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3: The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
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-The big question here, Mike, is how's the meditation practice going?
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-This one's going to take a little bit to become sticky.
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This is definitely not something that I naturally embrace.
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But every time I do do it, it feels really great,
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which is not as often as it should be.
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-Do you notice, because I've been trying to do this as well,
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and I feel like I've been getting pummeled on all sides to start meditating?
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And so I'm dedicated to making it work.
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I just don't think I'm there yet.
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But can you see a difference the day you do it?
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I assume you do it in the morning.
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-Yep.
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Yeah, I can notice a difference.
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And usually it's just by the end of the day,
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feeling like I'm still in control as opposed to being ready to snap.
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It's like my crap tolerance wears out otherwise.
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By the end of the day, just like, stay away from me.
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-It's like I just want to go to bed. Everybody leave me alone.
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-Exactly.
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-I'm kind of jealous because I feel like I'm one of those people that I need to,
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I guess, stick with it multiple days in a row before I see or notice any difference
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from meditating.
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And maybe that's just my lack of self-awareness, which is possible.
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But I just don't see whenever I do it that morning.
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And I'm using the app com for it.
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And they've just got a timed version of it.
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I don't do any of the guided pieces.
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I did those a while back and they never really helped me.
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So I just kind of do the silence thing.
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And that seems to work pretty well for me.
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But at the end of that session, I'm just like, "Okay, now what?"
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By the end of the day, I don't really notice it until I get a streak of about four or five
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days in a row.
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If I can get that streak of four or five days in a row, then I feel like I can start to notice
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it, which I guess is a pretty good instigator to keep a series of days going in a row.
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Don't break the chain.
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I know.
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I know.
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But the nice thing is that because one of the other pieces that I have been adopting
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is the journaling piece.
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So I try to make sure that at the end of the day, whenever I'm doing that journaling
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portion of my day that I'm discussing with myself how the meditation bit went,
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and I haven't looked back on them yet to see if there's much of a difference there,
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but I'm at least recording that.
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Hopefully that'll help me to at least see if there's any difference in the long run.
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Yep.
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Data-driven decisions.
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All right.
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It's true.
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It's true.
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But the other piece of the journaling thing that I've been doing is,
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am I working my way towards the goals that I have set?
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Am I able to conquer the urges to procrastinate and beat those?
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Those are the ones I'm primarily journaling through.
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And the nice thing is that just it's kind of like confession time, I guess,
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where I need to sit down and be honest with myself and just having that period of time
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at the end of the day.
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That's extremely helpful.
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And it at least helps me see where some of those weak points are,
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and where some of the difficult times that I need to be on my game and be aware of,
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step in, which is some of what we'll talk about today in today's book.
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But I think that journaling piece, and you talked about jumping in and doing a little more
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journaling as well or redirecting that a little bit.
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But for me, I've just found that being honest with myself and just being aware of
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the struggles that go on through the day and trying to figure out how do I overcome those.
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That's the big piece there that's extremely helpful.
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Yeah, you got to know what works and what doesn't.
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And journaling is a great way to create a record of what works and what doesn't.
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And then when you look back at it, you have a different idea a lot of times of what actually
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transpired.
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And then over time, you kind of lose the forest through the trees.
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But the journal, going back to your journal, can help you re-center and say,
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"Oh yeah, this is actually what happened."
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Yeah, it's true.
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Has that-- because you made some changes to journaling process, I thought, right?
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A little bit.
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It's still mainly the same.
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I'm kind of rethinking some other prompts that I asked myself, and I've kicked around
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some different ones.
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But in the end, it's still fairly similar.
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Okay, maybe I just--
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Really the idea for me is just to, at the end of the day,
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actually think through what really happened and then kind of rate myself on how I did.
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And usually when I do that, I can find the tipping points for where my day either
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became really productive or I got off track.
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And then identifying those tipping points helps because then you can avoid those situations in
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the future that kind of lead to that.
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So it's kind of like you see these patterns, at least for me, and then in the future,
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you can see yourself start to go down this pattern and you can catch yourself and say,
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"Oh no, I know where this is going to end up," and then you can course correct.
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Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
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Primarily for me, one of the things that I'm trying to journal about is with my creative work,
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because I do a lot of writing, you and I podcast together. I'm stepping into kind of building courses,
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online courses as well. So there's a lot of that creative piece that comes in.
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And that's primarily what eventually led me to choosing our next book, The War of Art,
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by Stephen Pressfield. And the subtitle on this is Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Intercreative
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Battles. I chose this primarily because whenever it comes time to sit down and write or generate a
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video or a podcast of some kind, for me, the podcast not so much, especially when there's
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someone else on the other line, just because there's the accountability piece there.
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But whenever it comes time to write, for a long time, I have had the mentality of,
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I just don't feel like I know what I'm going to write about, so I don't at all.
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And I know it doesn't make sense now that I'm thinking about it, but
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previously, I would always come at it from the standpoint of, "Okay, I need to have
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the best scenario to sit down and write." And I could create that scenario, but I don't really
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want to, and I don't really know how. And what I mean by scenario is mostly a mindset.
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And I'm coming around to how do I do this and how do I understand this creative work. And
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Stephen Pressfield, in the book, he talks about not necessarily saying that art has to be
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something creative in the sense of writing or painting or anything on those lines. He could
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also talk about building businesses, which I thought was interesting, because so many of us are
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building at least a side project or we're solo-preneurs type. So just how do you
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deal with that? How do you bring yourself to do that work and what's the fight that's going to go
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on the war in this case to keeping you from doing that? So I know that I struggle with that,
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and that's one of the reasons I wanted to read the book.
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Yeah, it's great for any creative type who's making anything. I talks a lot about the
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roadblocks and the resistance that people who have that creative mindset face. So
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you want to just jump in and I know resistance is kind of where the book starts.
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Yeah. You want to talk about that?
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I think so, because ultimately he starts, well, the whole book, if we back up here a little bit
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and say the whole book, the layout of it, he's got it broken down into three sections.
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I think it makes sense, Mike, to just work through him.
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Like go through the first one and then go through the second and the third. And the first one
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is all about resistance and what is it that we're fighting against? In other words, who's the enemy?
