Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way by Steven Pressfield.
Consider this a coaching book to help you complete a project start to finish without resistance factors getting the best of you. Steven Pressfield creates easy to read principles on how to stay focused throughout a project or work and minimize the resistance that either generates from within or outside of you. The author provides some ingenious intuition on what resistance is that gets in the way of completing a project or creative endeavor.
Characteristics of Resistance
- Energy field of a repelling force
- Will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work
- Is impersonal
- It is universal – everyone experiences resistance
- Never goes away
“Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” – Steven Pressfield
Activities That Invite Resistance
- The pursuit of any dream or calling in life (e.g., writing, painting, dancing, music)
- Launching any entrepreneurial business
- Dieting
- Any program to deepen your spirituality
- Education
- Learning something new
- Working to overcome habits or an addiction
- Courage to change for the better
- Commitment to help other people
- Commitment of your heart
“Rule of thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” – Steven Pressfield
Allies and Champions to Help Us Fight Resistance
- Stupidity – don’t over-think; just take action
- Stubbornness – means you won’t quit
- Blind faith – belief no matter what
- Passion – conquers fear
- Assistance – opposite of resistance
- Friends and Family – those who love you no matter how
“Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love.” – Steven Pressfield
Advice on Doing the Work
- Write your ideas on paper, in three acts: beginning, middle, and end; this helps with outlining your work to do
- Start with the end and work backwards
- Work through research with focused intention – do not let research take too long or paralyze you in the process
- Get the first draft done as quickly as possible no matter how bad it is
- Remind yourself that you are not allowed to judge yourself – no self-judgment
- Keep working
“Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing.” – Steven Pressfield
Understand and accept that resistance is part of the process of doing the work. You have a choice to either ignore the resistance and move through the distractions in doing your work, or pay attention to the resistance and let it overcome you. Some of the best advice I received in learning not to pay attention to resistance and the inner negative critic is to think of resistance and the inner critic as volume controls for the sound inside your mind. Imagine turning down the volume on these voices and then turning up the volume on the inner voices that are encouraging, positive, and empowering, that fill you with courage, confidence, and resilience.
“I stand in awe of anyone who hatches a dream and who shows the guts to hang tough, all alone, and see it through to reality.” – Steven Pressfield
Start. Do the work. Keep going. Persevere.
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