Big fan of Steven Pressfield here. Just read his second book Turning Pro, which is a sequel to War of Art…. two MUST reads for any creative. Here are some of my favorite take-aways:
- We tend to pursue “shadow careers” – jobs that are similar to our dreams, but not quite our dreams. It’s a metaphor for our true calling.
- The life we call normal isn’t normal at all.
- Lives go down the tubes … one hundred and forty characters at a time. Twitter is for amateurs.
- What are you pursuing that is producing incapacity in your life? What endless loop are you stuck in?
- There’s a glamour to failure that’s been mined for centuries, which inverts failure and calls it success. We have settled for the struggle.
- The Resistance wants to keep us shallow and unfocused. Have you checked your emial in the last half hour? It can be fatal, keeping up with the Kardashians.
- Steven described his “year of turning pro.” It was a year of tremendous sacrifice and focus, but the birth of a fruitful writing career.
- The “amateur” fears solitude and silence. Twitter and Facebook are pardise for the amateur.
- A Marine gets two salaries for his work. The money for his salary. And the other – his confidence, status, achievement, etc.
- Steven described his “years in the wilderness” – years when all of his friends seemed to be getting ahead. But living the “normal life” made him so depressed that he couldn’t stand it.