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Who is it that we're fighting against here? I have some ideas on how to define resistance,
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but Mike, what are the resistance pieces that stood out to you when you went through the book?
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Well, I think that resistance could have a little bit different definition for just about anybody.
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Anybody who's a creative type who has had a project that they've been working on or they know
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they should be working on has encountered resistance in some way, shape, or form. And they probably
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know exactly what you're talking about when you say resistance, which is one of the things
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that I really liked about this book. Like you were talking about the resistance that you face
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when you sit down to write. He has a quote and I've just wrote down a ton of quotes from this book.
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He says at the very beginning, it's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting
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down to write. So for a writer, you're like, yes, that is exactly the issue. And you can identify
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with resistance in that particular scenario. One of the craziest analogies, or maybe a sudden
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analogy, the stories that he told, conclusions that he drew was when he was talking about Hitler
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at the beginning of the book. Do you remember that?
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Vaguely. He talks about how Hitler actually wanted to go to art school. And all right, right,
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right. He just couldn't hack it. He has this quote at the beginning. He says,
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it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank piece of canvas.
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Which sounds a little bit extreme, sensational, whatever word you want to use there. But
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if you've been in that particular situation where you're like, okay, I have to create this thing.
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Like it feels like the entire world is fighting against you at that point.
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It's so true. And, you know, if you use the writing example, which is easy to do because
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you and I are both writers in some form, whether it's for a blog or a book or anything,
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we tend to write quite a bit. And the struggle really is to get your butt in the chair
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to start writing. I mean, it's just not, at least for me, the process of writing is enjoyable. But
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getting myself to go do it is always a struggle because I don't know what I'm going to write about
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for the most part. And when he talks about resistance and he puts all kinds of types of labels on it
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and Pressfield is awesome at cutting, I guess would be the word for it. He can condense things
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down into a very small package, but it says a ton in very few words, which is awesome. But it
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also means that you end up rereading little sections quite a bit. And he does this significantly
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through the resistance definition piece. And it's just page after page of resistance.
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It's the most powerful at the finish line. And it comes through procrastination. He even talks
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about resistance and sex. So it can take a lot of different forms. And for me, a lot of those,
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yes, it's a war. And for me, a lot of it is the procrastination piece. So if you go back to
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Kelly McGonigall's book, from last time, The Willpower Instinct, I struggle a lot with
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the thinking tomorrow is going to be better. That mentality of not getting to it today,
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because I think I'll be in a better position tomorrow. So I put it off to my tomorrow self,
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instead of my today's self, which is horrible. And it continues. And the next thing, you know,
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you got to cycle and it's three weeks before I do anything. And it just continues. But yeah,
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he actually says procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance. We don't say I'll
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never do it. We say I'll do it tomorrow, which is exactly to your point. Yeah. And I don't know why
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for me, and maybe I should say I do know why. It's mostly because I don't want to
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try to put something out there that's not perfect. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I always want it to
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be as good as it could be. So it's easy for resistance to step in and say, well, you're not
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in the mood to do it perfectly today. Let's do it tomorrow. And that cycle kicks off from there.
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It's not that I'm saying I'm not going to write or I'm never going to write. It's just that tomorrow
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will be a better time. You know, the kids will be out of the house. I'll have better coffee at that
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time. The whole space will be in a better place. I'll have it cleaned up at that point. I mean,
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you see have a list of excuses can just go on and on and on.
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Yep, exactly. And that's what he would define as self dramatization, I believe,
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which he says feeds resistance and it keeps us busy, but we're not productive.
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You know, if we focus on our situation and all the things that are preventing us,
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all those built in excuses from actually doing the work, then we can say, well, I'm not going
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to have to deal with this situation in the future, but I'm going to go back to Kelly McConaugall's
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book. We tend to view the future as like the ideal and it never plays out that way.
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It's true. I wish it did. That'd be awesome.
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But it never does. One of the forms of resistance that I thought was kind of interesting.
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He talks about some of these disorders. Did you catch this piece? The self medication
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that it was interesting that because he used to work for an ad agency. And one of the things that
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his boss used to tell him at the time was to invent a disease and come up with a disease and
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you could sell a cure to that disease. And it's interesting that we do that so much. And
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some of the disorders that he lists there, I'm not so sure are actually marketing ploys.
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They might actually be diseases, but they're at least interesting that like take myself,
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for example, I've had a psychologist that says, I'm ADHD. Well, just having that label
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immediately starts to give you an excuse for not doing something. And it's easy to take advantage
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of it, I guess. It's not that I'm saying I'm distracted and I can't focus long enough to write.
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Or maybe I'm using that as an excuse. And that's one that I've previously used as an excuse.
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And to be honest, once I finish reading this book, my ability to sit down and write went up
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dramatically just because you understand that it's a war and you start to put better labels on it,
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I guess. There's the label of the ADDPs, but having a label of something that combats that
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or potentially challenges that there's even the thing there to begin with will at least put you
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in this place where you're better able to go to battle. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah, definitely.
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And I thought that part was really interesting when he was talking about the marketing of the
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diseases. And he used a statistic, I don't know where he gets this, but he said that doctors estimate
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that 70 to 80% of their business is non-health related. Did you catch that? I did. I thought that
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was interesting. I brought it up to my wife and she thought it was probably true, but I don't know.
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Yeah, I guess I could see that. But yeah, I thought I used specifically when he mentioned the
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ADD stuff. Like, I wonder what Joe thinks about that. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I'm,
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I don't know if I'm coming to grips with the ADD thing or if I'm just rejecting it entirely.
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I've been calling it a racecar brain. I'm not going to instead of anything. I like that.
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Yeah, I don't know how I feel about the labels in general, but it's, it's at least interesting. And
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for me, as someone who's been given that label, I tend to use the book, The Willpower Instinct.
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And now with this, The War of Art, I see them as tools to combat it, if that helps at all. Because
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there's so much that goes on in your mind. And for me, I can bounce from thing to thing,
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extremely fast. Just in general conversation, I can throw some people off, just be like,
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how on earth did you get there, Joe? I don't know. I just jumped for topics and landed there
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somehow. But just knowing that when I sit down to create that there is this force, if you will,
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that's an enemy to be fought. And just knowing that there's something there
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to fight against and that there is a war against, that in and of itself helps tremendously for me.
