ryanhyde

In this final section Steven Pressfield stressed the importance of “professionalism”.  The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Doing brings power as we site down and do our work.

It took Steven 10 years before he got a check for something he had written and ten more before a novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was actually published. When he finished no one else knew it but him. Nobody else cared. But he felt like the dragon he had fought his whole life had dropped dead at his feet.

Rest in peace.

The next morning he went to a friend’s house for coffee and told him he had finished. His friends reply, “Good for you, start the next one today.”

Why did he say that?

Sales people are told that when you make a sale you should get back on the phone because chances are you will make another one.

A quote in the book “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” – W.H. Murray

When we begin.
When we make a start.
When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens.

Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?
Fear of consequences of following our heart. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. But this is not the Mother of all Fears, the Master Fear. That fear is:

Fear That We Will Succeed.

That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us.

A hack is someone who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to write, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for. Trust what you want and not what you think will work for the target market you are writing for.

The key to all of this is that we must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

Remember this, if you don’t do it you hurt not only yourself, but also everyone else.