The Art of Manliness - Advice on Achieving Any Long-Haul Dream

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.680 In a world that celebrates overnight success, it's easy to forget that very often,

00:00:16.220 achieving your dreams takes a heck of a long time. My guest knows this all too well. You may know

00:00:20.960 Steven Pressfield as the bestselling author of books like The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of

00:00:25.440 Fire, and The War of Art. But as he details in his new memoir, Government Cheese, it took more than

00:00:30.320 a quarter century for him to become a published novelist. Today on the show, Steven talks about

00:00:34.680 what he learned in that journey and the many odd jobs from driving trucks to picking apples that

00:00:38.960 he took along the way. We discussed the lessons Steven gleaned that apply to achieving any dream,

00:00:43.760 including how to overcome a propensity for self-sabotage, get your ego out of the way,

00:00:48.000 finish what you start, and develop the killer instinct. This is a great, motivating conversation

00:00:52.500 on learning not to pull the pin on important commitments in your life. And we'll explain

00:00:56.260 what that means coming up. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Pressfield.

00:01:17.260 All right, Steven Pressfield, welcome back to the show.

00:01:19.460 Steven Pressfield. Hey, it's great to be back, Brad. Thanks for having me.

00:01:22.480 You got a couple new books out, but one we're going to focus a lot on today is called Government

00:01:27.240 Cheese, a memoir. And what's interesting about you is you're a successful writer. You've published

00:01:32.600 10 novels, one of which, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was turned into a movie directed by Robert

00:01:37.540 Redford. You've also published several nonfiction books geared towards creative types, entrepreneurs.

00:01:43.480 And I think what a lot of people don't realize is that you didn't get your first book published

00:01:48.840 until you were 52 years old. And I think most people would imagine you were publishing books

00:01:55.540 from your 20s and 30s onward. I'm curious, did you know you wanted to be a writer in your 20s?

00:02:00.540 And did you think finding success as an author would take as long as it did?

00:02:04.340 No, I didn't. But here's the story. When I was, I guess, 22 or something like that, I got a job,

00:02:13.580 my first real grown-up job as a copywriter at an ad agency in New York City. And I had a boss named

00:02:20.860 Ed Hannibal who wrote a novel called Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks. It's the real thing. And it

00:02:28.500 became a hit. And he quit. And he was like a star. And so I said to myself, well, why don't I do that?

00:02:37.700 You know? So I quit and tried to write a novel. And totally, you know, I had no business even

00:02:45.880 thinking about doing something like that. It was just total immature, idiotic thinking of thinking 1.00

00:02:51.420 that something was going to be easy, was going to be a piece of cake, you know, just I'll just walk 1.00

00:02:56.400 into it and it'll be fine, when obviously that was not the case. And my life from there on sort of ran

00:03:02.080 off the rails completely. So I sort of backed into the concept of writing. It wasn't like I wanted to

00:03:09.300 do it or I really thought that I, you know, this was a goal of mine. But it's like once I kind of,

00:03:16.300 the bottom dropped out of my life, it was like the only way that I could get back, in my mind anyway,

00:03:24.940 was to sort of write my way out of it. So I do the next 27 years or however long that was,

00:03:32.740 was just sort of trying to, you know, what went wrong with the first novel was I got 99.9% of the

00:03:39.640 way through, and I choked and blew it up, blew up my marriage, blah, blah, blah. So in order to sort

00:03:46.860 of redeem myself in my own eyes, I sort of had to write my way out of that. And that's kind of how I,

00:03:54.060 I got on this 27 year passage through the wilderness.

00:03:59.480 So in Government Cheese, you take readers through what you did with your life between

00:04:03.860 your first novel failing, and then until you got The Legend of Bagger Vance published.

00:04:09.360 It's called Government Cheese. Interesting title for a memoir. What's the story behind that title?

00:04:14.860 Well, people today might not know in this day of food stamps and other sort of voucher programs that

00:04:23.120 feed the hungry. But back in the day, when this story took place, they had the Department of

00:04:31.860 Agriculture and state departments of agriculture had programs to feed the poor, and they literally

00:04:38.520 would give away enormous blocks of cheese, government cheese. It was a USDA cheese product,

00:04:46.100 number one, whatever. And there would be, in addition to that, there would be things like

00:04:51.540 powdered milk or dried beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, that kind of stuff, canned peaches,

00:05:00.340 whole, you know, you could totally live off of this stuff. And when I was driving trucks,

00:05:05.880 one of the things that was part of this odyssey here was that we delivered this surplus food to

00:05:13.840 poor communities. This was in North Carolina, out on the coast. And that was a real,

00:05:21.720 one of the most satisfying things I did in this whole time, because it really helped people,

00:05:28.080 you know? And I also have a whole metaphor for it of how it relates to writing, if we want to get

00:05:34.560 into that at some later date. But that's what the Government Cheese title means.

00:05:40.420 When did you sign up for this long-haul company where you're delivering,

00:05:44.420 you know, sometimes you're delivering tobacco, you're delivering this government food.

00:05:48.680 When did that happen, and why did you sign up to become a truck driver?

00:05:51.620 I think I was maybe 28 or 29, something like that. And I was trying to get back together with my wife

00:06:00.940 back in North Carolina. And I was dead broke. And I went to a trucking school, you know,

00:06:06.700 one of those one-month things where they teach you how to drive a tractor-trailer. And I just

00:06:11.740 couldn't get a job. I, you know, applied everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And I,

00:06:17.760 I, this was something that I really wanted to do because I felt like I, I had to get my life on

00:06:23.620 track again with a kind of a job that would pay the rent, you know, and that had some hope of

00:06:29.820 stability to it. So finally, I had just gotten fired from another job and was driving out of town.

