to you um but before we get to that you i want to talk about what's on the

00:01:55.700 inside of the jacket of the book because i think it'll give some context about the details of the

00:02:00.240 novel um you say this novel shares the origin tale of the ideas you laid out in your popular book the

00:02:07.040 war of art um it's a book popular with entrepreneurs uh artists writers etc and the big idea there is this

00:02:16.040 idea of the resistance for our listeners who aren't familiar with that concept can you briefly describe

00:02:22.780 what the resistance is well if you're a writer brett as you are and that's probably a lot of your

00:02:28.080 listeners are you know that when you sit down to the blank page you can feel a force radiating off that

00:02:37.900 empty page and it's a and it's a negative force that's trying to make you go uh go get a hot

00:02:45.320 fudge sundae or go surfing or do something like that anything other than actually face the page

00:02:50.920 and that is resistance in mont with a capital r it's this negative force that kicks in anytime we

00:02:59.780 try to do to move from a lower level to a higher level or to enact any kind of creative instinct and

00:03:06.480 this isn't just for writers it can also happen in your life whenever you want to have a goal like you

00:03:10.660 want to lose weight the resistance is go eat that hot fudge sundae exactly if you've ever brought the

00:03:17.100 home a uh an ab machine or a treadmill or something and watch you gather dust then uh you know what

00:03:24.660 resistance is any it seems to kick in in all seriousness anytime we try to move from kind of a

00:03:30.900 lower moral ethical spiritual level to a higher one including in relationships anything like that but

00:03:39.040 so yeah i think everyone's experienced that resistance of you know writer's block or procrastination

00:03:43.800 or you know you buy the the membership of the gym you just don't go but are there some more insidious

00:03:50.840 you know forms of resistance where you don't think it's resistance but it really is resistance

00:03:56.320 uh absolutely i mean i i have a sort of a little motto that i ask myself and uh or that i apply in

00:04:03.440 occasions like that and the motto is when in doubt it's resistance you know uh resistance kind of it

00:04:10.460 comes for me at least as as a voice in your head you know that that usually is trying to talk you out

00:04:17.440 of doing uh the thing that you know that you have to do and it may say something like uh you're worthless

00:04:25.540 uh this is a terrible idea why did you even come up with this idea it's been done a million times

00:04:31.080 you're never going to be able to finish it at that sort of thing or resistance will take a form of

00:04:37.280 uh just distraction like i was just saying it'll come up with any number of other alternatives that

00:04:43.060 you might do log on a facebook log on a snapchat uh distract yourself with this or that and in its

00:04:50.000 darker forms it gets into actual vices and uh you know drugs alcohol uh abuse of oneself or others

00:05:00.420 that kind of thing and um to get even darker about it uh if you want me to do you want me to keep

00:05:07.400 going in this breath um uh one of the things is that people in our world people that we're intimate

00:05:17.940 with sometimes they will embody resistance and lay it on us for instance if you decide that you're

00:05:27.360 going to write the novel that you've always wanted to write and you kind of get yourself together

00:05:32.240 professionally and you start to do it you're actually sitting down you get in one week two weeks three

00:05:37.020 weeks what you'll find dark as this is is that the people closest to you not all of them but some of

00:05:45.180 them will start trying to sabotage you and um if you've ever seen movies by david o russell like the

00:05:53.140 fighter with mark walberg or joy the recent one uh starring jennifer lawrence he gets into these

00:06:00.740 dysfunctional families where you know the mother the sisters the the boyfriend the wife the husband

00:06:08.040 will try to to sabotage the person who is defeating his or her own resistance so it's this resistance is a

00:06:17.160 really dark force that uh is diabolical in the ways that it can um get after you right and what's

00:06:27.600 interesting too and i think you talk about this in the the uh war of art is that yeah that example of

00:06:33.140 people around you people who love you at part you know they're your family your friends they're going

00:06:37.740 to bring you down when you're trying to improve yourself they're like why are you changing this is

00:06:41.700 not the way it's supposed to be and then you leave them you know kind of get away uh to do better

00:06:46.840 but then you find yourself being attracted or drawn to people who are just like your friends

00:06:52.140 and family who are trying to pull you back down like the proverbial crab in the bucket yes it's true

00:06:57.480 because that's now what's happening what's the dynamic that's really happening when somebody else