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Yeah. And the phrase that I really took from that first section was resistance understands
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nothing but power. So you're going to have to deal with this resistance and you can't
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deal with it any other way than to smack it in the face and say, no, I'm going to beat you.
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You can't ask it to leave. You have to overcome that fear that he talks about.
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Here's another quote. It says, if you find yourself asking, am I really a writer? Am I really an
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artist? Which I can totally relate to? Having published a book, I still ask myself that.
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He says, chances are, if you're asking those questions, then you are. The counterfeit innovator
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is the one that is wildly self-confident. They're the ones who say, oh, I can do that tomorrow.
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But the real one he says is scared to death. So recognizing that that fear is going to be there
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is kind of comforting in some sense because when you deal with that stuff after reading the book,
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it's kind of like, oh, that's normal. Everybody in my situation is going to go through this sort of
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thing. It's not just me. When you were writing your book, did you deal with this a lot?
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Was that something that you found difficult to overcome? And I don't know if you had read this book
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because I think isn't this a reread for you? Yeah, it's the second time I've gone through it.
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I can't remember when I read it the first time. It may have been before I wrote my book.
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But yeah, this was definitely something that I dealt with. But the thing that kind of grounded
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me, I guess, was the why I wrote the book in the first place.
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I mean, just being really straightforward, I guess. My book is a Christian take on productivity.
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So obviously I have a Christian mindset that I approach it from. And my belief in God was
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really the thing that drove me to write it. I believe that I had to write this book, that I would be
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held accountable when I die for not writing this if I hadn't written it. And I guess, you know,
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depending on your belief system, anybody could feel that way, you know, where this is something
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that I have to do. But it was really tangible for me. It really like put a face or a picture
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on the reason for why I wanted to write it in the first place, which made it a lot easier to
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relate to and then follow through with actually doing the work.
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Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that because so many of the ventures that I've taken on in
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the past, there's a lot of strong motivation purely from, like in your and I case, from a Christian
00:20:48
and spiritual standpoint, that there's such a strong pull towards that mission that the resistance
00:20:56
is almost just gone at that point because you have so much of that drive and that purpose behind
00:21:03
what you're doing. And I can definitely see that, you know, there are some sometimes when
00:21:09
resistance really isn't there. Some of the articles that I write, some of the
00:21:14
scripts or the small business ventures that I've taken on, they just happen. Like, I don't have to,
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it's not a war to sit down and do those things, just because it's enjoyable and it's something
00:21:30
that I can get excited about and I'm definitely on board with the mission behind it. So the
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resistance piece, I mean, who cares, it's not even there, it's not something I have to fight for.
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But whenever I go into something like writing articles for the blog, because I write to a week,
00:21:49
that means that it's pretty easy to run out of ideas pretty quick or it's not always
00:21:56
something that you're crazy excited about because you've done it so much. And whenever you have
00:22:01
something that you're continually trying to do repeatedly, that's I think when so much of this
00:22:08
resistance and that enemy can step up and the fear of putting it out there or doubting what it is
00:22:14
that you're doing, it's pretty easy for that to creep in and overtake it.
00:22:19
Yeah, and I don't think you need to have a Christian mindset in order to have like a spiritual
00:22:27
why. I mean, even in the Stephen Pressfield book, he talks about the prayer to the muse and he talks
00:22:34
a lot about the supernatural stuff, angels and things like that later on in the book. He's got a
00:22:39
little bit different take on it. But the motivation is and a lot of the
00:22:47
mental imagery that he uses, I completely agree with. My definition of an angel is probably
00:22:55
different than his, but I think we in terms of the whole spiritual realm at least, it sounds like
00:23:06
there's a lot of synergy and agreement there and what is actually driving this work forward.
00:23:14
Yeah, and I'm going to kind of pivot on you a little bit here. Are you familiar with
00:23:21
Jeff Goins at all? Yep. Okay, so Jeff, he's an author, writer, and he writes about writing,
00:23:32
primarily, which is interesting. It's very meta. His big turning point in his whole career
00:23:39
that I thought was interesting and he talks about this quite a bit was the day that he was
00:23:45
talking to a friend and he was grappling with whether or not he was a writer and whether or not
00:23:52
he wanted to be a writer and all of this stuff and how do you go pro, if you will?
00:23:58
And the thing that his friend told him was, well, you just have to say I'm a writer
00:24:02
and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, but just the definition there completely changed the game
00:24:10
for him. And it's interesting to me that Pressfield basically says the same thing. Whenever you want
00:24:19
to combat resistance, you need to turn pro. You need to step away from being an amateur and go
00:24:27
pro with it, which is a simply simple process of making the decision that you're a pro.
00:24:33
And he goes through a lot of different pieces on defining what a professional is,
00:24:39
which I think are really, really interesting and just the concept of turning pro and that it's a
00:24:46
decision by itself. I thought that was interesting because I've never really thought about it that way.
00:24:52
Yeah, and one specific aspect of that, he said that the professional tackles the projects that
00:24:59
will make him stretch. So I think a lot of people have this picture that once you turn pro,
00:25:05
you're really good at this and it's autopilot after that. But that's not my experience at all.
00:25:14
And it sounds like that's not Stephen Pressfield's experience either and not how he would define it.
00:25:18
But it's constantly seeking out those projects where you feel like you're over your head.
00:25:23
So when I wrote my book, for example, I had no idea how to write a book. I just figured I better
00:25:31
learn how to write. So I started, I started a blog just so I could get some practice,
00:25:36
you know, do some, do some reps. And there wasn't ever a point. It wasn't, you know, after I
00:25:44
published the book that I was like, okay, yes, now I have arrived. Now I am a pro. But looking back
00:25:51
at it after I read this book, the moment I turned pro in my eyes, and according to Stephen Pressfield's
00:25:58
definition was the moment that I decided to chase this project that I had no idea how to complete.
00:26:04
And if you do that enough, you'll find yourself, you'll end up somewhere that you never thought
00:26:12
you would get. Because when you take on those projects that stretch you, you don't know what the
00:26:17
end goal is going to look like a lot of times, right? You at least don't know what the process
00:26:21
is going to look like to get there. You have to kind of figure it out as you go. And recognizing
00:26:28
that that is part of the process, that is what a professional does. It's not just the things that
00:26:33
you know how to do and doing them over and over and over again until they become automatic.
00:26:38
That makes me feel a lot better about my process and my story and what I've gone through.
00:26:45
So does it still feel weird if somebody calls you an author? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.
00:26:54
So I've written a book as well, and I've had a couple people refer to me as an author. And
00:26:59
I almost want to contradict them. I don't agree with you. I'm not an author. I just happen to
00:27:08
have written a book. That's all it is. So it's not something, it's definitely an internal thing.
00:27:15
And you kind of just have like Pressfield says you have to make that decision. But it still feels
00:27:20
weird if somebody else calls you that. Yep. I would argue that the thing that makes you
00:27:28
a professional is the fact that you're going to show up and do it. He had a quote in there that
00:27:34
I really liked in that section on Turning Pro about the athlete. This is the athlete knows that
00:27:40
the day will never come when he wakes up pain free. He has to play hurt. And then there was another
00:27:46
quote kind of related. It's Somerset Meigem, is that how you say their name? It says I write only
00:27:53
when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. Yep.
00:27:57
You know, it's recognizing that there's never going to be that perfect scenario. The circumstances
00:28:03
are not going to be ideal. The stars are not all going to align where you can finally now,
00:28:09
I've got the time to sit down and make your thing or write the book or launch the project,
00:28:15
whatever the case may be. But to show up and do it every day anyways, even if it's not a big
00:28:23
substantial amount of time that you're investing in that project, just the fact that you show up
00:28:29
every day, I would argue is the thing that makes you a professional as opposed to one of the spectators
00:28:36
who sits on the sideline and is like, I'll do that tomorrow. They've got the ideas, they've got
00:28:42
the inspiration, but they never actually take any action on those goals and those dreams and
00:28:49
those visions that they have. And you combine this with his, as he's going through the definition
00:28:57
of a professional, he also has one where he says a professional plays it as it lies. And
00:29:03
it makes a lot of sense too, because he comes at it from a golf standpoint, you have to play the
00:29:09
ball where it lands. And whenever you're fighting against resistance, whenever you turn pro,
00:29:16
the circumstances like you're saying, they're not always going to be perfect. It's not like you're
00:29:20
going to be sitting with a straight, perfectly level green, ready to putt exactly with no win,
00:29:26
no anything, birds not going to sweep in and take it. Everything's going to be perfect and ready
00:29:31
for you. It's just not the way it is. Instead, you have to make sure that you're willing to,
00:29:36
in this case, go to war to continue to do the work. So talk action items here. I couldn't help
00:29:45
myself, so I got a head start on this mic. And for me, and I've written about this in the past,
00:29:52
I have two different desks in my office. One is a writing desk and one is my computer desk. And
00:29:58
I do all my writing with pen and paper. I don't do it with a keyboard. I always end up transcribing
00:30:04
it, dictating it into the computer later. Well, with that writing desk, I have found, since reading
00:30:12
this, that I just have to make sure that there's a certain time of the day, which for me is first
00:30:17
thing in the morning. And then again, after second breakfast, I'm semi-hobit. Whenever I get back
00:30:23
down in my office after second breakfast, that's another time when I sit down and write. And in both
00:30:29
cases, what I have to do and going through some of his suggestions here, accepting no excuses,
00:30:36
just doing the work, making sure you're ready for it and setting up all the environment for that,
00:30:44
I have to make sure that my phone stays upstairs or is somewhere else in the office where I can't
00:30:49
get it. The computer's off and I'm able to just sit down. And the only thing that's in front of
00:30:54
me is a pen and paper. That's all that I have available to me. If that's all that I'm able to
00:31:00
do at that time, then my only choice is to go to work and to do the work and beat resistance in
00:31:07
that case. So I've had to set some of those pieces up. And it's interesting how once you
00:31:16
sit down in that chair after you do that for three or four days in a row, just sitting in the
00:31:20
chair with a cup of coffee, it's crazy how everything just kind of magically takes over.
00:31:26
I think that's what he gets into in the third book of this, the third section of the higher
00:31:32
realm and the muse that he talks about. I think I would disagree with him on a lot of it, but
00:31:37
the interesting part for me that I found is if I sit down and I've got that set time and I've
00:31:44
got that set set of those circumstances put in place and I don't really have any other choice,
00:31:50
then the work is pretty easy to do, honestly, which is a very good thing.
00:31:55
So Joe, I have to ask you this because you have a separate writing desk. So you're probably the
00:32:04
most qualified person that I know to answer this question. Okay. Since I watched Alison
00:32:11
Wonderland with Johnny Depp, I have been wondering how is a raven like a writing desk?
00:32:16
I can't answer that question, Mike. Darn, thought for sure you would know.
00:32:23
Very good question. I don't have an answer. But I digress. One thing that I wanted to go back to
00:32:32
when you were talking about your setup, this whole section on being professional really
00:32:38
spoke to me. One thing he said though is that being a productivity guy, I really like this,
00:32:47
he said the professional will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to
00:32:53
banish it from his mind, which I would argue is exactly what you did when you set up your writing
00:32:57
desk. You wanted to make sure that there was no distractions, there was no chaos. When you
00:33:03
sat down to write, everything was in order. You've got your pens, your notebooks, I'm sure just
00:33:09
sitting there ready to be picked up and you've eliminated all that friction that could
00:33:13
get you to the point where you say, I just don't feel like it. I'll do it tomorrow. Correct?
00:33:20
Yeah, absolutely. Everything has to be clean. It literally, the notebook has to be open in the
00:33:27
title of the article or whatever it is I'm writing has to be already written at the top.
00:33:31
All I can do is grab the pen, uncap it and go.
00:33:36
Right. So that actually led to the, again, I'm just quoting different quotes that I really
00:33:42
liked from this book, but the professional dedicates himself to mastering technique.
00:33:47
Not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration, but because he wants to be in
00:33:53
possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration comes. That to me is the whole reason
00:34:01
for productivity and the whole reason for the organization that he's talking about is you want
00:34:07
to make sure that there is nothing in the way when that inspiration does happen. You want to make
00:34:14
sure that you can click in as easily as possible. And as Kel Newport would say, do that deep work.
00:34:21
The deep focus work that's really important. That's Stephen Pressfield's approaching it from
00:34:28
a creative stance in Kel Newport. I guess he would define deep work a little bit different where
00:34:34
it could be literally anything. But I think there's definitely some alignment there
00:34:39
where when that state of flow is there for the taking, you want to make sure that you're not
00:34:47
too distracted or there's not friction in your system to the point where you don't recognize it.
00:34:52
Yeah, absolutely. And so much of, because we're heavy in the productivity space, Mike,
00:34:59
and there's a large amount of productivity tips and tricks and apps and tools that
00:35:06
their whole purpose is to eliminate friction and resistance. I mean, look at tools like
00:35:11
take drafts, for example. It's an app for iPhone that you open it up and you can start typing into
00:35:17
it. And then after you type the text, you can send it somewhere else. The whole point of that app is
00:35:22
to remove resistance and getting something out of your head or to send it somewhere else,
00:35:28
but you don't know where it's going to go yet. Like the whole point is to remove that resistance.
00:35:32
Exactly. If you spend any time in the productivity space,
00:35:37
you start to see that this is a recurring thing. Like so much of what we do in the tips and the
00:35:43
tricks and the stuff that we come up with, the scripts and all of it primarily comes down to
00:35:50
removing resistance to the point where you could almost define productivity as removing resistance.
00:35:56
It's kind of ridiculous if you get down that far. That's true.
00:36:03
The other thing, I'm kind of going back to the middle section and we were talking a little bit
00:36:10
about the third book. The other thing I want to just touch on, I guess, is the whole idea of you
00:36:17
incorporated. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. That was really a light bulb moment for me because
00:36:25
when it comes to especially my personal projects, I am a terrible self-promoter.
00:36:31
I created a video course which I give away for free. I don't even sell it. I can't even get myself
00:36:39
to tweet about it. I did it one time when I launched it.
00:36:42
It's true. I did the same thing. I recently sold a thousand copies of my book, so I wanted to be
00:36:53
awesome and offer a huge discount on it. To say thanks, I guess. Of course, I write the email.
00:37:02
You send out your almost obligatory tweets and posts and emails to everybody to let them know about
00:37:09
it. You inevitably get people that are upset about it. This is another set of things that
00:37:16
Pressfield talks about is when you get those critics that come in because you put something
00:37:20
out there. You're doing something to help. You're putting your heart on the line. Whenever you do
00:37:26
that and you're doing it to help, you want to promote it. You want it to be successful.
00:37:32
You're always going to have people upset about it. It's just the way it goes. But the trick is to
00:37:39
not listen. We know this for a long time. Don't feed the trolls.
00:37:45
So much of that is true here because if you start creating things to not get critics in order to
00:37:54
not get the negative feedback, it ends up being, how would you put that non-successful, non-dramatic,
00:38:05
I don't know what you want to say there, but something that's not as beneficial or helpful to
00:38:11
other people. Even though you're putting a lot out there, it's not as impactful. That's what I'm
00:38:17
trying to say. It's got to be authentic. It's got to be who you really are. He talks a lot about
00:38:23
the self versus the ego. He talks about how specifically in that last section, he talks about
00:38:33
the hack versus the professional basically. The hack he says doesn't write what's in his heart.
00:38:38
He writes for his audience. Then he asks a question which was really, really good.
00:38:44
If you were the last person on earth, would you still do this? Because a lot of times we can get
00:38:51
caught up in writing for the audience and writing because we want to create things that we think
00:38:58
are going to be successful or are going to sell. There's definitely a place for that.
00:39:05
That's part of the equation, I would say, but really that whole last section of the book where
00:39:12
he's talking about the muse and he's getting into his spiritual reasonings and his spiritual
00:39:21
why, stuff like that. It really hit me between the eyes. You wrote this book because you say that
00:39:29
you believe that you had to do it. Why wouldn't you promote it? If you really do believe in this
00:39:37
thing that strongly, let's see it. Where does the rubber meet the road? If this was just something
00:39:45
so you could check it off on a list, then yeah, don't tweet about it. Don't promote it. But if
00:39:51
you really do believe that you got this thing because the world needs to hear this, then you
00:39:57
really can't care. It has to go farther than just the creation, I guess. If you really believe in
00:40:03
the message and the thing that you're creating, it's going to be a natural extension to promote
00:40:10
that and get it out there so that other people can see it and you're not going to care about the
00:40:13
criticism or at least you're going to keep going. You're going to overcome the criticism.
00:40:18
The criticism is really just the manifestation of the fear that he talked about in the first
00:40:27
part of the book. It can be really tough. I know with my book it's available on Amazon. I don't
00:40:34
remember the people who leave the glowing five-star reviews. I remember the one guy who says,
00:40:41
"I don't like it because of this, this, and this." I'm like, "No, you don't understand. That's not
00:40:46
what I'm saying." For example, if you're on my email newsletter, all it really is is there's some
00:40:55
original content that goes with it and then it's mostly just a feed of the articles and podcasts
00:40:59
that I put out. I never send out these promotion type emails. I don't ever do that. It's partly
00:41:09
because I don't like getting them. I'm okay with one or two every now and then but not every day.
00:41:17
It just gets to be overwhelming. I don't like sending them out. I recently sent one out.
00:41:24
Of course, there's a lot of people that were saying thank you because they loved the thing I was
00:41:29
promoting but at the same time, there's one or two guys that come back and say, "A marketing advert?
00:41:36
So sad. Really? You did this?" Well, of course I did this. I want you to know about this. It's
00:41:42
something awesome and I want you to be able to participate in it. You really have to get past
00:41:48
all the haters out there because you're not doing it for everybody. You're doing it for a small
00:41:55
subset. Now, the part that's interesting to me on that whole story with the email bit is that
00:42:00
nobody unsubscribed over that at all, not even one. If you're so upset about it, why did you stick
00:42:07
around? Anyway, it's interesting to me how because the anonymity that comes with so much of the
00:42:15
critics today just means there's a lot of them. I don't want to belabor the whole critics and
00:42:21
haters and trolls a bit, but there's a lot of it out there. You don't have to write online very
00:42:28
long before you start getting pummeled with things that really, really don't matter. You just have
00:42:34
to look past it. Yeah, and I think writing maybe is one of the safer ones because when you write a
00:42:40
book, it's expected that you're going to think about all the developers who spend three years
00:42:44
creating an app that they sell for 99 cents. People are leaving one star reviews because they have
00:42:49
to pay for it. It's the same principle times about 100 with the App Store economics, but that's a
00:42:57
whole other conversation. Good grief. That's a nightmare there. Anyway, so if you go on to the
00:43:03
third book, the third section here, Pressfield gets big into spiritual forces, angels. I don't know
00:43:13
what else you'd call them, but he gets pretty heavy on this. His view, and I'm pretty sure you're
00:43:21
with me in disagreeing with him here, but his view is that when you sit down to write, let's use
00:43:28
that example because it's what we've been talking about. You sit down to write and whenever you hit
00:43:34
that flow or that creative juice starts to come through, he's saying that's not you. That's what
00:43:41
he's calling the muse, and it's them putting the words and the creativity into your mind so that
00:43:49
you can impart it on the world. Is that a fair description of this? Yeah. Kind of struggle to
00:43:57
understand it a bit. That being said, I do think that there are like me specifically, I guess,
00:44:07
there have been times where I will be doing something and evaluating the effectiveness of it and
00:44:16
be praying in Stephen Pressfield's instance, he'd be praying to the muse. I would be praying to
00:44:23
God. Yep. And I'll get an idea which I know, like that's not something I would have thought of myself,
00:44:33
so and it ends up being the right thing. Yep. So I do agree with him on the point that
00:44:40
you can get ideas from, I'll just say the spiritual dimension. I do believe in that part of it,
00:44:50
but I definitely don't think it works the way that he thinks it works, where you kind of just
00:44:56
tap into it. There is a big part of it. You have to create the environment. You have to show up.
00:45:02
You have to do the work like he's talking about in the first part of the book. And because there's
00:45:08
a whole book devoted to this, I think it maybe is emphasized a little bit more than even Stephen
00:45:15
Pressfield would if you sat down and had a cup of coffee with him, I'm not sure he would put this
00:45:21
on the same pedestal as or at the same level of the turning pro section. Yeah. I would agree with
00:45:27
you. And I would certainly agree with you on the spiritual realm. I'm definitely with you in that
00:45:31
camp. And I think there are times when this spiritual dimension, as we're calling it, would
00:45:38
give us words in that sense. And I'm definitely on board with you there. I think it starts to get
00:45:44
a little funny when he starts to, when it's not necessarily a, you know, if it's not someone coming
00:45:52
from God in that sense, I would tend to disagree with him there, but that's, that's the Christian
00:45:58
worldview coming through. But the part of it that's interesting to me is because he even calls out,
00:46:03
he even gives you the exception saying, you know, if you don't believe in these spiritual beings,
00:46:08
then just think of it as this force of nature in some form. Right. And I get that. And at the same
00:46:15
time, every time I was reading the muse, I kind of translated it to the mindset in my mind.
00:46:24
To me, it's, it's less of a force, like when I rest it down to right. And I definitely hit that
00:46:31
flow. And at this point, it's almost every morning, which is awesome. And whenever I do that, I don't
00:46:37
necessarily think of it as some external force giving me all of those creative words. I tend to
00:46:43
think of it just as a mindset. And given the circumstances in me setting myself up for it,
00:46:50
creates that trigger to allow myself to think in the way that I need to think in order to
00:46:58
write the words that I need to write. Does that make sense, Mike?
00:47:01
Yeah. I mean, that's basically what my book is, is about is the, that from the Christian
00:47:09
perspective, there are a lot of people who think that God will just show up and do everything for
00:47:14
you, not my experience. He'll tell you what to do. And then you have to get busy and actually
00:47:20
follow through and do it. He's not going to just snap his fingers and poof. You're in your dream job.
00:47:25
Right.
00:47:26
Fact, my, my experience, my story is I've kind of lived it out now. You know, when I started to write
00:47:34
the book, that's kind of what led to me getting my job at Asian efficiency. I started blogging.
00:47:41
And for about two weeks, I posted every day, five a.m. before I left for the office. And then
00:47:48
Asian efficiency posted that they were, they were hiring at the time. I wasn't even interested in a
00:47:52
full time job. I said, not, no, I don't really want to do that. But any opportunities for guest
00:47:57
posting. And they said, well, we really don't do that. But if you have anything, send it over,
00:48:00
send over my blog that I started two weeks earlier. And they said, yeah, there's a lot of synergy
00:48:05
here. We've read a lot of the same books, a lot of the same mindsets. We're going to give this a
00:48:09
shot. Now, you know, one thing led to another. And now I'm full time with the, with the company.
00:48:14
And there's a lot of synergy between my Christian belief system and the company's core values,
00:48:19
even though they don't share the same, same mindset. But you have to do something with that idea that,
00:48:26
in my opinion, God has given you, you have to be a good steward of it. So once you do that,
00:48:32
the score takes care of itself, as Don Schuller would say, but you've got to step out there.
00:48:39
If you never make the first step, nothing's ever going to change.
00:48:42
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's some of this that comes out in, you know, you don't want to
00:48:48
go back to the very beginning here, where my experience was always waiting for that perfect
00:48:53
scenario, like you're waiting for this mindset to just kind of creep up and take hold of you.
00:48:58
It's not going to work that way. You have to create the circumstances and the place for that mindset
00:49:06
to come out. And this is where I think it's about two thirds of the way through the third book.
00:49:13
He actually shifts away from the spiritual realm, which makes me think that he's
00:49:19
not putting the emphasis on it that we originally think he is, even though he spends a lot of time
00:49:26
on the muse and the spiritual forces. He spends a lot of time there, but he does shift off of it
00:49:33
before the end of the book to talk about territory and hierarchies. And what he means by that is,
00:49:41
take the hierarchy thinking, for example, so you tend to put yourself in order, like,
00:49:46
that person's better than me and I'm better than this person. Like, well, that's just,
00:49:49
we tend to want to do that as humans. He's saying not to do that, which makes perfect sense. If
00:49:56
you're going to be an artist in some form that you would want to think of it more as this is my,
00:50:02
this is my place. This is my territory. This is where I go to work and nobody can touch me here.
00:50:07
That's what he's getting at there. I think that makes an awful lot of sense. Take the writing
00:50:14
desk, for example, Mike, if I, if someone else were to sit down at that desk, well,
00:50:21
it's not going to work for him. It's not going to do a whole lot for him. It's set up for me.
00:50:25
That's my territory. I know that whenever I go down to that desk and I go to work,
00:50:30
I'm going to be writing about productivity or tools or apps or something.
00:50:33
If I'm doing that, then that's, that's my game. That's where I'm at and I know I'm good at that
00:50:40
and I need to be okay with saying that because that's a place where I am a professional.
00:50:44
That's what I do. So that's my territory and I know it and I know your territory is similar to
00:50:50
that, but I think you're a little more broad than I am. Yeah, my territory is basically wherever I can
00:51:00
sit with my computer and then my latest toy is these Bose QC 35 headphones,
00:51:06
which are awesome. They are Bluetooth noise canceling headphones. So I now, for the first time,
00:51:15
have the ability to basically create that territory wherever I am and it is a game changer because I
00:51:22
do have an office, but it's about 10 minutes from my house, which is where I'm recording this
00:51:28
podcast from right now. I have my mic set up here and it's my probably eight by 10 office with no
00:51:35
windows. I call it my hobbit hole where I go and I need to need to just focus on something and
00:51:40
so we're both projects. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But yeah, so the ability though to to sit down
00:51:50
at my writing desk, which is literally just my laptop, I have been around computers my entire
00:51:57
life. I mean, my dad was taking me to to do presentations with him when I was three years old and you
00:52:02
know, booting up the Apple two E's. So it's just really comforting for me. Mine, you know, it's
00:52:09
digital. It's not analog like like yours, but it evokes that same emotion and that same,
00:52:17
I don't even know how to describe it. It's the sense of like, okay, I'm home. Now it's time to
00:52:24
just like, this is my territory like you were talking about. This is my domain. This is where
00:52:29
I can make stuff happen. And so yeah, the principle definitely still applies.
00:52:35
One of the quotes that I thought encompassed a large portion of the book here as a whole.
00:52:43
He's talking about a professional and the order that's needed for that. And this is what he says
00:52:51
because he's also got a story right before this where he talks about living in the back of his
00:52:56
Chevy van. Do you remember this? And he had to dig out his typewriter underneath layers of tire
00:53:01
tools, laundry, books, and he had a bunch of stuff in the back and he had to dig out his
00:53:06
typewriter in order to write. And then he says this, the professional cannot live like that. He's
00:53:12
on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to
00:53:17
banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed, the threshold swept so the muse may
00:53:22
enter and not soil her gown. I thought that made a lot of sense. And it really encompassed so much
00:53:27
of what he says in the entire book that there's a lot of chaos and resistance, for lack of a better
00:53:35
word, that can try to prevent us from creating. And we need to keep everything in order to allow us
00:53:45
to step in and do that creation and allow that mindset to skip away from the muse words,
00:53:51
to allow that mindset to step in and take over and help us to create the thing authentically and
00:54:00
honestly, in that case. So I think that really helped me a lot to just think about it that way.
00:54:05
Yep. Yeah, definitely. The organization aspect of Going Pro is so important. And then
00:54:14
like you were talking about the key then is to once you have the environment set up, you have the
00:54:21
atmosphere created, you're organized to the point where all the friction in the system is gone,
00:54:26
then being authentic. That was the big thing that I took away. You mentioned a little bit earlier,
00:54:32
you can't define yourself hierarchically. You can't compare yourself to other people. If I were
00:54:37
to compare myself to Jeff Goins, I wouldn't do anything because I don't know the level of experience
00:54:43
or the level of success that he has. And that would be in Stephen Pressfield's terms, a win for the
00:54:50
resistance. But another thing he said at the end of the book is that the biggest fear we have
00:54:58
is that we will succeed. Never really thought about that before. But when I read that, it was like,
00:55:08
yeah, that I can totally see how that would apply. Like the whole being bad at self promotion thing,
00:55:14
as long as I don't self promote, I have a built in excuse for my book to stay small.
00:55:22
Yep. But if I were to step out there and to really go all in,
00:55:28
I don't know what would happen. It's possible that it would not be a New York Times the best
00:55:37
seller probably wouldn't be, honestly. But it was interesting to think about the fact that
00:55:44
we stay with the things that we're familiar with. We stay where we think it's safe.
00:55:50
And we don't step out there because we don't, we don't at some level want to deal with
00:56:02
with the, if the book were to blow up, I have no idea how to handle that situation. So it's
00:56:09
on a psychological level, almost easier to just say, I'm fine with things the way they are.
00:56:15
I don't want to see what happens, which is kind of sad when you think about it that way.
00:56:20
It's kind of a depressing note there, Mike.
00:56:23
It is. Well, I don't mean it to be depressing, but it's also my big takeaway, I guess,
00:56:31
was like, okay, how much do you really believe in this thing that you created?
00:56:36
You know, it's time to put your money where your mouth is.
00:56:41
You know that there are things that you can do to promote it and get it out there that you
00:56:47
aren't doing at the moment. And so I was forced to look at myself through the eyes of, okay,
00:56:54
am I am I sure? Am I a professional? Because the professional is just going to get out there
00:56:59
and they're going to make this happen, let the chips fall where they may. The amateur is going to
00:57:03
say, well, I'm too busy. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. And I'll get to that tomorrow.
00:57:07
And it was kind of compounded because I also had a conversation this week with somebody else
00:57:14
in the productivity space, Sean Blanc, that I respect. And he was asking me the same thing.
00:57:22
He's like, well, you know, is this a priority for you? Like, is this something that you really
00:57:28
believe in? Or are you okay with the fact that this may never be something big? And when you
00:57:36
frame it that way, it's like, yeah, I got to just shut up and do it. Yep. You got to get to work.
00:57:43
You can't just let it slide because we know what's going on as it slides. Like,
00:57:49
as things are just moving along currently, we know how it works. And when we create something
00:57:57
and we put it out there, it's kind of scary if it goes big. Like, it's scary if it gets to be
00:58:03
something large and more than just not knowing what to do if it does go big. There's also the
00:58:12
problem of lots of people seeing my heart and seeing me. And that's fearful. I mean,
00:58:19
that's not something that's easy to grapple with because you really have to be vulnerable.
00:58:25
There's a lot of hype right now, I guess, for some of the books from Brene Brown, I believe,
00:58:33
Brene. I think that's how you say it. She's written a lot about, you know,
00:58:37
as being vulnerable and stepping out there. And that's not an easy thing to do because there's
00:58:43
so much of the closeness and the potential for lashing back at you from like the critics like
00:58:50
we were talking about. There's so much of that that can just be thrown back in your face.
00:58:55
I don't want to throw them back in my face. I don't like it when people tell me that I need to
00:58:59
just stop writing in general, which, you know, I get some of those every single day. It's like,
00:59:03
okay, what are you talking about? So you really have to just get over that. I mean,
00:59:10
that's one of the action items that I have for going through this book was get to work.
00:59:15
You know, don't wait for perfect circumstances. And just remember that it is a war. And just knowing
00:59:22
that you're in a war at all means that you have the ability to think about it as something I have
00:59:30
to win instead of it just being how you do things. You stop thinking about the how and you start
00:59:36
thinking about the why behind it. And I think there's a lot of power in that because then you
00:59:42
can really start to sit down, know that you have to get your butt in the chair and do something
00:59:49
instead of just waiting for the perfect scenario to come along because it's not going to happen.
00:59:53
Right. And for me, the physical action item that comes out of this, and we were talking about
00:59:58
journaling at the beginning. And I'm adding to that after reading this of because I don't always
01:00:05
have a good view of my own art, the words that I write. I tend to, it's rare, Mike, that I read
01:00:12
something I've written and think that was really good. It's just the way it is. And I know that it
01:00:18
helps people. I'm aware of that. Which is why I continue doing it. But at the same time, I don't
01:00:24
always feel like that's it's not a good place to be. So one of the things that I'm trying to do is
01:00:31
come through the reading of this and come through the mindset of, you know, what I'm doing is good.
01:00:36
And I know that it's helping people. And I see those emails. I see the feedback on that. So I know
01:00:41
that what I'm doing is good work. I need to be okay admitting that and say, yes, I'm good at this
01:00:47
and know that I'm okay with being a professional and then admit that yes, I am a professional at this.
01:00:53
But that's one of the physical action items for me here is to journal about the feelings that I have
01:00:59
about my own art, which can be kind of philosophical, I suppose.
01:01:03
Yeah, the big thing for me was to actually do what I've known for a long time. I need to do in terms of
01:01:17
being willing to self promote and being willing to get the message that's in my book out into the
01:01:23
world, to not be okay with the fact that it just sits on the digital bookshelf as something that
01:01:29
I've done. But to really embrace that if that's going to be my legacy, if that's my personal brand,
01:01:37
if I really believe in that message that I wrote, I need to double down on it. I need to follow through
01:01:45
with the next steps there. And actually, there's a quote in the War of Art that kind of encapsulates
01:01:52
it perfectly. It says, "Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it, boldness has genius,
01:01:57
magic and power in it, begin it now." It's like, okay, I guess I got to do it now.
01:02:01
Yep, get to work.
01:02:02
Yep, exactly. All right, Mike, how would you rate this book?
01:02:09
Man, that's a great question. So I really like the content of the book. Some of his word choice
01:02:18
is a little brash for me. And some of his imagery with the muse and stuff is,
01:02:26
that part was kind of hard for me to get through. It's kind of like,
01:02:29
I don't know, if there was a one point in the book where I wanted to put it down, that was the spot.
01:02:37
But it definitely is very impactful. And I think that it definitely altered my mindset and how I
01:02:47
view things, even the second time reading it. I'm going to say four and a half stars.
01:02:53
All right, I'm with you on, like, when I got to book three and he started talking to muse,
01:03:01
I almost skipped it. But I was like, okay, I can't skip it because I have to sit down with Mike
01:03:07
and talk about it. So I think if we weren't doing this, I probably would have skipped probably the
01:03:13
good half of that third book there. But I'm with you on, it can really change a lot. And I know that
01:03:20
as we were just talking about with the action items here, just knowing that I'm okay with my art,
01:03:28
I'm okay with being a professional and being willing to label myself that. Just coming out of it with
01:03:35
that mentality is huge, in my opinion. I mean, it's just, it has a huge impact. So I'm with you
01:03:40
there. It has a huge benefit in being a book to read. So if you create it all, I would highly
01:03:47
recommend it. But I'm with you on sections that I just completely disagree with or really had to
01:03:53
swallow hard. Like it was tough to get through. So there are some pieces of that that would make me
01:03:59
want to drop my rating quite a bit. So I would put it at a four even, mostly because I would debate
01:04:05
between a three and four, four and a half somewhere in there. So I'm going to land on a four ish.
01:04:10
4.0. 4.0. I'll call it that.
01:04:13
4.5 and 4 ish. Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right. So Mike, next book up is your choice.
01:04:21
What are we reading? The obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday.
01:04:26
Nice. And then so we're going to start reading that one now, which means it will record and
01:04:33
review that. I'm not reviewing it, but we'll talk about it in two weeks. And the one following that,
01:04:40
if you want to get the book for the readers here or for the for the readers, we're going through
01:04:45
books a lot, Mike. For the listeners, we're switching mediums here. For the listeners of the show,
01:04:50
the if you want to get the book that follows that, we're going to step into essentialism
01:04:55
by Greg McKeown. McKeown, right? I think that's how you say I looked it up. McKeown, I think, is right.
01:05:00
Could be. I've heard it from McKeown. I've heard a lot of them. And that's why I looked it up.
01:05:06
It's like, and I looked it up and I still think I'm getting it wrong. But that's the one that will
01:05:10
read following Mike's choice of the obstacle is the way. So that's the one that you would want to
01:05:16
pick up because I know it takes time to get books if you're going to read the physical copies.
01:05:21
So that's the one that would follow it. So obstacle is the way is coming up next.
01:05:25
Following that is essentialism. And then Mike has to decide what comes after that,
01:05:30
but I'm not going to make you do that here, Mike. All right, sounds good. All right, any last
01:05:36
parting words, Mike, on the war of art? Not good to work.