00:06:36.840 I'd sort of said goodbye to my wife, given up on that whole thing. And I stopped at this one final

00:06:43.260 trucking company that I had applied to before and been rejected a couple of times. And the

00:06:49.480 dispatcher was a guy named Hugh Reeves. And the first book inside of Government Cheese is called

00:06:54.560 Hugh Reeves. It's dedicated to him. He hired me. And so that kind of got me into that world,

00:07:01.420 which was a world that I never thought I would be into.

00:07:04.400 And in this part, talking about leading up getting hired by the trucking company,

00:07:07.740 you talk a lot about shame. Like you just, you just felt ashamed all the time, early in adulthood.

00:07:13.640 So, you know, early twenties through your, even your thirties, what were you like feeling shame

00:07:19.440 about? Cause I imagine that a lot of young men might feel this similar shame.

00:07:24.180 Well, in my case, it was because, you know, I, I quit this job in advertising to write a,

00:07:29.560 to write a novel, right? I thought I was pretty cool. And I had a young wife and she supported me.

00:07:35.620 And like I say, I got right up to the one yard line and I totally choked and blew it.

00:07:42.120 So I was ashamed of myself before my own self for failing like that. But then I was ashamed because

00:07:49.180 I had let my wife down. You know, I'm supposed to be a husband. I'm supposed to be a provider,

00:07:53.580 or at least I'm supposed to be, you know, a person that can finish a job. Even if you fail at it,

00:07:59.380 at least you should finish it. And so that was sort of the great shame that, that I had. And also I

00:08:07.460 blew up the marriage by kind of acting out in ways that won't need, don't need to talk about here on

00:08:12.160 the show, but enough that I felt like I had really screwed up my wife's life as well, you know? And

00:08:19.500 so I carried a lot of that shame for a long time. And which in a way was a good thing because it was

00:08:26.040 certainly a motivating force to keep me going forward. And you also talked about, there was

00:08:31.140 just moments too at the trucking company where you just biff something up and you just beat yourself

00:08:35.980 up. It's like, Oh, look, here I am. I'm being a screw up again. I can't even do this simple

00:08:40.800 trucking job, right? Either. Yeah. I mean, that was somehow for me, my demon was self-sabotage

00:08:52.720 and self-destruction of just getting in my own way. I would just screw things up as if there was

00:08:59.640 some demon inside me that was just waiting to, uh, you know, would make my hand to do something

00:09:06.760 that my head didn't want it to do. And the thing about driving, you know, tractor trailer over the

00:09:13.300 road, big rigs is when you screw up, you screw up royally, you know, it's a big mess. So I was

00:09:21.360 just fighting for years and years, this tendency within myself to get in my own way to sabotage

00:09:29.120 myself. And later on, I'm sure we'll get to this as we talk more today, Brett, when, uh, I wrote the

00:09:35.860 book, the war of art, which was about this internal force that I call resistance with a capital R

00:09:42.120 that's where my idea of resistance came from, from my own demons and, uh, and the fight to try to

00:09:51.320 overcome them. And were you still trying to write during this time? Like you were, you know, working

00:09:56.760 the big rig thing and then moonlighting as a writer, was that still happening? No, I absolutely wasn't.

00:10:01.480 In fact, I, um, once that first book sort of went down in flames, it was like, I said to myself,

00:10:08.220 this was a crazy mistake. I never should have done it. I'm never going to think about it again.

00:10:14.200 And so during this time, I never did try to write anything, but weird thing. It's almost like a

00:10:20.940 character in a story. I kept my typewriter. I had my typewriter with me the whole time and I just

00:10:28.340 never got it out until one particular moment, a few years later, when things turned around for me.

00:10:35.860 So you, you talk about when you were the long haul driver, you would oftentimes deliver

00:10:40.140 government cheese and especially you deliver them to like rural churches in the South.

00:10:44.880 What did you learn about life and writing while making these deliveries?

00:10:49.500 You know, it's, it's funny that the lessons you learn in these kind of jobs that have nothing to

00:10:58.640 do with your true calling, which in my case was writing are not direct lessons. It's not something

00:11:06.100 that you can use immediately, or you can, you know, write about or use as subject matter, but you learn

00:11:14.620 deeper lessons. Like one thing that, that happened when I was driving trucks is I dropped a trailer

00:11:21.120 one time. Talk about screw ups. If you've ever seen a trailer come unattached from a tractor and crash,

00:11:27.920 that's what happened to me. That, and it was my fault totally. And so a few days later, somehow the

00:11:34.300 boss, Hugh Reeves, who was, who had hired me, he didn't fire me for that. But a couple of days later,

00:11:39.760 he took me out to, to lunch at this hot dog place in Durham, North Carolina, just to have a talk.

00:11:46.660 And he said to me, he said, son, I can see that you're going through some process in your head.

00:11:55.060 I could see you're living out some kind of something. He said, I don't know what it is. And I don't want

00:12:01.200 to know what it is. But what I want you to realize is you're working for me and your job is to deliver

00:12:08.900 loads. That's all your job is. When I send you out on the road, I don't care what's going on in

00:12:16.860 your head. You've got to finish the mission, whatever it is. And so that was an amazing sort

00:12:24.380 of moment for me. I really come to Jesus moment for me that almost anybody else would have known

00:12:30.220 that from their whole, just any, just growing up. But that was something that I've used forever

00:12:40.140 since then. And particularly as a writer that, you know, when you're, when you're a writer,

00:12:45.820 you're completely on your own. You have no boss. If you take on a project and you start it,

00:12:51.320 there's nobody that you have to report to, to finish it. It's all up to you. It's all self-discipline.

