It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can’t do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.
When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
The opposite of fear is love – love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.
Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?
The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within.
But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested.
It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.
I guess what I want to say to us artists and entrepreneurs is that conventional yardsticks of success don’t apply to all enterprises. Labors of love count.
Don’t prepare, do. Don’t let Resistance sucker you into wasting months on background, foundation, planning. All that can come later.
Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you’ll find that you have nothing to say.
The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket.
As resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.
On the artist’s journey we are redefining and reconfiguring ourselves and our lives.
Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.