00:07:04.440 tries to bring you down in that kind of case is it's not that they're bad people it's that they're

00:07:11.320 dealing with their own unconscious resistance for instance they may have a dream that they

00:07:18.320 you know feel in their heart that they want to do that they're not doing so when they see you grab

00:07:24.080 when they see you writing your novel or or uh doing you know creating your startup company or whatever

00:07:30.180 it is your actions become a reproach to them even and this happens on an unconscious level they don't

00:07:37.320 even know they're doing and so they will say to you things like uh what's happening you man you've

00:07:42.980 changed you know you used to be we used to be able to get sewn together we'd have a great time now

00:07:48.060 you're going off and uh what do you who do you think you are you're some you're better than us

00:07:52.100 that sort of is that is the ways that resistance manifests itself in uh in the more insidious ways

00:08:01.600 other than just a voice in your own head right so uh you argue that in order to overcome the

00:08:07.580 resistance you have to become a professional and stop being an amateur um what's the difference

00:08:13.760 between a pro and an amateur in your the way you frame it um one of the things is when when we fall

00:08:22.360 prey to resistance when we're mired in our own resistance and we just can't get anything done

00:08:27.480 sometimes we'll we'll blame ourselves we'll put a value judgment on we'll say well there's something

00:08:34.920 wrong with me you know it's like i'm sick i have some demented thing from childhood or whatever

00:08:40.560 or um you know uh we'll we'll blame ourselves in other words and the idea of amateur versus pro

00:08:51.760 turning pro in a situation like that it's just it worked for me that thinking of it that way in that

00:08:57.360 it takes the value judgment out of it you stop telling yourself that there's you're wrong or

00:09:03.040 you're quote unquote sick or there's something you know that's not functioning right really the mistake

00:09:08.820 that we make when we get defeated by resistance is we're we're operating as amateurs um now what is

00:09:17.200 an amateur as opposed to a pro an amateur is somebody that like uh is a weekend warrior um that doesn't

00:09:26.940 really take it seriously enough whatever their dreams if you um if you want to become uh a piano

00:09:37.360 professional piano player right or a concert pianist you what do you have to do i mean realistically

00:09:44.220 you have to commit yourself to hours and hours a day of of working on your music and working on all

00:09:51.800 the aspects of it the career aspects of it the health aspects of it the mental toughness aspects

00:09:58.100 of it as well as the musical aspects of it and the way that i found it worked for me is just to turn

00:10:05.120 that switch in your mind where you say to yourself i'm not going to be an amateur anymore i'm not going

00:10:09.960 to be a weekend warrior i'm going to i'm going to turn pro i'm going to think of myself as a professional

00:10:14.160 and one of the things about i know i'm rambling on here but um for instance a pro what does a pro do

00:10:22.480 that an amateur doesn't do a pro shows up every day a pro stays on the job every day a pro plays hurt

00:10:31.960 you know um i could go on and on but that's i think you get the idea of what i'm what i'm getting at

00:10:38.220 there right one of the things i found in the uh the war of art that really helped me out is in that

00:10:43.160 idea of trying to think of yourself as a pro is thinking of your profession whatever it is if

00:10:48.820 you're a writer a business owner like think of it as a corporate entity that's not you right because

00:10:56.700 i feel like a lot of writers entrepreneur types artists they tie up their work with their their

00:11:02.400 self so much so if they suffer defeat in their that one aspect of their life they it just demolishes

00:11:07.320 their their entire self-worth but when you separate that you think okay this is my work this is

00:11:13.120 corp this is this is steve inc over here if i'm not doing good in steve inc that means i'm not

00:11:18.980 necessarily doing bad in my other areas of life yeah that's that is a you know when i when i first

00:11:24.420 got out to hollywood and started working as a screenwriter um i learned and this is in the war of

00:11:31.640 art uh that many writers were incorporated and um they had their little one-man corporations

00:11:39.420 and when they signed a contract to do a script or screenplay whatever it is it would be fso for

00:11:46.980 services of so they would be their corporation um would sign the deal for the services of them as an

00:11:56.180 individual as a private person and i thought that was a great way of uh separating the entity part of

00:12:05.140 yourself that does the actual work from the entity that is sort of managing you so you have to sort