00:12:56.460 And so many times I've sort of had a vision of Hugh Reeves in my head saying that thing to me,

00:13:03.120 I don't care what your issue is. Your job is to complete the mission at all costs. And that has

00:13:12.180 worked for me over and over again to just remember that. And then you also talk about when you would

00:13:18.340 make these deliveries to these churches, you were just driver, right? The people were very friendly,

00:13:24.200 very polite, had that Southern hospitality, but they'd just say, driver, take your truck over here

00:13:30.260 and we'll take care of everything else. And then when they were done unloading the things, they'd say,

00:13:34.980 driver, thank you for your time. They didn't care who you were. You were just driver. You were just

00:13:39.280 there to deliver the goods. Yeah. Which was kind of odd to me at the time, you know, because I made,

00:13:46.860 I mean, we did a lot of other loads other than surplus food, but I probably delivered maybe 40

00:13:53.740 of those loads to different churches all over the place. And it was always the same for, I don't know

00:13:59.520 why it was, but they would always address you as driver. You were anonymous and they didn't want you

00:14:05.620 participating in any of the offloading or anything like that. I would go smoke a cigarette, you know,

00:14:10.940 over under a live oak somewhere and just, you know, be an observer, which I considered to be a real

00:14:17.580 privilege because these scenes were so human, you know, and so heart-rending that, you know, I just

00:14:28.360 considered it a privilege even to be part of it and particularly be a part of it that was helping, you know.

00:14:32.800 But later on as a writer, I started to think that writing was a lot like this. Like when you're a

00:14:42.040 writer, you're delivering a load and the load is the book and the content of the book. And you hope

00:14:49.980 that like government cheese or surplus food, you hope it's going to be sustenance for somebody. But yet

00:14:57.200 you, the writer, you didn't make the cheese, you know, you didn't harvest the pinto beans or can the

00:15:04.680 peaches. All you are is a vehicle to deliver it. And nobody really cares who you are. They're just

00:15:12.080 there for the material, which I think is exactly as it should be that you are anonymous. You know,

00:15:20.680 I'm a big believer in the muse and in other dimensions of reality and that kind of thing.

00:15:25.760 So I really felt like that particular load where you're anonymous was a real metaphor for what the

00:15:36.260 writing or any artistic endeavor is. You are, you're a vehicle and you're not the maker of the stuff.

00:15:45.640 I think that's a good point because I've noticed there's a tendency today with a lot of the social

00:15:49.980 media stuff for creatives like writers or even entrepreneurs to really think, talk about themselves

00:15:56.360 and like, you know, what they go through. And it's, I think it can be useful in some instances.

00:16:00.500 Like you do that a lot with your work, kind of give insights to the process. But sometimes there's

00:16:05.500 something about when you get yourself or your ego too attached to your, whatever it is, the work that

00:16:11.460 you're delivering, it messes it up. It just doesn't land the same.

00:16:14.920 I think it's absolutely true. In fact, I would say that any artist's task as they're developing

00:16:21.280 from a neophyte to somebody that's capable of doing work is to somehow get past their ego. And as long

00:16:27.860 as their ego is there, it's going to screw them up and they're never going to get it right. You have

00:16:32.920 to, I think, deliver from another place, you know? And I also think when you start to think

00:16:40.980 that you're the one that's creating this, you're in trouble too, because it's not true.

00:16:49.500 You are getting it from somewhere else, from some other level of reality. And your job is to be

00:16:58.620 enough of a professional and to be enough of on top of your craft that when you get this kind of

00:17:05.380 transmission from the cosmic radio station, that you're capable of delivering it in a digestible

00:17:13.420 form to people on this material plane, if you know what I'm talking about, Brett.

00:17:19.360 Yeah. And then connect it to your other book, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. You talk 0.75

00:17:24.700 about this, like the ego, and there's this great chapter. It says, when we try to sing or write or

00:17:30.380 dance from the ego, we fall on our face. It is impossible to sing or write or dance from the

00:17:35.740 ego. I think that's true. And like, that's what was happening to you. Your ego was getting in the

00:17:40.700 way of yourself. That's why you probably choked on that first novel. Yeah, for sure. And my ego

00:17:48.120 was totally connected to my tendency to sabotage myself. How do you overcome that, right? Like,

00:17:54.020 what did it take for you? Was it just like you had to drive the trucks and do these jobs not related

00:17:58.380 to the writing for you to finally figure that out? I mean, I do think, you know, I'm doing a kind of

00:18:04.380 a video series on Instagram now that I'm calling In the Wilderness. And it refers to the kind of

00:18:12.980 passage that we all sort of have to go through, I think, where we're kind of outcasted from what we

00:18:21.780 would call our normal world. And we sort of, it's like an analogy would be the Odyssey, Odysseus' story

00:18:29.480 by Homer, you know, which was his 10-year Odyssey. That's sort of the granddaddy of all legends that

00:18:36.580 have to do with this. And where I do think you have to suffer and you have to be humbled and you

00:18:45.760 have to have this shit kicked out of you one way or another before you sort of finally get to a point 0.99

00:18:52.780 where you, in a way, not even in a way, I think it's absolutely exact, where you give up. And that 1.00

00:19:00.400 giving up is a giving up of the ego. You know, where you just say, I can't fight this anymore. You

00:19:06.480 know, I mean, I just can't do it anymore. And some shift happens in that point. At that point,

00:19:14.360 it's sort of like someone who has a problem with alcohol finally saying, I'm defeated by this. I

00:19:20.460 just can't, I don't have power over this. Help, you know, somebody help me, you know? And when that

00:19:29.380 person makes the decision, okay, I'm going to join AA or I'm going to quit or I'm going to, whatever it

00:19:34.760 is they're going to do and change my life, that's, I think, the same thing that happens to anybody

00:19:41.940 that's trying to, to find who they, who they are and what their calling is.

00:19:49.040 No. So tying this back to the legend of Bagger Vance, it's based on the Bhagavad Gita,

00:19:55.140 right? And it was a, you're a great reader, Brad. It's great that you, that you know that.

00:19:59.940 And I think like at the beginning of the Gita, Juna has that moment where he sees this epic war going

00:20:05.420 on and it's like family against family. And he's like, I don't know what to do. I can't. And that

00:20:11.760 was his surrender moment. Yeah, exactly. You know, actually I had never thought about that before in

00:20:17.420 that, in that terms, but it's exactly true. Like in, in screenwriting, you know, that was another

00:20:24.940 career that I had sort of along the way here. There's a term called the all is lost moment.

00:20:29.860 Have you heard of that before, Brett? Yeah. And that's, that's what our Juno was in. And that,

00:20:36.480 I think in our real life, we need to get to one of those. And maybe we need to get to many of those

00:20:44.240 because that's the only way real progress I think is made. When you run into an absolute brick wall

00:20:51.560 and the resources that you've called on in the past are not sufficient to get over that brick wall.

00:20:59.140 And you have to somehow find something somewhere. Right. That's when the ego dissolves. And that's

00:21:05.620 when you can receive, like, I know you're a big fan of like divine help, the muses. That's when you

00:21:10.680 become more receptive because the ego has finally fallen away. Yes, exactly. We're going to take a

00:21:16.300 quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So you did this long

00:21:27.580 haul thing, still weren't writing during this time. You left that job because they were rearranging.

00:21:32.180 They were going to make you like a set of an employee, a contractor, and you're going to be

00:21:36.280 in charge of your own truck. You left and then you, you, you took a job picking apples. What was going

00:21:41.700 like, why that? Like, how did you end up doing that? Well, there are a few other things between the

00:21:46.260 two. And one of them was that I did start writing a book and I had, in fact, it was a book about the

00:21:54.580 trucking company, a novel. And I had saved money. I worked in New York and advertising for, I don't

00:22:01.280 know, a year or something. I'd saved 2,700 bucks. And I moved to a small town in Northern California

00:22:08.420 and just to write. And I did for, I think maybe 20 months. And then I ran out of money.

00:22:17.500 And so I thought it made sense to go do this migrant labor thing because it was something that 1.00

00:22:24.320 you could, you could go, you could make money, you could come back and you'd have enough,

00:22:28.700 you know, I'd have enough to finish the book. So I sort of stumbled into that thing kind of by

00:22:33.980 accident. And so again, it wasn't like a planned thing or anything, but it was just

00:22:38.540 you needed money, a thing on the fly. When you're working on the second novel,

00:22:43.800 were you still haunted by those previous demons of you just sabotaging yourself?

00:22:47.920 Absolutely. In fact, the whole, because with the first book, I couldn't finish it. That was,

00:22:55.820 that was my self-sabotaged demon. I couldn't get to the end of it, you know? And so for the second one,

00:23:02.620 when I went to go, you know, do this migrant labor, I still hadn't finished it then.

00:23:09.160 So it was very much in my mind. I got to finish this son of a bitch, you know, one way or another, 0.99

00:23:16.500 whatever happens to it, you know, I don't care if a guy throw it in the trash, 1.00

00:23:20.680 you know, I got to finish it. So yeah, that was very much in my mind.

00:23:25.540 So you took the job, like what, what did you take from that experience picking fruit? And then

00:23:28.700 there's this, I want to talk about this, this phrase you picked up there, pulling the pen.

00:23:33.560 What does that mean?

00:23:34.900 It's a great question, Brett. And it's right on target here. And now I don't know what migrant

00:23:40.300 labor is like today, but back then it was done. It was like the depression in a way. It was done by

00:23:47.320 what they call fruit tramps. And these were guys that would follow the harvest. And most of them were

00:23:54.900 alcoholics, winos. And, uh, the, the joke is a tramp is an itinerant worker. A hobo is an itinerant 0.87

00:24:06.040 non-worker and a bum is a non-itinerant non-worker. And, uh, so a lot of these guys were at least heirs 0.54

00:24:15.640 of the riding the rails school of, of tramp life. And when a car is uncoupled from a, from a train,

00:24:26.440 the trainman pulls a pin out of, you know, between the coupling of the two cars. So the phrase pulling

00:24:32.980 the pin means to quit something. So like you would wake up in a bunkhouse in the morning and somebody

00:24:38.840 be missing and you'd say, you know, Hey, what happened to Harry? And he'd say, Oh, he pulled the pin.

00:24:42.780 Um, so for me, that was absolutely on target. I like pulled a pin on this book that I tried to

00:24:49.960 write. I pulled the pin on my marriage. I pulled the pin on the trucking company where I really just

00:24:55.080 bolted. I just couldn't do it anymore. I bolted. And so I was absolutely determined, you know,

00:25:02.300 not to do that, but the demons were there. And actually, like I said, the first book in government

00:25:09.500 cheese is named after Hugh Reeves, who was my mentor or boss at the trucking company. And the

00:25:14.940 second book, which was about fruit picking is named after a guy whose name I didn't even know his last

00:25:20.200 name. I just call him John from Seattle. And he was a guy, uh, who was a great picker and, uh, one of

00:25:28.360 these hardcore road guys. And he knew he just sort of sussed out, sussed it out in me. He could see what I

00:25:37.120 was struggling with and he wouldn't let me kind of rode me, wouldn't let me, you know, sneak out of

00:25:43.800 it in any way. And he would come over to me. And when I was in one of these moments and he would

00:25:49.300 just sort of tap me on the forehead with one finger with his forefinger. And what he meant by

00:25:54.140 that was it's all up here, kid. You know, you got to get your mind right. And for some reason,

00:26:02.760 again, this is one of the sort of lessons that you learn that stick with you forever.

00:26:07.280 You know, so thanks to him, I did get through that thing. I did finish it out. Oh, here's one

00:26:14.020 thing just for whatever this is worth. It's a silly detail, but I thought it was interesting.

00:26:18.700 The way you pick apples or any kind of fruit is they will pay you like three quarters of your salary

00:26:26.300 for what you do, but they'll hold a quarter of it back. And they'll give you that as a bonus if you

00:26:34.160 finish the season. But if you don't finish the season, if you pull the pin, you lose that bonus.