00:12:11.760 of it's a great device to sort of split yourself in half and the one half of you can kick the ass of

00:12:17.980 the other half of you you know and also can encourage you and support you you know in our world as as writers

00:12:27.200 or artists or entrepreneurs or whatever it is we're competing with uh um facebook we're competing

00:12:35.040 with general dynamics we're competing with uh frigidaire we're competing with all these corporations

00:12:41.620 out there uh and we have to be as organized in our own minds in our in our own selves as they are

00:12:51.220 and we have to have just as uh something uh a place like apple let's say under steve jobs

00:12:58.440 has its corporate culture that demands a certain level of work and will not be satisfied uh below a

00:13:06.460 certain level of excellence we you and i as individuals brett and anybody that's listening to this

00:13:12.860 we have to be apple in our own heads and have that same sort of corporate culture only on the

00:13:20.580 individual level that has a level of excellence that we aspire to and that we won't let ourselves

00:13:26.760 fall below and we also we have to be able to motivate ourselves to reinforce ourselves to pick

00:13:34.800 ourselves up when we fall down and um all of those things are aspects of thinking of yourself as a

00:13:42.780 professional instead of an amateur for instance an amateur when an amateur encounters adversity

00:13:47.680 an amateur will quit you know they'll say well i'm just gonna go to the movies i'm gonna hang out

00:13:52.940 with my girlfriend i'm gonna whatever it is but a professional if you think about michael jordan or

00:13:58.880 lebron james or something like that they wake up in the morning they've got a high ankle sprain they've

00:14:04.040 got a broken uh you know finger on their shooting hand they play they show up they because they have

00:14:11.860 that professional attitude whereas the amateur might quit and just say you know it's just it's

00:14:17.800 too rough today i can't handle it the professional will get in the arena and do his or her job right

00:14:24.700 and i think one thing you talk about too is the amateur is is really tied up i mean amateur means

00:14:29.280 that you do it for the love of the whatever right you do it for the love of the sport um but love you

00:14:35.520 know it's a feeling feelings are fleeting and uh sometimes you feel like you love it and sometimes you feel

00:14:41.060 like you don't love it and so i guess that's one of the reasons why uh an amateur would be more

00:14:45.140 susceptible to the resistance yeah i would even put it in a slightly different way brad it's like

00:14:49.580 the word amateur comes from the latin root you know amo amas amat meaning that somebody that plays

00:14:56.980 for the love of the game only right as opposed to playing for money let's say but to me the amateur

00:15:05.460 doesn't love the game enough because if they loved it enough they would commit to it full bore the way

00:15:13.680 a professional does and they would think of it even you know if if you're a writer even if you're you

00:15:21.180 don't have an agent you haven't been published you're sitting there working on a novel or whatever

00:15:26.120 it is and realistically figure the best i can do is self-publish this on amazon and you know it'll sell

00:15:32.480 200 copies nonetheless you have to think of yourself as if you are philip roth or or tani

00:15:41.820 morrison you have to operate as a full bore professional or you'll never get to that level

00:15:48.100 so i mean how do you make this switch is it just like a mental switch you flip in your brain like

00:15:52.720 okay i'm no longer an amateur i'm a pro or does it involve embodied actions right to help you

00:15:59.160 you know train well you know it's both that's a great question i mean uh it's but it really is

00:16:05.540 a simple mental switch like to me it's an analogy with uh like um when somebody recognizes that they're

00:16:15.240 an alcoholic right they wake up face down in the gutter at four in the morning for the 20th time

00:16:22.460 and suddenly they are they it dawns on them oh my god i've got to come out of denial i really do have

00:16:29.640 a problem with alcohol and at that point if if the person is going to survive they make that mental

00:16:36.300 switch in their head and they they basically turn pro and they say to themselves i have to i have a

00:16:43.080 problem i i can't handle it by myself i've got to get help and then they join aa or they take some

00:16:50.740 sort of step and they change their life um in other words it's both of what you said right it's it's

00:16:59.140 that decision that is like flipping a switch but after that decision happens then there has to be a total

00:17:07.660 change in the in the way a person lives their life and um i always say that an amateur has amateur habits

00:17:16.560 and a pro has pro habits and they're completely different one from the other and uh it's a great

00:17:23.900 exercise for an individual to sort of ask themselves how do i how do i pursue whatever this is whatever my

00:17:31.120 dream is to be a photographer a filmmaker an actor or whatever it is am i pursuing it with amateur habits

00:17:37.320 or am i pursuing it with professional habits and if you're doing it with amateur habits you got to flip

00:17:43.880 the switch and and pursue it with professional habits all right let's circle back to the knowledge

00:17:49.600 now because these these ideas you wrote about in the war of art like this the knowledge is about where

00:17:54.560 you got these ideas from um you know it's about it's a fiction novel about a struggling writer

00:18:00.520 living in gritty 1970s new york city uh who makes money on the side driving cabs and managing a band

00:18:07.520 and then the writer gets involved with his boss's underworld dealings uh when he has to start tagging

00:18:14.560 his boss's wives around new york city lots of hijinks ensue um really great book but you the book says

00:18:21.580 it's it's the too close to true novel so this stuff happened to you i mean there's a lot of crazy stuff

00:18:27.400 that happens in this novel uh exactly how close does it follow this period of your life um as an artist

00:18:34.980 pretty close i mean if you eliminate uh the the murders and stuff like that that's obviously

00:18:43.960 tarting reality up a little bit but um the basic internal story just like we were talking about a

00:18:51.560 couple of minutes ago brad about it's really when you talk about the struggling writer this really was

00:18:57.420 me at that era in new york i'm driving a cab i'm tending bar i'm writing a book i'm doing all kinds of

00:19:02.840 other stuff writing my third book actually all three of them failed you know never got published

00:19:08.240 basically what that story is is a it's a person that's living the amateur life and allowing

00:19:15.940 distractions and uh you know in the form of sex drugs blah blah blah all of the other crazy stuff that

00:19:23.820 we all get into in that sort of time in our life and the turning point at the end of the book

00:19:31.500 it could be looked at as the the protagonist turning pro and and um so it's as simple as that

00:19:40.580 uh the the villain of this book the knowledge is simply resistance or the capital r just what we're

00:19:48.940 talking about here it's not any individual there's no uh bad guy that's uh going against the protagonist

00:19:56.460 it's all inside his head as he sabotages himself um in his struggles to be a writer and finally what

00:20:05.240 happens i was talking about you know waking up face down in a in a ditch and saying to yourself

00:20:10.320 you know gee i do have a problem with alcohol that is the sort of the all is lost moment for the hero of

00:20:18.820 this book the knowledge is he sort of finally totally crashes and burns and says soon wakes up and says

00:20:27.280 to himself i do have a problem i'm sabotaging myself there's some demon inside me that's stopping me from

00:20:34.860 from you know just getting out of my own way and at that point he makes the decision that he's got to

00:20:41.560 change something you know because he realizes you know the alternative is basically to die so um

00:20:50.040 so this the the events of the of the novel the knowledge many of them are true to my true life

00:20:57.200 and they are the events out of which the ideas of the war of art came and uh for me and when i sort

00:21:06.740 of realized that there was this negative force called resistance that it was beating the crap out

00:21:11.960 of me day after day year after year and that i had to get a handle on it one way or another or i was

00:21:17.800 just going absolutely nowhere and my life was going down the toilet we're gonna take a quick break for

00:21:22.620 your words from our sponsors and now back to the show right and in the novel the the protagonist

00:21:29.160 um who's also named steven um he he encounters people individuals friends co-workers who it seemed

00:21:38.120 like they planted the seeds of this idea that he needs to turn pro or else he's not gonna um he's

00:21:45.640 not gonna survive he's not gonna thrive i'm curious did when you were in new york city at this time in

00:21:50.120 your life did you encounter people like that that planted the seeds of these ideas of the resistance and

00:21:54.620 turning pro yes um definitely and i think we all have those people in our lives right there may be a

00:22:01.180 a boss or a mentor that is like constantly trying to kick us in the butt and get us to see what

00:22:08.080 we can't see and what we're in denial of or maybe we have a friend or a spouse or a girlfriend or boyfriend

00:22:16.680 and where you have those maybe it maybe it's in a moment of a terrible fight when they just sort of

00:22:22.800 unload on you and they say you know look in the mirror and you know see what you that sort of

00:22:27.260 stuff right so yeah there definitely were characters and people in my life that did that were really

00:22:35.000 positive influences on me and some of them are in the book literally uh and i i think we all we all

00:22:41.980 have that in our lives we do have friends and people who love us who are trying to uh make us see

00:22:47.620 what's right in front of our face when we're in denial of it as i certainly was and a lot of

00:22:53.860 people are right and sometimes your friends just act as an example i guess in the novel steven has a

00:22:59.000 friend who uh works in an ad ad company who's just super disciplined meditates gets up early just does

00:23:07.680 everything by the book right he has a routine and he sticks to it he's he's a pro um and it seems like

00:23:12.420 now in in your in your life that you know routine ritual is really important to you as well so i

00:23:17.920 imagine there was someone in your life that you encountered that was just like that yeah that's

00:23:22.460 exactly true and it really is there are so few people i find who actually do possess self-discipline

00:23:30.840 if you think about you know you look through your own life and everything like you do brett that's for

00:23:35.900 sure and uh coming up i had maybe just one friend really that that did that you know that would

00:23:43.800 get up with a crack of dawn and you know do piano stuff and meditate and do that sort of thing and

00:23:50.580 and he uh he was a role model to me and i basically tried to become him and have uh copied so much of the

00:24:01.380 way i live right now from this one particular friend uh so yeah role models are tremendously

00:24:07.120 important and in a way i mean what you're doing with the art of manliness is trying to be a sort of

00:24:13.580 online role model for a lot of people and i'm trying to do that myself on my on my blog um

00:24:22.380 because it helps nowadays you know people that get it online rather than in person let's talk about

00:24:30.720 the title of the book the knowledge um it comes from the this in the novel steven and his friend

00:24:36.200 gill work on this concept music album and they call it the knowledge um and it's based off of

00:24:42.220 the knowledge which is what london cabbies have to memorize to become cab drivers basically london

00:24:48.340 cabbies have to like memorize the entire map of london and all the cattywampus you know streets there

00:24:54.460 and how to get to different places i mean it takes two or three years for uh someone to memorize

00:24:59.800 this stuff um but you know for steven and gill a novel in the novel the knowledge seemed to

00:25:07.280 represent something higher so what did the knowledge represent for steven and gill um that's a great

00:25:15.060 question brett um and you're right the knowledge in terms of london taxi drivers is sometimes it's

00:25:21.700 referred to as the hardest test in the world and these guys who want to be london cab drivers

00:25:27.000 like 20 000 different lanes and streets in london and they will literally get on a bicycle or a moped

00:25:33.740 or something and for two years you know with a pad and a pencil they'll ride around london just trying

00:25:39.200 to memorize where all the streets go they have to pass you know a test where somebody will say you know

00:25:44.280 how do you get from earl's court to shepherd's bush you know and and uh you know you got to play that

00:25:50.480 back so i asked myself as writing this writing this book what's the metaphor here and the metaphor

00:25:59.980 is just as a cabbie has to learn the geographic layout of the city of london what you and i as

00:26:10.520 writers or artists or entrepreneurs or just as human beings we have to we have to learn the knowledge

00:26:17.580 quote unquote of life of the city the city of of life and we have to learn how to navigate from a to b and

00:26:26.820 all that sort of stuff but in in in in the concept that uh that i was applying it in the book it was not

00:26:36.780 only knowledge of um the real material world but knowledge of our interior world and when we're talking

00:26:45.040 like we were before bread about resistance and about self-sabotage that sort of stuff we have to

00:26:51.220 learn the the knowledge of the our inner city our inner london that's inside us how to navigate around

00:26:58.360 our own self-imposed roadblocks and beyond that i would even go to say that it was knowledge of

00:27:06.500 previous lives or other um things from dimensions that are beyond the material dimension or even

00:27:15.020 the interior dimension so it's sort of like we come out of the womb we're in this strange place

00:27:20.600 called planet earth where we have uh an unconscious and we have a conscious and we have the the world

00:27:26.940 out there in front of us and from infancy we're trying to master it like where are we who are we

00:27:35.280 why are we here what are we trying to do and how can we do it what is it all about these are the

00:27:43.260 questions that everybody asks themselves and that in terms of the book that's what quote unquote the

00:27:50.080 knowledge means why do you think uh sometimes seeking the knowledge right it ends up swallowing

00:27:56.360 people you know mentally emotionally and sometimes physically um you know they they just they do

00:28:04.120 themselves harm trying to seek out the knowledge and why do you think that happens to people well

00:28:08.780 you know it's it's a big world and it's a dangerous world and it's full of a lot of uh negative and

00:28:15.900 evil stuff and i'm talking about inside our own heads we don't have to look for bad people out there who

00:28:21.140 will who will harm us so it you it really when we sort of you know most people live life on a very shallow

00:28:29.420 level right they don't uh if they have a job if they have a spouse if they can raise a family they're

00:28:37.180 happy with that right um but when any of us try to to uh go deep we're playing with fire because um

00:28:49.340 there are a lot of uh blind alleys out there and alleys that will take you down uh you know down sinkholes

00:28:57.420 um and uh that's why i think um mentors are so important and finding somebody that uh just like

00:29:09.660 this is a bad analogy brett but like you know when a young quarterback comes into the nfl let's say

00:29:16.060 they the coach will not throw them into a game too soon right sometimes a quarterback even aaron

00:29:22.680 rogers was played behind brett farr for years right and there have been many um players that are

00:29:30.240 thrown into the deep end too soon and it can ruin you that's just the way life is you know so um

00:29:41.080 it that's why mentors and coaches and role models are so important that can sort of uh lead the young

00:29:51.760 person you know like obi-wan kenobi and luke skywalker can lead the person one step at a time

00:29:59.280 and not expose them to too much too soon because uh it's a dangerous world out there and inside our own

00:30:07.760 heads and that was what the character actually his name was peter um in the book um and um that was what

00:30:14.960 what that why that character was in the book to represent the dangers of um pursuing art too deeply

00:30:27.760 or pursuing the knowledge too deeply when you're not prepared um and don't have the um the mental

00:30:36.320 discipline and the mental self-knowledge yeah and i think it ties in nicely with one of the other things

00:30:41.920 you talk about in the war of art about being pro we talked about this a bit already but being detached

00:30:46.880 you have to keep a little detachment from your work and even from the task of seeking that higher

00:30:52.480 thing you're looking for as well or else it will it will end up doing a lot of damage i think that's

00:30:57.680 true it's a it's a great point but it's like um one of the things i one of the attributes of a

00:31:03.440 professional i think is that they don't they take they don't take success or failure personally

00:31:12.000 they again they can sort of split themselves in half and say okay i had a great success but i'm not

00:31:20.400 going to let it get my head swelled or okay i crashed and burned but that doesn't mean that i'm a loser i

00:31:27.920 just had i just made one you know i did something wrong i'll correct it and um i think it's great to

00:31:36.880 have that sort of witness perspective as well as the man in the arena perspective as we're navigating life

00:31:46.960 and and it's a mistake i think to take things too personally to be so totally um you know engaged in

00:31:57.120 something that when an endeavor fails it's like we have failed as human beings and as souls which is

00:32:06.720 not the case at all it's just an endeavor that's failed we'll dust ourselves off we'll get up again

00:32:12.400 we'll try again right so in the novel uh the protagonist he's in his late 20s thereabouts um

00:32:19.920 and the book ends with him leaving for california in a van with his beloved cat and you actually had a

00:32:26.080 cat right at this time period in your life yeah yeah i love that how you love the cat um so he has

00:32:33.120 this sort of he has the knowledge about overcoming the resistance so i'm curious what happens to this

00:32:37.760 protagonist when he gets to sunny la does he experience wild immediate success or does it take

00:32:44.800 time even after you acquire the knowledge of the resistance and turning pro that's that's another great

00:32:50.720 question brett and um well i'll tell you the real what really happened was that uh after i i i left new

00:33:01.360 york in my late 20s having given up on writing novels i just figured i just can't do it it's beyond me

00:33:08.880 um i'll i'll be like peter i want to kill myself if i keep doing this and so i said i'm going to reinvent

00:33:15.120 myself i'm going to go to la i'm going to be i'm going to try to be a screenwriter and uh so at that

00:33:22.640 point i i had sort of flipped the switch to being a professional but the bottom line was it took me

00:33:29.440 like another six or seven years before i made the first penny so there was plenty of struggle

00:33:37.840 and plenty of um lessons learned and and uh you know almost like getting a phd in a field that

00:33:45.680 you don't you know that doesn't have an actual college um so uh yeah it took uh in the real world

00:33:54.320 it took a long time and i i would think even if you would imagine what would happen to that fictional

00:33:59.280 character and the knowledge that probably the same thing would happen to him it's not success is not

00:34:06.080 just going to come immediately to him but um at least he's turned the corner and is operating as

00:34:13.680 a professional now and not as an amateur even though he isn't making any money yet right what

00:34:19.920 did you when did at what point in your life did you start trying to write a novel again ah another great

00:34:24.400 question it wasn't for let me see the novel was the legend of bagger vance and i was in it was like

00:34:30.960 another 15 years after i uh left new york and went to la why do you think it took that long you're just

00:34:38.640 focused on your i mean do you think there was like some resistance going on there like you were using

00:34:42.800 screenwriting like that was the resistance to writing the novel you think i was so traumatized by

00:34:48.880 i worked for like maybe 13 years trying to write novels you know you know supporting myself doing these

00:34:54.560 crazy jobs and they all failed so i was just totally traumatized by that and it pretty much had made up

00:35:03.200 my mind i was never going to try it again so um but the working in the movies was uh a real college

00:35:12.240 education phd and learning about the principles of storytelling and learning about how to how to

00:35:18.480 conduct yourself as a professional how to manage your emotions and i think at some point that that

00:35:25.280 seed that had been planted 15 years earlier that i had put away 15 years earlier it just sort of stayed

00:35:31.600 dormant through that time and then it just kind of popped up and um it popped up when i had the idea

00:35:39.840 for the legend of bagger vance it kind of just popped into my mind fully formed and as a book not as as a movie

00:35:48.480 so i sort of knew okay i've got i've got to switch i've got to go uh back into this arena that i had

00:35:55.440 failed in so miserably um but oddly enough it was a piece of cake and the book came out came out of me

00:36:03.840 fast and got bought fast and got made into a movie fast right that's that's the muses uh in action there

00:36:11.760 right yeah i guess so it's uh it's the unconscious it's uh it's the goddess you know inspiring

00:36:18.240 us it's things we can't explain you know we're trying to find the knowledge of that but uh it's

00:36:24.480 beyond us so steven do you still struggle with the resistance today even though you you have this pro

00:36:29.520 mentality oh yeah absolutely you know it never goes away um it's just as uh you know i always say it's

00:36:38.640 you have to slay the dragon again every morning never goes away it never gets any easier the only

00:36:45.040 thing i'm sure you know this yourself brett from you know all the work that you do is you've had

00:36:50.400 enough success you faced it down enough times that you know you can do it now which is different from

00:36:57.440 when you were first starting out you didn't know if you could defeat it at all but now at least you

00:37:01.920 know you know i've done it 10 000 times so i guess i can do it again today but it's always there and it's

00:37:07.600 always ready to kill you and it will kill you if you let it well steven this is a been a great

00:37:12.480 conversation and there's a lot more we could talk about but where can more where can people learn

00:37:15.840 more about the knowledge and uh the rest of your work um i everything is on amazon or barnes and noble

00:37:23.360 but i also have a a blog that's just my name www stevenpressfield.com and uh everything is there

00:37:34.400 and i do a every wednesday i do a post called writing wednesdays and it's sort of like an ongoing

00:37:40.960 chapter in the war of art and it's about the craft and it's about professionalism and it's about

00:37:47.280 you know overcoming the demons of self-sabotage with it within us

00:37:52.960 so let me thank you brett thanks for having me on the podcast here and thanks for the great

00:37:58.000 questions it's uh it's always fun to uh you know get into this studio with you well thanks so much

00:38:04.960 steven pressfield thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure my guest today was steven

00:38:08.320 pressfield his latest book is called the knowledge it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:38:12.240 everywhere you can find more information about steven's work at stevenpressfield.com

00:38:16.720 also check out our show notes for this episode at aom.is slash the knowledge

00:38:21.040 where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:38:30.240 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:38:34.400 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

00:38:38.400 show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that helps that a lot

00:38:42.160 as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:38:46.800 manly

00:39:04.080 you

00:39:16.800 You

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#281： Overcoming the Resistance

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