00:26:40.580 But yet still, so many people don't make it to the end that the orchards or whatever it is,

00:26:49.020 they make a lot of money off of that. So in any event, thanks to John from Seattle,

00:26:54.940 I did finish that. And I did finish the book, even though it never got published.

00:27:01.400 Well, yeah. What happened then? So you actually finished this book. You didn't choke and stop.

00:27:04.660 Not like the first one. You finished the second book. What were you hoping? Like,

00:27:09.180 did you really think like, this is it? This is going to be my big break?

00:27:11.700 No. No. I mean, I, I sort of had, you know, crazy hopes about that, but I just wanted to finish

00:27:24.280 it. And actually, I write about this moment in the, in the war of art, which was the moment when I

00:27:31.060 finally finished that book. And this was before computers. So it was on a typewriter. So you

00:27:38.080 actually had a stack of pages. And when you finished a book in those days, you would roll

00:27:43.680 the last page out and put it on the bottom of the stack. And I looked at that and I thought,

00:27:49.980 you know, I did it. Nobody knows that I did it. Nobody cares. It doesn't make any difference to

00:27:56.500 the world or to anybody, but I know. And I will say this to anybody that's listening that has that

00:28:04.760 same sort of demon in them. I, I have found over the years since then, that once you defeat that

00:28:11.580 demon, you'll never have any trouble finishing anything again. And I never have, but getting

00:28:18.400 over that hump was a, was a big one. And not only do you know, right? Like by finishing something,

00:28:25.420 you're able to show yourself, you can do this. The muses know as well. You talk about this,

00:28:29.840 it's chapter 49 and put your ass where your heart wants to be. It says, the goddess is like Santa 1.00

00:28:35.460 Claus. She knows when you've been naughty or nice. I'm not being facetious. Somehow by some mechanism

00:28:41.300 unknown and unknowable to mortals, the higher dimensions see and know what's going on down

00:28:45.440 here on the material plane. When you and I put your ass, you know, where the muse notices and she 0.98

00:28:51.520 responds. I think, you know, as I wrote it and I believe it completely that when we're trying to do 0.99

00:29:00.700 anything creative, we're, our role is to connect to the higher dimension, whatever that is, to our

00:29:10.140 self, capital S self. And that, you know, the Greeks thought of gods and goddesses there. You could

00:29:17.540 think of it as the quantum field or something else if you looked at it another way.

00:29:21.760 But somehow they do know, the goddess knows, and, and she does reward you and she does grant you

00:29:29.460 respect. And I, I felt that in that moment too, Brett, I felt like, even though I couldn't really

00:29:34.880 put my finger on it, I felt like I'd scored some points with heaven, even if I didn't score any in

00:29:40.440 the material world. I mean, that's an important distinction. I think sometimes people expect

00:29:45.060 everything they do to have some sort of public recognition. You make the point that that's not the

00:29:49.880 most important thing. Like the most important thing is that, that private recognition. Cause

00:29:54.880 that's, what's going to keep you going. Yeah. And the most important thing period is to keep going

00:30:00.180 because if you think about it, I mean, if you and I wanted to be brain surgeons or concert pianists,

00:30:08.260 we would say to ourselves, well, okay, it's going to take, you know, 15 years or something full time

00:30:14.420 to get to that place. But yet when people think about writing or acting or something like that,

00:30:22.160 they think, well, I'll just slip into it and it'll be fine. I mean, that's what I thought,

00:30:25.940 like an idiot. And so the, the, the main goal is to just keep going, to find the sustenance, 0.99

00:30:36.340 the emotional sustenance to keep going. Because at least in a field like writing,

00:30:42.940 where you can write until you're 80, 90 years old, it's not like professional football or your

00:30:48.100 career's over at, you know, whatever age you do get better. And the state that you were in when you

00:30:54.840 were 30 is not the state you'll be in at 45. You'll be much better and so on and so forth.

00:31:02.020 So the name of the game is to find the wherewithal to keep going because you do get better and you can

00:31:10.520 get closer to the dream by just keep hammering away. And so after, okay. So after the second book,

00:31:16.540 it didn't get published. Did you just keep writing? Like you were like, well, I finished that one

00:31:20.500 onto the next one. Yeah. I went on, I did, I did, I saved more money and I was driving a cab in New

00:31:27.620 York city at that time. And, uh, and then I, I wrote another one that also didn't get published,

00:31:34.180 couldn't find anybody. And at that point I said to myself to talk about an all this lost moment.

00:31:39.680 I said to myself, okay, I've done three now, you know, and, uh, it's probably total of seven years

00:31:46.800 full time. In addition to all the other work, just trying to support myself. And I just don't

00:31:52.940 have it in me to do a fourth one. I, I, I can't do it, you know? And that was an all is lost moment

00:32:00.040 for me, followed by an epiphany where the epiphany was, let me move to Hollywood and try to write for

00:32:06.060 the movies, figuring that, you know, I failed as a novelist. Why don't I fail as a screenwriter too?

00:32:11.840 So that kept me going for another 10 years. So after this third novel, how old were you

00:32:20.040 at this point? How old was I? It's a good question. I think I was

00:32:22.580 30, let's see, 38, something like that. Okay. So yeah, I mean, you're hitting middle age

00:32:28.800 at this point. And let's talk about this. So, you know, we've talked about, you did the truck driving,

00:32:34.060 you did the fruit picking also during this time from your twenties until, you know, through your forties,

00:32:38.640 you did, did a stint as an oil field worker. You were a school teacher. You worked at this rural

00:32:43.580 doctor's office. You drove a taxi. When you look back on the diversity of jobs you had,

00:32:50.000 like, do you think they shaped you into the man you are now and the writer you are?

00:32:54.500 Yes. Yes. I know that that's not the kind of thing that people do anymore as a kind of a

00:33:03.600 the university of hard knocks type of thing. But for whatever reason, if I look back on it,

00:33:10.800 I needed to do it. You know, I grew up as a sheltered kid and I needed to get my butt kicked 0.99

00:33:17.240 a little bit. And so, yeah, I really do think that, that although I never set out to do any of 0.98

00:33:23.600 those things, if you, if you think about those jobs that you just rattled off, they're all the kind

00:33:29.400 of jobs that require no skill other than trucking that you actually have to know something. But the

00:33:34.700 other things are things you can just walk in. If you got a pulse, you can do them. So, but like I

00:33:40.720 say, you, you learn lessons along the way that passage through the wilderness is, is necessary.

00:33:47.300 I think. Okay. So you're about 38. You've given up writing novels because none of them were getting

00:33:52.360 published and you start writing screenplays and you found some success in writing screenplays.

00:33:57.320 You started to make good money. You started to be a pro at it. But then at a certain point you

00:34:02.380 decided to leave screenwriting and go back to novels. I mean, what led that decision? Like what

00:34:07.740 led you to say, I'm going to quit this, this thing, this thing that I'm making money on and go back to

00:34:13.800 writing another novel? That's another great question, Brett. This again is kind of a, uh, reinforces my

00:34:20.620 belief in the muse. The novel was the legend of Bagger Vance. And it just kind of came to me one

00:34:27.760 day. The idea came to me and, but it came to me as a book, not as a movie. And I had an agent at the

00:34:35.920 time, a good agent who had worked really, really hard for me to get me established. And I had a

00:34:42.720 meeting with him and I said, I have good news. I have bad news. I have worse news. I said, the good

00:34:47.220 news is I've got an idea that I'm in love with because the bad news is it's a novel. So you can't

00:34:53.420 help me. And the worst news is it's a novel about golf, which is like the dumbest subject that anybody 0.97

00:34:59.420 could possibly write a novel about. So he basically fired me and he was right to do that. So the 0.90

00:35:06.760 question again, Brett, it wasn't like this was a conscious decision on my part. Oh, I'm going to now

00:35:12.160 try to write a novel. It just, the idea came to me and that was the form it came to me in and I was

00:35:18.100 absolutely seized by it and had to do it. And at the time that I was working on that book, I thought

00:35:25.760 this is the dumbest idea I've ever had. It's completely uncommercial. Nobody is going to want 0.98

00:35:32.300 a book on this subject and they certainly are not going to want it as a movie, but to my amazement,

00:35:39.180 they did. So that was kind of how when once you write one, then, you know, you get a chance to

00:35:46.440 write another. Well, why do you think it was a success when your other novels had failed? Like

00:35:51.680 what do you, what, what, what changed? Did you change? Was it the circumstances? Was it both?

00:35:56.140 I think for sure. I wrote that story from a different place than anything else I had done before.

00:36:05.020 Now, some of the screenplays that I had done, particularly ones that never got, saw the light

00:36:10.220 of day, that just kind of circulated in the town, but never got made. Some of them were really good.

00:36:16.880 They had really good ideas and it's, you know, they were really good, but they weren't

00:36:22.420 completely from my heart in the sense of they weren't coming from that other dimension of reality.

00:36:31.060 They weren't coming from the muse. And the legend of Bagger Vance was, I mean, even as I was writing

00:36:37.680 it, I thought, like I say, I thought, this is crazy. Who's going to like this? You know, I love it,

00:36:44.260 but who else is going to, it's so different from everything. And so I think I had finally turned a

00:36:50.760 corner, maybe by paying the dues for all those years that finally the goddess said, okay, I'm going to

00:36:58.820 give this guy a break. But for whatever reason, I was writing it from a different place and it was

00:37:04.660 coming out in a different way. And when I was done with it, I felt a kind of a pride that I had never

00:37:13.440 felt before. Before I'd been able to appreciate some of the best screenplays that I'd done, the

00:37:19.860 ones that never got made. I thought, you know, these are good. These are really good. But I never really

00:37:25.020 felt like, you know, on my deathbed, I'll be proud of this. And I felt that way about the legend of

00:37:31.740 Bagger Vance, the book, not the movie. So that was, that was a huge turning point. And that really is

00:37:37.720 where this book that we're talking about, Government Cheese, ends. Because at that point, I really had

00:37:44.020 become a working writer, a pro writer that had found my own calling and my own groove. And

00:37:51.960 the story from then on really is just a question of serving the craft and learning the craft.

00:38:00.660 Well, and then accompany this book and publish this book, we've been kind of talking about it,

00:38:04.160 Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. What do you mean? Because it's a pretty provocative title. 0.96

00:38:09.100 What do you mean by that? And like, I mean, maybe did you learn this idea from just your varied life you

00:38:15.820 had before Legend of Bagger Vance? Yes, absolutely. This phrase, put your ass where

00:38:22.200 your heart wants to be, I don't even know. I don't think I stole it from anybody. I think it's my 0.99

00:38:28.140 original thought. But I've had it kind of rattling in my head for like 10 years. And the idea of it is

00:38:35.400 simply that it's another way of saying, commit. When you say put your ass somewhere, you're really 1.00

00:38:43.460 talking about your heart, you know, your physical body, the commitment to where if you fail, you're 1.00

00:38:51.680 going to, it's going to hurt. And there's something magic about making that commitment to whatever it

00:39:00.540 is. And, you know, you were talking before about how heaven does notice, the gods notice, and they do

00:39:09.000 notice when you put your ass where your heart wants to be. Like people say, okay, how do I be a writer? 0.99

00:39:16.220 I want to be a writer. My answer to that is sit down in front of the freaking typewriter and start 0.96

00:39:21.700 doing it. If you want to be a painter, put your ass in front of the easel. If you want to be a dancer, 1.00

00:39:27.800 get into the studio. There's something magic about putting your physical body and putting your

00:39:33.740 commitment, your commitment from the heart into whatever it is you want to do, where your heart

00:39:39.000 wants to be, what your dream is, that good things happen. I'm sure that when you started the art of

00:39:47.760 manliness, it was a leap, I'm sure. And I'm sure that you were putting your ass where your heart wanted 0.99

00:39:56.700 to be. And whatever issues, you know, I don't know the full story behind this, Brett, but I'm sure that 0.98

00:40:03.400 things started breaking your way at some point in ways that you couldn't account for. Because the gods

00:40:11.820 and the goddesses notice it, and the universe does intercede and intervene in your behalf when you put

00:40:20.700 your commitment where you really live, where your heart wants to be.

00:40:24.720 Yeah. I started this while I was in law school. And so my time was limited, but I committed to

00:40:30.180 publishing three articles a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I stuck to that schedule

00:40:34.680 religiously. And that meant I had to get up early and crank out an article. And yeah, it is a point

00:40:41.260 where I had those breaks come my way. And then now, you know, it's my wife and I, and we're still,

00:40:46.740 you know, we try to be pro about this. It's like, we have a schedule like Monday and Wednesday,

00:40:50.560 we're gonna have new podcasts up Tuesday, Thursday, we'll have an article, new articles up. We've stuck

00:40:57.600 to that for, for years. And like, you know, sometimes things go awesome. Sometimes, you know,

00:41:01.520 things don't land, but we just try to be consistent with it as much as possible.

00:41:06.360 And, and it's, I mean, it takes guts to do that, doesn't it? I mean, a lot of people talk about it,

00:41:12.940 but very few people actually do it. So I take my hat off to you. You know, you, you got into this

00:41:18.820 thing before a lot of people got into it. You know, you were one of the first people and it took

00:41:24.940 even more guts then. So the success that you've had is well earned. Well, thank you so much. And

00:41:31.540 I'm curious, how do you keep that commitment going for the longterm? Like keeping your ass 1.00

00:41:34.980 where your heart wants to be when you're, when you're not experiencing any success, 0.99

00:41:39.580 what did you figure out that helped you? I mean, for me, I had in those wilderness years,

00:41:45.980 I had no plan B, you know, every time I tried to sort of go straight and get a regular job,

00:41:53.940 I just couldn't stand it. You know, I couldn't stand going through the door that morning. And I've

00:42:00.680 heard that from a bunch of other people who've been in the same kind of situation. So there was really

00:42:06.880 kind of no way out of it for me, except to keep going forward. And it was very clear.

00:42:13.620 Well, you have this idea in your book about self-reinforcement. What do you mean by that?

00:42:18.120 And how do you develop it?

00:42:19.600 This is a question, Brett, kind of about how do you last over the long haul? Because there are going

00:42:26.080 to be long, long periods when you're not getting any external, you know, third-party validation.

00:42:33.360 And the only way to overcome that, those periods, is you have to validate yourself.

00:42:40.880 Self-validation, self-reinforcement. And they don't teach you this in school. If anything,

00:42:48.100 they teach you the opposite. And certainly social media teaches you the exact opposite.

00:42:54.260 Social media teaches you to validate yourself based on number of likes, number of followers, 0.98

00:42:59.580 and all that bullshit, right? But the true reality is you are the only judge of your own stuff and

00:43:08.400 your own endeavor and your own commitment, your own progress. And so self-reinforcement is really

00:43:17.220 self-talk. And a lot of times, it's almost inane and silly and embarrassing when you think about it. 0.91

00:43:25.420 But you do have to sort of basically look in the mirror and say to yourself,

00:43:32.560 today was a good day. You know, we didn't make any money today. We didn't move the ball,

00:43:39.760 you know, three inches today. But we tried as hard as we could, and we stuck by our guns.

00:43:47.620 And validating yourself for that and learning to make that stick so you believe it is more important,

00:43:57.180 I always say, more important than talent. And I believe it's absolutely true because talented

00:44:02.860 people are a dime a dozen. But people that can actually stick it out are very, very rare.

00:44:10.020 You talk about John Keats and this idea of negative capability. And I really like this

00:44:15.680 idea a lot. And you quoted him from a letter that Keats wrote to his brother, George. And he gets to

00:44:22.380 this idea of self-reinforcement. And I'll read it here. This is what he says.

00:44:26.080 Several things dovetailed in my mind. And at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of

00:44:31.400 achievement, especially in literature, in which Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean,

00:44:36.880 negative capability. That is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,

00:44:43.900 without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. So self-reinforcement is just, you know,

00:44:49.360 being able to, you know, when things aren't going your way, or you don't know if things are going to

00:44:55.440 go your way, still being okay with that. Yeah, that's exactly it. It was the idea of being uncertain,

00:45:03.820 being wracked by self-doubt, but keeping going. You also talk about developing a killer instinct,

00:45:11.940 that, you know, writers, creatives, entrepreneurs need to have that. What do you mean by that? And

00:45:16.560 what does it look like? In a way, for me, like I was talking, my demon was finishing something,

00:45:25.560 right? I'd get right to the end of it, and then I'd choke. And I think one of the ways I defined that

00:45:31.720 for myself later was, I said, I don't have killer instinct. I got to, the, I'm locked in a struggle

00:45:39.660 with this freaking book, and I've got to, I've got to win. This is a war, and I have to win. And 0.94

00:45:47.180 from that point, I always decided I've got to have killer instinct to just bust through however hard 1.00

00:45:54.340 it is, and kill that son of a bitch. No, yeah, I think that's something I'm seeing my kids start 1.00

00:46:02.540 to develop, right? Like, you see this in sports. When kids first start playing sports, they're kind

00:46:08.100 of timid. Like, a lot of, some kids just have that natural killer instinct, like they're naturally

00:46:11.900 aggressive. But some kids, they have to learn it. This reminds me of, there's this great analogy of

00:46:17.100 Hector and Achilles. Achilles, he was just born manly, right? He just had that, because he's this

00:46:23.160 divine being. Hector, on the other hand, it talks about in the Iliad, he had to learn how to do it.

00:46:28.820 I think a lot of people are like that. They have to learn how to develop that killer instinct.

00:46:33.200 And it's tough. I don't, there's really nothing you can do to tell your kid, except like, be

00:46:37.840 aggressive. And like, they ask, what does that mean? And I have a hard time even explaining to my

00:46:43.740 kids, like, what do I mean by that? But it means just like going for it. Like, just going for the

00:46:48.940 ball and not caring, like, you know, within the rules, but not, like, not being, like, you have

00:46:54.760 to like lose your self-consciousness and just care about scoring the point.

00:47:00.220 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really a question of risk. Because if you fail, if you go for it and you

00:47:06.020 fail, you lose, right? And then you have all that terrible feeling, you know? But like Seth Godin

00:47:11.720 has this, he uses the phrase shipping. Are you familiar with what he says about this sort of

00:47:18.120 stuff? Yeah, I did. But you know, let other people know. He figures if you're Steve Jobs

00:47:23.160 and you've got, you've been working on the iPhone for the first time, you know, your company's got

00:47:29.520 it together. There comes a day when you got to ship it. You know, you got, what comes a day when you

00:47:35.720 have to say, okay, there may be some, you know, glitches in here, but we can't keep noodling with 0.98

00:47:41.600 this sucker forever. We got to ship it today. That's killer instinct to push the button and make 0.55

00:47:47.560 it go. Because if it fails, then who knows what the consequences are for your career. But Seth is a

00:47:54.880 great believer in shipping. When something is ready, don't noodle with it anymore. And that's killer

00:48:01.320 instinct. So you're approaching 80 and you're still putting out work. What keeps you going?

00:48:07.180 I am a servant of the muse, Brett. You know, I sort of take my assignments from her. And as long as

00:48:15.620 she's got another one for me, I'm going to keep doing it. And that's kind of, that's the way I live

00:48:23.180 my life. I live it kind of from, that's the way I live my life from the time when Bagger Vance first

00:48:30.020 got published, when my life really changed and I became, you know, a full-time working writer.

00:48:36.320 So I'm, I go from project to project and I become completely absorbed in it. And when one is done,

00:48:43.620 I go on to the next one. And to me, this is another idea from Seth Godin. It's a, it's a practice like a

00:48:51.400 Zen practice or a practice in martial arts where the end result success, quote unquote, is not the

00:49:01.300 goal. The goal is the practice itself. And you hope that, you know, you'll have a hit here and there

00:49:08.620 or you'll pay the rent here and there. But mainly I have a calling. It took me a long time to find it.

00:49:15.700 And my way I view my life is that I'm following that calling and I'll follow it as long as I can

00:49:23.200 still breathe. This reminds me of, um, Stephen Covey. We had his daughter on Cynthia Covey. She

00:49:29.660 finished a manuscript that he was working on before he died about a decade ago. And it was about living

00:49:36.540 life in crescendo. This idea that you still have stuff to put out, even if you've done well in your

00:49:42.480 career. And he's a lot like you, like the seven habits didn't come out until he was in his mid

00:49:46.180 fifties. And after he wrote the seven habits of highly effective people, family and friends be

00:49:51.400 like, well, Stephen, do you got anything? How can you top that? Right. I imagine like,

00:49:55.900 maybe you got that question. Like, how can you top legend of Bagger advance where Robert Redford

00:50:00.180 wanted to make that into a movie. And Stephen said, no, I've got something better than seven

00:50:05.100 habits of highly effective people. I mean, I've got this calling. So it might not be as prolific

00:50:09.220 as seven habits, but it doesn't diminish the importance of that work.

00:50:14.600 Yeah, I agree completely. There's a famous story about Cole Porter when he was writing songs for

00:50:20.560 Hollywood, where he had just written a song for some movie and they'd rejected it. You know,

00:50:25.280 the studio or the director, somebody had rejected it. And a friend said to him, Cole,

00:50:29.320 what are you going to do? I mean, your song just got shot down. And he said, I got a million of them.

00:50:34.320 There's another trolley coming down the track all the time. And I think that's a, that's a great

00:50:41.320 attitude to have because to get a little mystical source, capital S is infinite. And there is another

00:50:50.620 trolley coming down the track all the time. You just have to believe in it. You just got to be the

00:50:54.620 driver. You got to become the driver. Yes. Right. Deliver the goods, deliver the load. Right. Well,

00:51:00.700 Stephen, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the books and

00:51:03.900 your work? I am on Instagram, just under Stephen Pressfield. And I have a website and it's just my

00:51:11.720 name, Stephen Pressfield. And in fact, if you go there right now, you can pre-order Government

00:51:16.620 Cheese, a signed copy that will be hand delivered by me just about. And I'm in, you know, on Amazon

00:51:24.980 and all those things, just like, you know, every other writer that's in business. Awesome. Well, Stephen

00:51:29.940 Pressfield, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Hey, thanks, Brett. Thank you for having me.

00:51:34.440 My guest today was Stephen Pressfield. He's the author of the book, Government Cheese. It's

00:51:38.040 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:51:41.980 his website, stephenpressfield.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash pressfield,

00:51:47.420 where you find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:51:57.120 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:52:01.100 artofmanliance.com. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter, artofmanliance.com

00:52:05.240 slash newsletter. We have a daily or weekly digest option. It is free. And if you'd like to enjoy ad

00:52:10.420 free episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:52:15.340 sign up, use code manliance at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up, download the

00:52:19.780 Stitcher app on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad free episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you

00:52:25.060 haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or

00:52:28.620 Spotify helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:52:33.100 show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank

00:52:37.180 you for the continued support. And until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen

00:52:41.320 AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:53:11.320 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - January 16, 2023

Advice on Achieving Any Long-Haul Dream

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript