Winning the War of Art: Overcoming Resistance with Steven Pressfield

Speaker 1 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 1 Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a month.
Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With offer watch.
Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 1 So, wanna drive? CarMax.

Speaker 2 Pickup not available everywhere.

Speaker 3 Restrictions and fee may apply.

Speaker 4 This is an Etsy holiday ad, but you won't hear any sleigh bells or classic carols. Instead, you'll hear something original.
The sound of an Etsy holiday, which sounds like this.

Speaker 4 Now that's special. Want to hear it again? Get original and affordable gifts from small shops on Etsy.
For gifts that say, I get you, shop Etsy. Tap the banner to shop now.

Speaker 2 What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast, which is soon, maybe it already is.
We're in the process of rebranding it to the Selling Online podcast.

Speaker 2 So depending on where you are right now, welcome back to the podcast. Pumped to have you here.

Speaker 2 And if you haven't been paying attention to the YouTube channel lately, we have been crushing it, doing a lot of really, really fun things. And so this episode is going to be based partially on

Speaker 2 a YouTube video we published recently. The YouTube video was about one of my favorite books of all time called The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
And so you have a chance, first off,

Speaker 2 if you haven't read that book yet, it's all about how to overcome resistance.

Speaker 2 So what I'm going to do is first part of the the podcast, you have a chance to listen to the audio from the YouTube video because it's going to help you guys to see just the highlights from that book, War of Art.

Speaker 2 And then after that, I actually had a chance to interview Stephen Pressfield for over an hour.

Speaker 2 And so after that, we'll jump over to the actual live interview and have a chance to hear some brilliance from the man himself.

Speaker 2 So with that said, we're going to jump right in directly to the YouTube video, the audio version of at least to learn about resistance, how to overcome resistance.

Speaker 2 And then I'll jump back here with you guys and then we'll set up the interview with Stephen Pressfield. All right that said, let's overcome resistance right now.

Speaker 2 In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online.

Speaker 2 This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.

Speaker 2 99% of people in this world fail because they can't conquer one thing. This book right here is one of my favorite books of all time.
They teach you how to overcome resistance.

Speaker 2 Every single one of us feels resistance every single day. Most of us multiple times throughout the day.
Every time the alarm clock goes off you feel resistance like I want to turn it off right?

Speaker 2 You want to check your phone, you want to scroll one more time, you want to watch one more episode on Netflix, like there's these things that keep holding us back. So I think it's some external force.

Speaker 2 I don't have the time, the money, the energy, but the reality is all of us have the same resources. The thing that keeps you from being successful is learning how to control resistance.

Speaker 2 When you can control the internal resistance you're having, then externally you can achieve the things you want in life.

Speaker 2 This book, if you haven't read before, is called The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, one of my favorite authors of all time.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna walk through four different steps to help you to overcome resistance so you can get your goals, accomplish your dreams, and change the world.

Speaker 2 All right, with that said, I want to walk you guys through the four steps that you need to learn to be able to overcome resistance in your life. And over here, we got them.

Speaker 2 So, these are the four steps to actually beat resistance. If it's been holding you back for any amount of time, today is the day it's gonna be gone forever.

Speaker 2 I'm so excited for you to learn these things. All right, so step number one

Speaker 2 is called

Speaker 2 expose the enemy. The first thing you need to do is understand exactly what resistance is.

Speaker 2 A lot of people don't even know this, that internal force is the thing that's keeping them from success. It's happening every single day, over and over and over and over again.
So, what is resistance?

Speaker 2 Well, inside of the book, The War of Art, in here, he's talking about people who are creating some type of art, right? So, everyone's got a different art.

Speaker 2 Some of you guys are writers, or you're designers, or you're content creators, or you're an athlete, but everyone's got a different art, right?

Speaker 2 And so, the war of art is this internal war we're having as we're trying to create our art.

Speaker 2 And obviously, Steven is a writer, so he's using a lot of these metaphors in terms of someone who's an author who's writing, but it's true for anybody, right? So this is what he says.

Speaker 2 He says, there's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't. And the secret is this.
It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

Speaker 2 What keeps us from sitting down is called resistance. I could replace this with any type of art.
Let's say, for example, you are a bodybuilder and you're trying to get in shape, right?

Speaker 2 Or maybe not a bodybuilder, you're just out of shape and you want to get in shape.

Speaker 2 So I might say the same sentence, like, the secret that people who are in shape know that that the people who aren't in shape don't know, is this. It's not the working out that's hard, right?

Speaker 2 It's the getting to the gym that's the hard part. What keeps you from getting to the gym is resistance.
So I want you to think about this inside your life.

Speaker 2 Like, what are all of the times the resistance is hitting you? Now, I had some of my clients do this one time.

Speaker 2 We sat down and said, for an entire 24-hour period of time, let's map out every time resistance hits. Okay, and I did the exercise with them.

Speaker 2 The craziest thing is my alarm goes off every morning at 4:50. Alarm goes off at 4:50.

Speaker 2 First thing is, I turn it off, and instantly, within a half a second of me waking up, resistance hits me and goes, roll back over, go back to bed. So So I grabbed my pad of paper.
I'm like, 4.50 a.m.

Speaker 2 Resistance wanted me to go back to bed, right? Then I get out of bed, it's cold, and my resistance is like, get back in bed, it's cold. Hit it again.

Speaker 2 By the time it was like five o'clock in the morning, resistance already tried to stop me like 10 times.

Speaker 2 And what's crazy for me, as soon as I became aware of the enemy, as soon as I was able to understand this is who it is, then I was able to address it and figure out ways to protect myself from the enemy, okay?

Speaker 2 That's why step number one is exposing the enemy. One of the things Pressville talks about here inside the book, he talks about what's called, what he calls the unlived life.

Speaker 2 He says it's the athlete who doesn't compete, or it's the writer who never writes, or it's the painter who never paints, or the entrepreneur who never actually starts his own business, right?

Speaker 2 And for most of us, in parts of our life, like we're not doing that, we're not living the life that we were called to actually live.

Speaker 2 So, that is the very first thing to understand, is to understand who the enemy is, because when you're aware of it, now we can actually beat it.

Speaker 2 Which now brings me to step number two in beating resistance. Step number two

Speaker 2 is this.

Speaker 2 Is ready for this?

Speaker 2 Is understanding the lies of resistance, okay? Now, resistance is going to give you a whole bunch of lies to keep you from being successful.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to walk you through a couple of these lies that most of us hit every single day. So the first lie is the lie of procrastination.

Speaker 2 Now this is one of the worst lies that resistance uses because resistance is not going to tell you, oh, don't go to the gym, right? It's going to say, go to the gym tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Resistance is not going to say, don't write the book. It's going to say, I'm going to write the book tomorrow.

Speaker 2 It's trying to get us to procrastinate the thing. And this is what's fascinating for most people.
I don't know about you.

Speaker 2 But if we procrastinate something until tomorrow, till Mañana, when Mañana comes,

Speaker 2 what happens? They get procrastinating the next day and the next day until we never actually get things done.

Speaker 2 It happens for all of us in every single area of our life, right? So understand that the very first lie that resistance is going to tell to you is procrastination.

Speaker 2 Not that you're not going to do the thing, but you're going to do it later. When you understand that, right?

Speaker 2 And I know my enemy, I know when procrastination is coming, I'm saying, dash resistance, I got to stop that. I cannot procrastinate.
I got to take action today.

Speaker 2 The second lie is what's called the shadow calling. This is where resistance will allow you to do a version of what you're called to do, but not actually the thing that you were called to do.

Speaker 2 For example, with Stephen Pressfield in this book, he talks about for a long time he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write books.
He wanted to write screenplays for movies, all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 2 And eventually he actually did. If you know this, he's the one that wrote the screenplay for the movie Bagger Vance.
With Will Smith, like one of the best movies of all time, he wrote that.

Speaker 2 But it took him like 40 years of writing before he ever did this.

Speaker 2 First he was writing copy for advertising companies. Then he was writing scripts for these projects.
He didn't like. He never actually did the thing he wanted.
He was doing a shadow version of it.

Speaker 2 His calling was to write books, to write screenplays, and he was doing a version of it, right?

Speaker 2 He was writing copy for clients, he was doing things, these other projects where he was writing, but he wasn't pulling into his calling. Now, shadow calling is a metaphor for your real calling.

Speaker 2 It looks very, very similar. The difference is there's no risk if you fail inside the shadow calling.
That's why resistance allows you to do that, right?

Speaker 2 If you're writing for somebody else and it doesn't work, it doesn't really matter. For you to put yourself out there and to write something and put it out into the world, right?

Speaker 2 There's consequences if it doesn't work. It's scary, it's fearful.
So, resistance is always trying to push you to a shadow calling.

Speaker 2 So, that's lie number two: the shadow calling is your actual real calling. Lie number three is what we call pleasure, not fulfillment.

Speaker 2 Resistance is always trying to get you a cheaper form of the thing you actually desire the most. It's trying to give you the dopamine hit.
We get the reward without the actual effort.

Speaker 2 Nothing good comes in life when you're getting just the reward without the effort that goes into it. And this is true in all sorts of things.
A couple examples I wrote down.

Speaker 2 Number one is having an actual relationship with somebody you love versus pornography.

Speaker 2 One,

Speaker 2 you get the reward without the risk. Number two, you get actual fulfillment.
Reading about something all day long, but not actually doing it,

Speaker 2 How many of us are reading and listening to podcasts and like going through the motions, but we're never actually doing the thing that we're called to do? Okay?

Speaker 2 Another one, I have so many friends who get in this trap where they go to school, and they keep going to school, and they keep going to school, and they're so scared to get out of the school system because they don't want to actually do the work.

Speaker 2 And then lie number four, this is one step deeper than

Speaker 2 a shadow calling. You're kind of in the thing.
Step number four, lie number four, is literally full sedation. When you're just sedated, you're trying to like not even focus on the dream.

Speaker 2 You're getting into drugs and alcohol, anything to get your brain away away from the pain of knowing that you're not living into your calling.

Speaker 2 So these are the lies the resistance is giving you to keep you from stepping into your actual calling. All right, you guys ready for step number three on how to beat resistance?

Speaker 2 This one is one of my favorites of all time. This one is really cool.
It is called...

Speaker 2 The bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance.

Speaker 2 Now I hear people say all the time, they come to me like, hey, Russell, I want to do this thing, but man, there were so many obstacles, so many things that are happening, that there must be a sign this is not something for me to actually do, right?

Speaker 2 Like, if I was supposed to do this, it would be easier.

Speaker 2 And so they step away from their calling because of the trials and the headaches and the heartaches that come when they're trying to pursue the thing right and this is the reality that's not true the opposite is actually true now i was lucky enough after reading this book and freaking out because it's one of my favorites of all time i messaged the author stephen pressfield i said can i interview you for a few minutes i want to find out some more stuff on about resistance how i can beat it inside of my own life and luckily for me and for you he said yes and so i actually have a clip over here of stephen pressfield from my interview and i want to show this uh clip specifically because he's talking about this concept of the bigger the dream you have the bigger resistance is going to be.

Speaker 2 So with that said, let's check out this clip from the man himself, Stephen Pressfield.

Speaker 5 Imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The minute the tree appears, a shadow appears.
And the shadow is equal to the tree, right? If it's a big tree, it's a big shadow.

Speaker 5 So in the terms of resistance, the tree is the dream that you have. The book you want to write, the adventure you want to do, whatever.
And resistance is the shadow.

Speaker 5 So there would never there would not what i want to say is resistance always comes second there would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream if there wasn't a calling that was inside you so the good news of that is when you're feeling big resistance that big shadow that shows that there's a big tree there something there's a big dream because resistance always comes like Newton's third law of motion equal and opposite reaction it's a reaction to to an aspiration, to a book you want to write or a movie you want, whatever it is.

Speaker 5 So don't be freaked out, I would say to anybody, by that dark cloud. That dark shadow is an indication that the dream is for real and it's big.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that is the key for you guys to understand, right? The bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. Okay, if you have a big dream, you start pursuing it, it gets hard.

Speaker 2 It doesn't mean oh, it's not meant to be. No, it means that it is meant to be, right? The greatest things in life don't come from simplicity.
It comes through the pain, through the hard work, right?

Speaker 2 It's getting the, it's going through the effort, the risk, the trials, and from the other side of that is when the greatest things come out.

Speaker 2 So understanding step number three here is that the bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance, and that's okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, for me now in my life, if I'm going after something big, I'm like, man, the resistance is huge here.

Speaker 2 Like, I get doubled down, like, even more excited knowing that it means that this calling, this thing that I'm chasing, the thing I'm pursuing, is something that's going to change a lot of people's lives.

Speaker 2 And the same thing is true for you.

Speaker 2 So when you're on your own personal war of art, when you're trying to create your art, whatever that thing is for you, and you feel the big resistance, don't step away from it.

Speaker 2 Lean into it, knowing that means you're on the right track. Okay, that brings me to step number four.
So how do we actually beat this thing, right? Obviously, we got to become aware of it.

Speaker 2 Number two, we got to understand the lies it's using to beat us.

Speaker 2 Number three, we have to understand that even if the resistance feels so heavy and so big that we can't pursue it, knowing that that is a sign that you are on the right path, the last step here is then how do we beat it?

Speaker 2 And this is one of my favorite ones. And the reality is, the way we beat it is through action.

Speaker 2 And you've heard people talk about this before, before but this is the key to actually beating resistance okay now in life there's different types of of motion right there's circular motion okay and most people get stuck in the circular motion where they're just kind of spinning their wheels they're going around these ruts over and over and they're never progressing they're never moving forward okay how many guys feel like that sometimes maybe feel like that right now Napoleon Hill calls that drifting says we drift into this hypnotic rhythm where we're just like nothing's changing our life we keep succumbing to resistance and so nothing ever progresses the second type of motion is forward is taking action you're actually moving forward right now the problem with direction is when you decide to move forward there's always a cost right sitting here and drifting is no cost you're just kind of bouncing off the walls doing the same thing over and over again when you decide to move forward into momentum and actually take action there's a cost which is why it's scary it's why it's hard it's why the resistance starts coming every time you decide to move forward right when you are creating your art and you decide to move forward there's always gonna be that resistance okay and the reason why is that our brains are programmed naturally to do a couple things okay one thing our brain is naturally built and coded hard hard-coded in our brain to do, is to avoid pain at all costs, right?

Speaker 2 You feel pain, it's like, I don't want to go there, I don't want to do that, okay? So, our brain tries to avoid pain, number one. Number two, our brain is trained to seek pleasure.

Speaker 2 Let me go find the fastest hit of pleasure possible. How to get my dopamine here as quick as possible, right? On my phone, through my, like, whatever we can do, we try to seek pleasure.

Speaker 2 Number three is our brain wants us to conserve energy, conserve calories so you don't run out of the calories we need to survive. And then number four is our brain wants to prove itself right.

Speaker 2 We call this confirmation bias, okay? So, those are the four things. Our brain wants to avoid pain, seek pleasure, conserve energy, and prove itself right.

Speaker 2 Now to be successful and to beat resistance, you literally have to do the exact opposite of what your brain has been trained to do.

Speaker 2 Number one, instead of avoiding pain, we have to move out of our comfort zone over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 Creating art is not going to be simple. Writing books are not simple.
So not only do that, we can't avoid pain, we have to step into the pain.

Speaker 2 Number two, instead of seeking pleasure at any cost we can, to be successful in any area of life, you have to actually delay gratification, you have to allow that to build up before you get the reward.

Speaker 2 Number three, instead of conserving energy, to be successful, you have to take massive action. That's the opposite of conserving energy, right?

Speaker 2 It's waking up early, it's working hard, it's doing the things that your brain does not want to do, okay? And then, number four, to be successful, you can't just try to prove yourself right.

Speaker 2 To be successful in anything in life, you have to question your beliefs, question your assumptions, and become teachable and becoming a student.

Speaker 2 So, those are the steps for how you can be at resistance. Now, I want to give you guys one more key to being successful at this, okay?

Speaker 2 Every single time you do something, right, you start moving forward, you're into a direction, instantly, just like Stephen Pressfield talked about, as soon as you do that, resistance is going to show up, okay?

Speaker 2 And our default, our brain quickly wants to go back to drifting to the simpler version of it, right? So what's our job? Okay, there's a quote from Victor Frankl. It's one of my favorites.

Speaker 2 He says, between the stimulus and the response, there's a space. And in that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our responses.
In our response lies our growth and freedom.

Speaker 2 So as soon as resistance hits us, there's a space, right? Most people hit resistance and they give up.

Speaker 2 For all of you guys, as soon as you hit resistance, there's this little gap of space where you actually have the ability to choose and say, no, I'm going to move forward.

Speaker 2 No, I'm not going to believe that lie. No, I'm not going to procrastinate.
And that's where all success and growth and happiness comes. So that is what resistance is.

Speaker 2 That's why The War of Art is literally one of my favorite books of all time. This is one, I say about once a month I read it or listen to the audiobook.
The nice thing is it's really short.

Speaker 2 It is the key to help you to overcome resistance in your life. Because the reality is like you being successful or not successful is almost never about the external circumstances.

Speaker 2 It's not about your resource, about the money you don't have, the time you don't have. It's almost always an internal thing.
It's

Speaker 2 the fight and the battle you're having with your brain every single day, right? Resistance is that thing that's trying to keep you back from being successful.

Speaker 2 So if you have art that you know you are called to create, right, to change people's lives, again, it could be a business you're launching, it could be a video on YouTube you want to make, it could be a podcast, it could be anything, whatever your art is, if you want to learn how to win this war of art, right, to beat resistance, to be successful, this book is one of my favorites.

Speaker 2 I hope you guys love it. Now, a couple of really cool things.
Number one, I did this entire interview with Steven Pressfield. It is insane.

Speaker 2 We had so much fun going deep into this book, talking about resistance, how to beat resistance, how to go pro, and a whole bunch of other things.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, I'm not going to attach that on to the end of this video because it's about an hour long.

Speaker 2 But if you go and search for the podcast, I'm going to have the entire long-form version of this on the podcast.

Speaker 2 Just go to your favorite podcast app and search in Russell Brunson or Selling Online or Marketing Secrets, and you'll probably find the Stephen Pressfield interview.

Speaker 2 It'll be the entire thing and you are going to love it. So check that out.

Speaker 2 Number two is if you are enjoying videos like this or I'm going deep into my favorite books, let me know in the comments down below.

Speaker 2 I'm really enjoying making these videos and I hope that you love them. And if you do love them, again, let me know in the comments down below.

Speaker 2 But on top of that, please share these videos with other people. The more people that watch these videos, the more I know you like them and the more likely I am to make a whole bunch more of them.

Speaker 2 I've got so many books that I want to break down and share with you. In the last two years, I've bought over 18,000 books.

Speaker 2 I haven't read them all yet, but I'm trying to, and I would love once a week to share my favorite books to you guys. And that way, you don't have to go read all the books.

Speaker 2 My goal is for me to go take the coolest parts out of them and share them with you. And then the ones that you're like, I want to go deep on this, you have the ability to do that.
So let me know.

Speaker 2 And then also down below in the description, we're going to give you guys some really cool things. Working on some study guides that go with each of the books, outlines and other things.

Speaker 2 That'll all be in the description down below. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel.
That's how you can find out when the next video is going to drop as we go deeper into the next book.

Speaker 2 With that said, thank you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I love sharing these things with you. And if you haven't yet, go read The War of Art.

Speaker 2 There's linked in the description as as well. We can get a copy of this book.
And this is one of those books that changed my life and it'll change your life as well.

Speaker 2 All right, everyone. Hope you enjoyed the first half of this podcast.

Speaker 2 So by the way, if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, make sure to go to YouTube, search for Russell Brunson, go subscribe to my channel.

Speaker 2 We are dropping bombs every single day, like the one you just heard. I hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 But now I want to give you guys some bonus stuff because you guys are my podcast listeners, my faithful few, the ones who I love the most.

Speaker 2 Don't tell the YouTube channel that, but you guys are my favorite. So I'm going to give you guys access to, it's an hour-long interview I did with Stephen Pressfield.

Speaker 2 We haven't launched this live yet anywhere else, but I thought you guys want a sneak peek, right? You want to hear my interview with him. I'm not gonna lie, I was so nervous to interview him.

Speaker 2 I've looked up to him for such a long time. I love his work, I love his art, I love his writing, I love everything.
So, I probably sound a little nervous in this one, but I was.

Speaker 2 I don't know why, I just kind of was. But I had a really fun time interviewing him and going deeper into resistance and turning pro and all the cool things he talks about in his books.

Speaker 2 So, I hope you enjoy the last half of this podcast, which is my interview with Stephen Pressfield.

Speaker 2 What's fun for me about this is a couple things. Again, I read Warbard initially, and

Speaker 2 in there, you talk about resistance. We'll go deeper into that here in a little bit.

Speaker 2 But I read that, and it was funny because at the time, I was in the middle of trying to write a book, and I was like, I was feeling that as a writer, like I was feeling that as such a big thing.

Speaker 2 But then in my audience, like we have, you know, we have a hundred thousand entrepreneurs that use our platform. So I started talking to them all about it.

Speaker 2 And it was crazy because a lot of them aren't writers, but they're, they're all sorts of things from marketers to copywriters to designers to you know people being social media pro social media people or podcasters and everyone is just like as soon as i would as soon as i would talk about that i was like you guys read the war of art i talk about resistance all of them instantly like oh my gosh yes that is the thing like i feel that all the time and it gave everyone something very tangible to to think about and talk about so i'm excited to share some of those things but before we do sorry i'm just so excited um your new books came out government cheese and i had a chance over the last week and a half to to read the entire thing and i finished it two days ago um which was fun because

Speaker 2 it's your whole story.

Speaker 2 It was fun for me because it kind of pieced together all of the

Speaker 2 stories from all the different books into one

Speaker 2 timeline. And I feel like I know you so much better because of that.
And the thing I want to start with is

Speaker 2 this book, the government cheese book,

Speaker 2 which I have right here, is basically, it's kind of like your autobiography, right? Going through everything.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's really a memoir, you know, and like you're in Boise. You know, I used to actually drive a truck to pick up potatoes in Boise that's not in the that's not in the book but

Speaker 5 so there's connections everywhere there but that is it's a memoir it is kind of my life story and the reason I wrote it is just like what you're talking about for your entrepreneurs and people that are writers and copywriters and so on and so forth that are struggling you know with their own stuff and sometimes feel like oh this is taking forever and I'm bouncing around I don't know where I am you know and I figured if I would tell kind of my story because it took me such a long time to kind of break through, that that might be encouraging to people that, you know, if this guy can, you know, live through all that stuff, that there's hope for everybody else too.

Speaker 2 For sure. So I think before we go into like the resistance side of things, like what I think normally happens, at least for me, it's like, I felt, I feel like, I call it a lot of times the calling.

Speaker 2 I feel called to do something. I feel this mission.
I feel something. It was interesting when I was reading this.

Speaker 2 It was fascinating because the first, I can't remember how many 10, 20 years, when you were driving and doing all the different things, you talked about your huge typewriter that you literally carried in your car everywhere.

Speaker 2 And so I'm curious, like, when did you, like, when did you know that was going to be your calling to be a writer? Because it was a long time before you actually became a writer.

Speaker 2 But it sounds like at the very beginning, you knew that was something so much so that you were hauling this huge typewriter, you know, from place to place, from apartment to apartment, and carrying it everywhere you were going.

Speaker 5 Well, I was to Google sort of longer version of the story. I was working, my first job was as a copywriter in New York City at a big, you know, Madison Avenue ad agency.

Speaker 5 And I had a boss named Ed Hannibal, and he wrote a novel, and

Speaker 5 it was an instant hit. And the guy quit his job and became like a full-time writer.
And I

Speaker 5 saw this happen. I thought, well, shit, why don't I do the same thing?

Speaker 5 So I quit. And I tried to write a book for about two years.
And of course, it was like, I had no business doing it. I had no concept of how hard it would be.
I was way too young, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 5 And so my life sort of collapsed at that point. I was, you know, divorced, blah, blah, blah.
I wound up kind of on the road.

Speaker 5 And I felt like the only way I could get out of this thing was to sort of write my way out of it. You know, it was like I tried this thing, I failed.
You know,

Speaker 5 resistance was what defeated me, resistance with a capital R. But at that time, I had no idea that there was such a thing.

Speaker 5 So anyway, I just was sort of

Speaker 5 in a position kind of Russell of shame, you know, as I kind of talk about in government cheese where i felt like i've let everybody down i've let myself down i've somehow gotta write the ship and so it just took any 27 years or something like that as you've known us say 27 years would you have gone on that journey that's if i if somebody had told me that it would have been a different story

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.

Speaker 3 They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Speaker 3 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers. Discounts and covered selections not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 6 At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Speaker 6 Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

Speaker 6 From free expert design help to our 100 satisfaction guarantee everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows because at blinds.com the only thing we treat better than windows is you black friday deals are going on all month long save up to 45 off site-wide plus an additional 10 off every order right now at blinds.com rules and restrictions apply do you still have that original typewriter that you were using back then this is actually not it my original one is in a storage space but this is

Speaker 5 kind of a stand-in for the original one well i'm gonna i'm gonna to see offline.

Speaker 2 I'm going to beg you to see if I can buy your original one. The reason why is, so one of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill.

Speaker 2 And recently, the Napoleon Hill Foundation actually gave me Napoleon Hill's typewriter. He wrote Think and Grow Rich on.
So I have that in my collection now.

Speaker 2 But it's funny, because like, again, I was never around during typewriter time, so I never had a chance to actually write on there. I can't even imagine, you know, I.

Speaker 2 you know, I write in Google Docs and it's stressful. And I got, you know, me and editors can all edit in one spot.
I'm like, I don't know how people wrote just sitting down and writing that way.

Speaker 2 You know, I can't imagine like in the book you talked about when you're editing, like actually copying and pasting, like literally cutting and gluing things around to make it.

Speaker 5 It's true. It's like the reason why they have those phrases, copy and paste, is because that's what it really used to be.

Speaker 5 You know, you literally would cut it and you literally would paste it, you know?

Speaker 5 But because you didn't know any better, there was no such, no alternative. So you just did it.

Speaker 2 I'm curious back then, like when you would write, you'd write a book. Again, because for me, it's like I have some rewrites and I'm copying and paste huge sections of the book.

Speaker 2 Like when you're writing something like that, like some of your early novels, I know the first, I can't remember how many didn't get published, but like when you're writing those,

Speaker 2 like, was it hard to know like from the beginning to the end, like where you were even going on this journey with the story? And then would you have to retype huge sections?

Speaker 2 I'm trying to visualize what that even would look like.

Speaker 2 Cause I think nowadays so many, like me and other writers complain about stuff versus like, I can't imagine what it would have been like back then, you know?

Speaker 5 Well, you would wind up kind of with pages that would that would be scotch taped together and it'd be like, you know, three feet long sprawling sprawling across your own you're just like you know you would do on a computer only actually had to do with real paper and it was it was a kind of a crazy situation try to read it over to see if it makes sense you know um but uh yeah that was the way it went you know it was definitely handmade stuff

Speaker 2 So I want to go a little deeper with this concept of like this calling that people feel, right? Especially we're going to talk about later.

Speaker 2 I want to ask you about the shadow calling, but initially it's the calling, right?

Speaker 2 So for me, it's like, I know the things I've pursued my life, it's like I felt something that was, and again, I always think my head is like, I feel called to go do this thing, and it doesn't always make sense.

Speaker 2 A lot of times, it's like, I'm not qualified to do this, I'm not ready, but like, there's something that pulls me towards that. And I'm curious, kind of two, twofold for you, like,

Speaker 2 like, did you feel like that? Like, you wanted to be a writer, and I don't know if it was like you wanted to write movies or books, like, but did you feel that?

Speaker 2 If so, like, what did that actually feel like?

Speaker 2 I want people to be able to identify like when they're feeling something more so than just like, oh, I should go do this thing, but like, they're feeling something that's bigger than just themselves, like, what that feels like, you know?

Speaker 5 Well, it definitely feels like that's who you really are, right? That's kind of your, it is your calling that you should be doing that. And at least for me,

Speaker 5 when I would try to do anything else, you know, like if I would get a copywriting job or something like that, I would be so depressed at the end of the day, really, you know, that I would have, the only thing that would save me would be to sit down at this old clunky typewriter and try to write something of my own, you know?

Speaker 5 But the other thing, from a writer's point of view, is that you feel a call to a certain story.

Speaker 5 You know, there's a book you want to write, like I'm sure you felt this, Russell, or you're feeling it right now, you know, that

Speaker 5 there's this story about whatever it is, and you just got it, and you start it, and you're hooked on it, and now you've got to finish it.

Speaker 5 And you go through the same sort of things you're talking about, where, you know, once you're a few weeks into it, you say to yourself, what am I doing? You know, like, this is crazy.

Speaker 5 This is not going anywhere. I'm lost.
Nobody's going to buy this. I'm not good enough.
All that kind of thing. And those are the sort of

Speaker 5 resistance points that you have to sort of learn to overcome. Just like an entrepreneur, right? Where you start something and you think, oh, shit, what have I done? Right.

Speaker 5 There's no way this is going to pay off, et cetera, et cetera. But that just seems to be part and parcel of any creative enterprise.
When you are called, you get this. You do get that feeling, right?

Speaker 5 You feel like I've got to do this thing. Nothing else is going to make me happy.

Speaker 2 I'm curious for you. Do you feel like that calling, is it, I've heard a lot of people, some people think it's something internal, some people think it's God.
Like, I'm curious for you.

Speaker 2 Like, what do you feel like that? Where do they think that comes from?

Speaker 5 Well, I'm definitely a believer that life

Speaker 5 happens on two levels, that there's the material level that we're on, and there's a higher level above that. And we get called from that level.

Speaker 5 You know, it's, it's the muse, it's the goddess, that's the way I look at it. That it's sort of,

Speaker 5 you know, like they say about songwriters. They might be driving along the freeway and suddenly a song will come into their head completely, you know, from start to finish, right?

Speaker 5 And they have to like screech over to the side of the road and write it down before it goes away. So I definitely feel that ideas are coming from someplace else.

Speaker 5 And it's our job to, you know, grab a hold of them and

Speaker 5 bring them into material being. on this material plane.

Speaker 2 So cool. I always think about that with mine.
Like I similar. I feel these things come up.
And then I feel like there's times where, like, I take those things and I run with them.

Speaker 2 And there's times where I don't. And then it's weird when you see, you don't, you don't run with something.
And then later, you see somebody else runs with it.

Speaker 2 I feel like God, whoever's giving those things, it's like he gives it somebody. If you're doing something and he gives somebody else, he's like, someone's going to be a good steward of this idea.

Speaker 2 Someone's going to take it and run. And so now I'm always like, when I have that impression, I'm like, I want to be the, I want to be a good steward of this.
I'm going to take it.

Speaker 2 I'm going to run with it. Even if it doesn't make any sense, I'm like, I don't want someone else to have this.
And

Speaker 2 anyway, it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 5 Let me ask you, Russell, how do you deal with like the self-doubt that hits you when you start something? Like, I mean, when you were first messing around with potato guns,

Speaker 5 you just said to yourself, what am I doing with this thing here? How do you, how do you deal with self-doubt when you're starting something new?

Speaker 2 First off, the fact that you know the potato gun story is literally like the coolest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. So

Speaker 2 so anyway, so that's number one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's one of those things I think

Speaker 2 it's interesting because

Speaker 2 in different areas of my life, it affects me differently, right? Like now in business, I've had success over years.

Speaker 2 So most things come to me now, it's like more easy, but like there's other parts where maybe my relationship where it's like, I have way more fear that goes into it. And

Speaker 2 I think a lot of times, sometimes the fear wins where it's just like, ah, you know, resistance or fear, like it keeps me. But other times it's like,

Speaker 2 at least for me, like, I'm able to see like, I'm not a vision, but like I see like the calling, like where it's supposed to go. And I see the benefit of it.

Speaker 2 And like, okay, I'm going to go pursue this. And again, sometimes, sometimes you make it far, sometimes you don't, but it's just like the pursuit of it, I think is the, is the key.

Speaker 2 It's not so much like the attainment as much as the pursuit,

Speaker 2 which is interesting.

Speaker 2 It kind of leads to my next question I had for you, because I hear a lot of entrepreneurs sometimes, and usually this is after the fact, where they're like, oh, I created this thing because I wanted to help these people over here or whatever, which I think is a good, like we create to help other people, obviously, but...

Speaker 2 But I also think when people, when they're trying to create for someone else besides themselves, it typically doesn't work. And there's a quote you had in Government Cheese.
I wrote down, it says,

Speaker 2 You said, The thought of tailoring my output for some market or to please some imagined audiences never enters my mind. This is for me.
I'm writing to save my own life. I think that, like,

Speaker 2 I love, I love your perspective on that, but I think it's like the fact that we have to become obsessed with the thing we're doing for ourselves, or else you're not going to have the energy to go through it, right?

Speaker 2 I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's my theory. Actually, I just did a podcast a little while ago with Rick Rubin.
You know, he is the music entrepreneur, the guy that's sort of the godfather of hip-hop. And

Speaker 5 that's absolutely what he believes.

Speaker 5 And I believe it completely that when you're trying to imagine some audience and you're going to fill the need for them, you're coming from a place of the ego, I think, and not from a place of the heart.

Speaker 5 And the other cunts, the other way to look at it is to say,

Speaker 5 I've got to lead the audience. They don't know.
what this story that's in my head or this idea that's in my head. If they did, they'd go for it.

Speaker 5 So it's much, like when Steve Jobs came up with the iphone nobody was looking for that right nobody said you know do me a phone that's got apps and stuff on it they didn't know what it was but he believed if i fall in love with this thing everybody else or other people are going to fall in love with it too and i think that's that's just the way that the world seems to work you know you have to

Speaker 5 You have to fall in love with it yourself, believe that if it's fun for you, it'll be fun for somebody else.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I just want to jump ahead where I was going to go and we'll come back.

Speaker 2 But like in Government Cheese was really cool because like you tell your story in such a way where you see like, you know, you were driving trying to write and then you were writing books and you wrote, I think three or four novels that failed.

Speaker 2 Right. And then you shifted to screenplays and then you were doing that.
And it got the point where I feel like in the story, I'm like, you're almost a success.

Speaker 2 It was like, oh, you're about to be there. Like I was like cheering for you.
And then you're like, I'm going to go write this book. And nobody wanted you to write this book.

Speaker 2 And I'm assuming this is where that came from, right? Like you were like, this is the thing I want to write. And from that came Bagger, The Legend of Bagger Vance.

Speaker 2 I love to hear just like, what were you thinking that period where it's like, everything's finally working for me? And then you're like, I feel called to do this thing. I want to create it for myself.

Speaker 2 I'm going to leave this thing I'm working on for 20 years of my life and to go a whole other direction.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 5 the longer version of this story is that I had had a screenwriting career for about 10 years, you know, kind of a B or C level, not an A level,

Speaker 5 but I was sort of getting there.

Speaker 5 And my agent, who was a good friend of mine, had done a lot of work for me, you know, to get me out to the town and get people to know who I was.

Speaker 5 And then suddenly, talk about, you know, I was just seized by this idea for the legend of Bag or Vance,

Speaker 5 but it was as a book, not as a movie. And I just knew that completely, you know, there was no doubt in my mind.

Speaker 5 And when I told my agent that, he basically fired me, said, you know, I've been busting my ass for years for you to get you out there. You go off for a year or something to write this book.

Speaker 5 People forget you in this town in a week and a half, you know? But I was just so seized with it that I just absolutely had to do it, you know, come hell or high water.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 5 knock wood, it worked. But that sort of goes to what we were talking about before, about you, the creator, you, the entrepreneur, have to lead the audience, you know?

Speaker 5 But I had tremendous self-doubt about that book. I thought, as I was writing it, I thought a golf story, you know, that's mystical.
I mean, who's going to be interested in that?

Speaker 5 But again, I was just seized by it. I just had to do it.
So sometimes, you know, that higher dimension takes over and you don't have a chance. You just got to do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I've never written a book that's not a how-to book yet.
So I'm just curious, just personal, because

Speaker 2 like when you decide to go down and do the Legend of Bager Vance, like.

Speaker 2 What did you see first? Was it the golf story? Was it the character? Like, what was, how does that work in your mind as these characters start developing?

Speaker 2 What's the chicken and the egg in that process? I have no idea how that works. I'm so curious.

Speaker 5 Well, and this, this is probably going to bore our listeners completely, but there's a famous Hindu scripture called the Bhagavad Gita.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you've heard of this, but it has, you know, it's about the great warrior Arjuna and his charioteer. And

Speaker 5 I was a fan of this book. I read it many times, you know? And one day I just thought, this is a great structure for a story.
I can just put this in a modern context and it'll work, you know?

Speaker 5 And so I was kind of seized by that. I thought, this is the structure is great.
It's like ripping off Romeo and Juliet or something like that, right? You know, it's going to work.

Speaker 5 So then once you're into it, it acquires a momentum of its own and characters appear and scenes start happening and new ideas come in, just like an entrepreneurial venture, you know, where you start with one crazy thing, your potato gun, and next thing you know, you got, you know, you got a whole industry going.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's so cool. cool oh so cool okay i want to jump back then so what i want to do is i want to talk about this so

Speaker 2 most creators or entrepreneurs or writers they they have this this calling they feel this thing that keeps pushing into to make them it create like creates desire in your mind right that puts you on the on motion into into momentum and then as soon as that starts happening um and it's funny um in the artist's journey you talk about the hero's journey which is like one of my favorite frameworks.

Speaker 2 I talk about it in one of my books.

Speaker 2 But like in the hero's journey, the hero hears the call to adventure and then immediately hears a refusal to call right like i'm not going to do it and i feel like in my mind when you first start talking about resistance i was like that's that's what happens right the second you feel this calling then it's like oh it hits you and then it hits you and then as you're moving through the process keeps hitting over and over again and so um i'd love to start though like with you just kind of explaining what the resistance with a capital r like what is resistance um because again i think everyone feels this but like you made it such a tangible thing in my mind where now it's like anyway i'd love to hear to kind of talk about resistance with the capital r okay uh well first let me just say that for the first you know eight or nine years or longer than that of my career I was being defeated by this force called resistance and I never knew it even existed.

Speaker 5 So let me see if I can define it. It's like when you sit down in front of one of these things and you're facing the blank screen.

Speaker 5 You can feel a force radiating off that screen, a negative force trying to make you get up and leave, you know, right?

Speaker 5 It's definitely doesn't want you to do that job whatever it is and it'll and the way resistance appears is as a voice in your head and the voice in your head will tell you a couple things one of the things it'll tell you is you're not good enough to do this who do you think you are you're too old you're too young you have no skills you've never done this before this is a dumb idea if it's been done before by a million people better than that kind of voice right that'll that'll try to force you back and stop you from doing it.

Speaker 5 The other half of the voice is it will try to distract you. And it will say, clickbait, you go down this,

Speaker 5 you know, the rabbit hole of whatever it is, or let's get drunk or let's have an affair or let's, you know, go to the beach, let's get whatever, that kind of thing.

Speaker 5 And after a while, you recognize that there is an enemy. The playing field is not level when you sit down to do anything creative or entrepreneurial.

Speaker 5 There is this negative force out there that I believe

Speaker 5 is like the force of gravity. It just exists in the real world.
There's nothing you can do about it,

Speaker 5 except you've got to learn to overcome it one way or another. It's there.
It's fighting you. It's going to fight you every day of your life.

Speaker 5 I've been in this business now for 50 years and the force of resistance never goes away. and never diminishes.
It's the dragon you have to slay every morning anew.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I always say to any artist or any entrepreneur, before you even get into the skill of it, of whatever you're going to do, the first thing you have to do is recognize this negative force and find some way to overcome it one day at a time, day after day after day.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 2 so interesting.

Speaker 2 When I first read War of Art and you're talking about that, I started thinking about other areas of my life as well, not just my business or my writing, but like for me initially it was like,

Speaker 2 as a a younger kid, I was a wrestler and that was my thing. And I remember feeling it then.
I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 2 Obviously, if you wake up in the morning, it's like, I got to go run or I got to go work out. And it's like, oh, and like it would hit.
And then you get to the gym and you do all the work at the gym.

Speaker 2 And they're like, I don't want to work, you know, and every, like almost every time you do something, you have that choice again.

Speaker 2 Like, okay, I can go like super hard and push myself on this set of whatever, or I don't have to, or your practice, like I can run 100% or I can go 80% this time.

Speaker 2 And it's like, it's just constantly just kept hitting over and over and over again. So after I read, though, I was, you know, I read it a year ago.
So I was in my life. I'm in my business.

Speaker 2 And we were, were working we were working towards one of our big events.

Speaker 2 And I, I wanted to, to see like how often it was hitting me. So I tried, I started like a little note thing on my phone.

Speaker 2 And every time I would, I would feel some version of resistance, I tried to make note of it. And it was crazy.
It was like

Speaker 2 just how often like I kept feeling it. It was, it was like, sometimes it was, you know, four or five times in a minute.

Speaker 2 Other times it was like, you know, every 20 minutes, every, it was like every time I was moving forward, it was like this thing pushing back, moving forward, pushing back.

Speaker 2 And I was thinking about it, I'm like,

Speaker 2 like the reason why i think most people never have success is it's not that they don't that they don't get past resistance it's like they get past it once or twice but it just keeps going and it just keeps pushing so often that it's it's it's a brutal thing you have to have a lot of um belief in the calling or the thing you're pursuing or else it's easy for that just to to collapse you right yeah and like you say because it never stops It's like you might defeat it, you know, for a week or two weeks or in training, you know, or work that you're trying to do.

Speaker 5 And then resistance will even use that success against you. And the voice in your head will say, Oh, you've done great for the last two weeks.
You really got it licked, you know.

Speaker 5 Let's take the day off, you know, or it's Sunday, or, you know, our wife wants to do that, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 And of course, you can't be hardcore 24 hours a day, but you do have to sort of think in marathon terms. You know, I think of this absolutely as a lifetime commitment.

Speaker 5 You know, when I'm dead, I'll stop worrying about this, but not until then. And so,

Speaker 5 you know, it is, it, it's so diabolical, the voice in your head, in the nuanced ways, it'll try to fake you out

Speaker 5 and get you to stop. But you're, it's really interesting what you did, Russell, with your phone where you kept track of it.

Speaker 5 I've never done that, but I imagine, I would imagine it would hit me 500 times a day.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty crazy.

Speaker 2 But I think for me, like, again, as soon as Rick, reading your book is so big for me because like it became such a tangible thing that now i could like almost call it out like i'm a resistance you're not going to win this time you know like as opposed to like before you like you again you feel guilty or you feel like unworthy or like or um

Speaker 2 you know these feelings of just like oh man i messed up again or i didn't do it again versus like no it's not me this is an external force i gotta fight i gotta win and at least for me it made it it made it more fun and more uh manageable when i was able to be aware of it you know what i mean uh-huh so let me throw one thing out here that maybe uh maybe you're gonna ask me something about this but maybe this what i want to say now maybe it'd be very helpful to anybody that's that's thinking about this stuff and that is that um

Speaker 5 if you imagine

Speaker 5 imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow the minute the tree appears a shadow appears and the shadow is equal to the tree right if it's a big tree it's a big shadow so in the terms of resistance the tree is the dream that you have the book you want to write the adventure you want to do whatever and resistance is the shadow.

Speaker 5 So there would never, there would not, what I want to say is resistance always comes second. There would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream, if there wasn't a calling that was inside you.

Speaker 5 So the good news of that is when you're feeling big resistance, that big shadow, that shows that there's a big tree there or something.

Speaker 5 There's a big dream, because resistance always comes like Newton's third law of motion, equal and opposite reaction.

Speaker 5 It's a reaction to an aspiration, to a book you want to write or a movie you want, whatever it is. So

Speaker 5 don't be freaked out, I would say to anybody, by that dark cloud, that dark shadow is an indication that the dream is for real and it's big.

Speaker 2 Such a cool thing. I think a lot of people look at it the opposite way where they're like, they feel resistance, like, I guess I'm not supposed to do this.

Speaker 2 This is a sign that I'm not supposed to do it, versus like the opposite, you just said is a sign that you are, that the dream is big enough to actually pursue um that's fascinating um

Speaker 2 so cool okay so the next thing i want to talk about because we talked about resistance what it feels like i think um one of the things i can't remember again i've read all these books again in the last like month so i might mess up like which book to reference but everyone should buy all of them and just get them all because they're amazing but um in and i think it was in war of ours we talked about like some of the ways that resistance shows up and one of them that was so interesting was you call the unlived life where um

Speaker 2 where that's kind of what it's trying to create create or trying to get you to do. Is that correct? Can you explain what the unlived life is and how that how that shows through because resistance?

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 it's like we're talking about a calling or a dream or whatever it is. We may be working in a cubicle in some office or we may be at a high end.
We may be some big shot lawyer or something like that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that's the life we're living. But there's an unlived life within us.

Speaker 5 And resistance's job is to make sure we never live that life out right there are so many people who want to be writers want to be artists want to start businesses but they don't for various reasons they have kids they got to take care of the kids you know all that sort of stuff practical things got to keep my job but uh so it's a very good question to ask oneself what is my unlived life what what is the thing that's inside me that wants to be born and That's the call, right?

Speaker 5 You're talking about the hero's journey. That's the call to adventure.
And

Speaker 2 so yeah that's what i mean by the unlived life that's cool i was writing some notes from the book says you know unlived life um

Speaker 2 it's like you see the life we live and the unlived life within us the resistance stands between them so like an athlete who doesn't compete a writer who doesn't write a painter who doesn't paint an entrepreneur who's never started an online business i i see that a lot of my community because we have again we have you know i think our email lists are five or six million people from there we have a hundred thousand or so that use our click funnels platform you know so i look at like again my whole world is all funnels so you see this whole thing and it's like most of the people i would i would say probably identify as like an entrepreneur or a creator yet how you know what percentage of them have never created yet or never done anything because they're you know they they they see it they believe they want it but they don't act they never live it's the unlived life the part that that they're that they're missing um and like you said resistance what stands between that that keeps keeps you from actually living the thing that they're they're called and supposed to do so yeah that's like one you were talking about refusal of the call right

Speaker 5 the The hero's journey, the concept is that, well, one of the concepts is that immediately when the hero receives the call to adventure, the first thing that pops in their head is, well, I don't want to do that, right?

Speaker 5 They refuse the call. Like in the movie Rocky, when he gets a chance to fight the champ, people forget this from them.
You watch the movie, first thing he does, he turns it down, you know?

Speaker 5 Or in the Odyssey, when Odysseus is called to go to the Trojan War, first thing he does is turn it down. Even in Star Wars, when

Speaker 5 Luke discovers R2D2 and gets the message, help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. First thing he does is he turns it down.
He says, I got to stay here on

Speaker 5 Uncle Owen and Aunt Baru's evaporator farm. They need me.
And it's not until they're killed by the sand people that he actually answers the call. So, yeah,

Speaker 5 that's the unlived life.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. Now, next thing you talked about, and again, I can't remember exactly which book, but this was fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 You talked about how a lot of people, instead of like, it's not so much that they don't do it, but they settle for something different. You call it the shadow calling where,

Speaker 2 you know, it's not necessarily they're not pursuing it, but they're picking an easier option. I'd love to talk about what is the shadow calling?

Speaker 2 And I mentioned, by the way, I mentioned somebody on my team the other day, and it was one of our writers. He's a copywriter.
He's like the most amazing copyright I've ever had on my team.

Speaker 2 And when I said that to him, he was like, he realized, he's like, he's like, I'm supposed to be a writer. And then I was like, oh, no, I need you to be my copywriter.

Speaker 2 So, but he like, he recognized, like, he's like, I'm living in my shadow calling right now, not the one I actually wanted.

Speaker 2 And so I love you talk about that because I think a lot of people are probably, that's where they're falling and they're thinking they're going the right path versus like understanding like, ah, you're actually not hitting it quite correct.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a great example of copywriter because I was one myself.

Speaker 5 And you know, like in any big ad agency where there might be 200 copywriters, male and female, if you open the drawer of any of their desks, they've got a novel, a half-written novel in there.

Speaker 5 They've got a bunch of screenplays in there, you know, and they're, so the actual copywriting is kind of a shadow career.

Speaker 5 And a lot of times, like in the movie business, you know, there are the lawyers in the movie business are entertainment lawyers.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you're familiar with this, but they're the people that do the contracts for actors and directors and writers and so on and so forth.

Speaker 5 And it's kind of a commonplace that many, many of these lawyers want to be writers or directors or producers. And a lot of them do it, you know, and they're good at it.

Speaker 5 And you can see that they sort of chose this career as a lawyer in the movie business to be adjacent to a creative enterprise, but in a kind of a safe way. They're a lawyer,

Speaker 5 they went to law school, it's a real job, they're going to be paid money, but that's their shadow career.

Speaker 5 Or another time, another example is a lot of times people will take a job maybe as an assistant to somebody, to an entrepreneur, to a creative

Speaker 5 person.

Speaker 5 when really they want to be the creative person, but they just haven't raised the the courage quite yet to do it. So it's a real common thing.

Speaker 5 It's another way that resistance, that it's diabolicalness fakes us out, you know, and gets us, sidetracks us away from something that we should be doing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I think it'd be an interesting exercise for everyone to kind of sit down and think through that.
Like, what am I currently doing today? Like, is this actually the calling?

Speaker 2 Like, am I fired up about this or am I settling? to kind of like appease that feeling like I'm kind of doing it, but I'm in the right industry, but I'm not doing the thing that I actually want.

Speaker 2 And then if they figured figured out, they realize they're following a shadow call. Like,

Speaker 2 what would you tell them? Like, what's the process? Like, do they just cold turkey, quit, and start running? Or say, like, what do, what should most people do, you think, in that situation?

Speaker 5 I think that it's a great question, too. Like,

Speaker 5 one of the things I've said before, you know who Steven Soderberg is, the director?

Speaker 5 He won an Oscar for traffic, and he's done a million things that you've seen.

Speaker 5 And when he won his Oscar as best director for traffic, he kind of held up the award and he said, this is for everybody who puts in one hour a day pursuing their art.

Speaker 5 And I would say that you can be a full-time professional artist an hour a day. You know, you don't have to quit your job.

Speaker 5 Although, hopefully, that's what you will get to do at some point, to do it full-time. But another way of looking at that is like I'm a full-time professional writer.

Speaker 5 I don't have to do anything else.

Speaker 5 But in my day, with all the bullshit that I have to do, I really wind up with only like about two hours of time to actually do my real writing, you know, so that even if you're a single mom and you've got two jobs, you can carve out a couple of hours for whatever your dream is.

Speaker 5 And, you know, and I figured it out one time. An hour a day comes out to a lot of hours over the course of a year.

Speaker 2 And you can get a lot of stuff done in that time if you just stick with it, going for the day when maybe you really can leave that job yeah it's interesting my very first book i wrote i i've been talking about it for for a decade and then one of my men one of my mentors told me he's like he's like if you just write two pages every day he's like two pages every day he's like if you do that and you wake up in the morning two pages first thing you do he's like that's two books a year And I remember him saying that.

Speaker 2 I was like, I've been for a decade, like kind of writing it and kind of, you know, I changed the table of contents a few times, like feeling good about it. And then, so I started doing that.

Speaker 2 And I wasn't able to keep the pace constantly with two pages a day, but some of it was one page. But what happened is within the next, it took me about a year to write my first book.

Speaker 2 Within a year, I had a book and I was like, I actually finally did it, you know, but it was, it was like chopping it down to that of just realizing like the consistency of putting in the effort over time, not that I'm going to write a book in a weekend like I maybe thought I was going to do, you know.

Speaker 5 It's great. It's true.
It's just like fitness, right?

Speaker 5 You know, if you run a certain amount and you just do it every day, you know, by the end of the year, you know, you're a lot fitter than you were when you started.

Speaker 5 So it's definitely doable in increments. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. So next question.
So after I read War of Art, I was like going crazy with it. I was telling everybody like, this is resistance.

Speaker 2 I was trying to make everyone aware of this thing that was hitting them in their life and trying to make, you know, I had all my coaching clients. I was like, the same thing.

Speaker 2 I was like, get a pad of paper out and start writing down every time this hits you so that they are aware of it. And then, but I didn't like, I didn't have a solution.

Speaker 2 I was just like, okay, now I'm aware, sweet. And I know like these different things I was protecting.
And then that's when I bought every one of your books and I started going through them.

Speaker 2 And I think the second or third one I read was Turning Pro, which I feel like, at least for me, it was like, here's here's the answer to how to overcome it.

Speaker 2 Again, like you said, you said we're completely gone, but how do you actually overcome that?

Speaker 2 And so I love you talk about the premise of going pro or turning pro and like how this is like the antidote to beating out resistance.

Speaker 5 That's another great question. I mean, this is what worked for me.
I mean, it doesn't, you know, I'm a lot of other things. It worked for a lot of other people.
But I sort of.

Speaker 5 When I asked myself, why am I constantly being defeated by this force of resistance? You know, why do I cave in? Why do I go halfway? That kind of thing.

Speaker 5 And I sort of said to myself, what I'm really doing is I'm acting and operating like an amateur and not like a professional.

Speaker 5 Like, for instance, when an amateur encounters adversity, an amateur folds, you know, but a professional doesn't. A professional shows up every day, right? Think about Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or

Speaker 5 anybody like that, LeBron James or something. Another thing that a professional does is a professional plays hurt.
You know, if you're, right, if you're spraining your ankle or something like that,

Speaker 5 if you're an amateur, you're going to say, okay, this injury is too much. I can't keep going through it.
But a pro plays through that injury and just knows that you have to play hurt.

Speaker 5 That, you know, nothing's ever going to be perfect.

Speaker 5 On the shittiest days are sometimes the days that you do the best work.

Speaker 5 But the thing is to think of it as a real profession and to think of yourself as a professional and ask yourself when you feel that hit that moment of of adversity, what would a pro do in a case like this?

Speaker 5 And what's great about thinking of yourself as a pro is it doesn't cost anything.

Speaker 5 You don't have to go to school. You don't have to take a course.
You don't have to do any,

Speaker 5 all you have to do is change your mind. And, you know, it worked for me.
It's not easy, but it's a great way of thinking of yourself.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think when I was thinking about this, when I was reading your book, I was like, it's a shift in identity, right?

Speaker 2 And I think about myself like for a long time, like I went to wrestling practice, but it wasn't until I was like, I am, like, I made a goal and I said that I'm going to be a state champ.

Speaker 2 I'm going to become a, you know, and I made these things and it changed my identity. Same thing with this business.

Speaker 2 I like, I was trying to make money for months until I like identified, like, I am an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 I am, and when I shifted my identity, again, it went from like me dabbling, trying to figure something out to like, no, this is, this is what I do. This is who I am.
And then

Speaker 2 I was able to push through things because my identity had shifted. And so I think that's, in my mind, how that kind of synced and went together.

Speaker 5 I think you sort of hit the nail on the head there, Russell. It's an identity question as much as it is anything else.

Speaker 5 You know, when you say, like a lot of people will say to themselves, I'm an aspiring entrepreneur or I'm an aspiring writer or an aspiring actor.

Speaker 5 You got to get rid of that adjective, you know, even if you're not making money at it now,

Speaker 5 if you can think of yourself as that's what I am, you know, I'm a wrestler, I'm an actor, I'm a dancer, then

Speaker 5 it works. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So cool. All right.
I want to ask you some questions more just about your timeline because I want people to understand this. And

Speaker 2 my goal is to get everyone addicted to you. Like I've been addicted to all your, all your writing.
So The Legend of Bagger Advance.

Speaker 2 So this was, was this the first book that got published or were the other ones prior to this?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And how many years into your writing career did that?

Speaker 5 I think it was like 27. I was like 52 years old.

Speaker 2 52 years old. And then that came and it blew up.
And I

Speaker 2 imagine the book went one way. And then did you change, turn into a screenplay? How did it it go from becoming a book to becoming the movie and everything else after that?

Speaker 5 Well, for some reason, as soon as I wrote that first book that got published, you know, I didn't make a lot of money, you know, but, you know, it had a little bit of a splash.

Speaker 5 I just somehow knew I'm now a book writer. Talk about identity, you know,

Speaker 5 and I don't want to do movies anymore. I don't want to be a screenwriter anyway.
And so.

Speaker 5 Then the next question for me, I'm sure you've had the same thing, was, well, what am I going to do now?

Speaker 5 So you have to, you know, I just waited for the next idea to come. And it was a whole other different thing, a book called Gates of Fire that was about the 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.

Speaker 5 And then I was sort of off and running. And it was just a question of what's next, what's next, what's next.
I think I'm up to now like 23 books or something like that, which kind of is amazing to me.

Speaker 2 I have, I don't think you see the shot on stage, but I think I have most of them. But yeah, so you have all the ones you wrote that are story-based.

Speaker 2 And then you started also doing, obviously, like The War of Art and these other ones that are more how-to-ish. Like when did that transition?

Speaker 2 When did you go from writing stories to like actually teaching and training writers and creatives and stuff like that?

Speaker 5 I think the War of Art came out in 2002.

Speaker 5 So I'd been, it was maybe seven years into my book writing world. And I just did that just because

Speaker 5 people asked me over and over, how do you write a book? I want to got a book in me. I want to write a book, right? And I would kind of sit down with them live, you know, in person, my friends.

Speaker 5 And the first thing I would tell them about was resistance, capital R. I would warn them, I don't care how great your idea is, unless you can overcome this thing, you're never going to get anywhere.

Speaker 5 And of course, nobody ever listened to me. Nobody ever wrote their book.
You know, they were all defeated by resistance.

Speaker 5 But they kept coming. So I finally just said, let me just write this down.

Speaker 5 I'll make a little small book and then I'll just say, when somebody asked me, I'll just say, here, read this. So that was how the War of Art kind of came about.

Speaker 5 And it was not successful at all at the start. It took quite a while for it to kind of catch on.

Speaker 5 And then I started to write a few follow-ups, as you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you're 53, you said, or 52, 53, when Bagramance came out.

Speaker 2 And then, I mean, I look at, as we were getting all the books and pretty much Seychelle, I was like, you're like one of the most prolific writers ever. Like, it's insane how much you've written.

Speaker 2 And so I'm curious, like, is it like one a year, two a year? How, like, how, how often do you write? What's your writing style? Like, how, how are you able to produce this much at this point?

Speaker 2 That's what I'm trying to understand because it's, it's really, it's really impressive.

Speaker 5 Well, I do think that, like, we're talking about being a professional, right?

Speaker 5 And a professional shows up every day, just like, you know, your mentor said to you, two pages a day, and you've got two books a year. So, but I think I'm no different from most writers.

Speaker 5 You know, I write every day. That's my job.
This is what I do. This is my calling.
And so, and I'm also a believer in

Speaker 5 not stopping. You know, some people will finish a project and they'll sort of publish it or release it, launch it, and then they'll kind of wait for the response.

Speaker 5 You know, is this going to be a hit or whatever? I'm definitely from the other school. I really feel the minute you finish number six, move on to number seven.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so that's how, you know,

Speaker 5 one book follows another. And before you know it, you got a whole shelf.

Speaker 2 Are you writing fiction and nonfiction at the same time, or do you take the different seasons

Speaker 5 one at a time? You know, all you know, depending on what has grabbed me and seized me at the moment. Yeah,

Speaker 2 very cool. So, of all the stuff you've written, what's your favorite of the fiction side and favorite the non-fiction?

Speaker 5 Well, a non-fiction, I would say, the war of art, you know, because that was, you know.

Speaker 5 The second book after the legend of Agravants is a book called Gates of Fire. That's probably, that's the one that has sold actually more than the War of Art.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 to an audience that is probably not your audience, it's probably a different audience. But

Speaker 5 that would be, I think, my second favorite. Very cool.

Speaker 2 And then just like last two or three weeks ago, I bought

Speaker 2 Government Cheese and then The Daily Press field. Was the Daily Press field, did that come out? Is that brand new as well? Or did I just miss that?

Speaker 5 That's brand new. It just came out like about two months ago.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 yeah, I would.

Speaker 2 It's really cool. Like, even the box and the packaging, everything is super cool.
But, like, anyway, that's one of my favorites right now. I'm going through it each day, kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, as a daily, a daily thing to go through each day, which is, which has been really cool.

Speaker 5 Give a little pitch for the daily press field. If you pitch it for your audience here, this is the newest one.
What do I have? I think I have it here somewhere.

Speaker 5 And this is sort of a, but when people come to me and say, how do I write a book or how do I do a long form thing, whatever it might be, a screenplay, a startup or whatever,

Speaker 5 I give them this. This is like a 365-day,

Speaker 5 I don't know if I'd call it a course. It's not a course, but it's something that you, if you started into it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 Something you could put beside your laptop or whatever it is and just pick, take it a day at a time.

Speaker 5 And it kind of starts for you from day one and kind of works you all the way through a project, hitting all of the resistance points, the predictable resistance points.

Speaker 5 So that like when you start to panic halfway through a project and you go, oh my God, I wish I had never started this thing.

Speaker 5 I really go into great detail of what that's all about and how resistance is trying to fake you out and to keep you going. So anyway,

Speaker 5 I highly recommend this new book, The Daily Press Field.

Speaker 2 It's really cool. It's like, again, it's fun because it's such a simple, like fast thing.
Each day you read one little thing and you keep moving through it,

Speaker 2 which is, which is awesome. So I guess my last question is, what are you working on now? Obviously, this is all done.
You probably work on the next project. Are you allowed to tell people?

Speaker 2 Is it top secret right now?

Speaker 5 No, it's not top secret. I actually just finished

Speaker 5 a book, which is a fiction book, a novel, which is a follow-up. to this book, A Man at Arms, that came out about two or three years ago.

Speaker 5 And so I just finished that. I haven't given it to my agent yet.
I'm not sure exactly. I'm fixing a few things in it.
And then I've started another story, another story set in

Speaker 5 another period of time, another fiction book. And just for fun, or just to show you that I'm not immune to the stuff I'm talking about.
I am riddled with self-doubt over this new book.

Speaker 5 Exactly like with The Legend of Agravance and other things where I say to myself, is anybody going to be interested in this?

Speaker 5 This is the dumbest idea you've ever come up with yet, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 5 And again, like what I said before about the tree and the meadow with the sun and the shadow, I take that as a good sign.

Speaker 5 I say, if I've got this big resistance that's trying to get me to not do this book, then there must be something to it. There must be something good here.
So I'm sort of...

Speaker 5 forcing myself each day, just like, you know, you running or going to the gym or me doing the same thing, saying, I got to do it, I got to do it.

Speaker 5 In fact, i haven't worked yet today on it soon as we finish russell i'm gonna sit down and get on even if i only can do an hour

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 2 i was probably resistance feed today then you're like oh russell's here i gotta

Speaker 2 i kept you from the goal

Speaker 2 oh so cool um i'm also curious like obviously you've got fiction non-fiction like those audiences merge across or are they very separate audiences typically do they know about each other that's a great question it's actually one of the big frustrations of my life the audiences don't cross.

Speaker 5 And the people that read my fiction, I can't get them to be interested at all in the war of art or that. And the people who like the war of art, I can't get them to read my fiction.

Speaker 5 And I'm actually, I've just, I've given up, you know, they're two completely different audiences. And it's very frustrating to me.
Yeah. But I'm glad I have audiences at all.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's been fun.

Speaker 2 I'm very much more on the war of art and that south stuff. But my wife and I re-watched Bagger.

Speaker 2 We watched Bagger advance like a decade ago before i was familiar with who you were or anything so i re-re-watched it uh the day that i actually sent you a message the first time i was like i didn't watch this my wife and i watched it that night and now i'm actually reading the book version because i want to just because i want to understand you and your writing style different and so it's been fun because you write i don't know you write differently and it's such a it's just fascinating and i'm trying to learn your style right and understand your style of writing so it's been fun going through bagger advance and then you you sold me i was gonna that's why i actually i'm gonna pick one of the the next ones to go with deep into so you said the um the gates of fire is the next best one right yeah read gates of fire next yeah okay so i'm gonna be your crossover i'm gonna get by the way i just want to say to anybody listening the book of bagger vance is a lot better than the movie so

Speaker 2 it's interesting because like there are parts in the movie bagger vance when like i think it was when will smith goes and he does his lines where he's he shifts over and he's like giving really good feedback and direction um that felt like you and i was like he's delivering those lines i'm assuming those are closer from the book versus the other part you know i'm sure hollywood does does their

Speaker 5 thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, this has been so fun for me. I'm really grateful for this.
Like, partially because it's going to help me as I'm into my new book and working through it just to keep these principles in mind.

Speaker 2 But I think also for our audience who everyone here is creators, they're creating different things.

Speaker 2 And I just, it's been so valuable to me to be able to put a name to the things that's holding me back from having success and moving forward, like calling it resistance and being aware of it and then figuring out ways to overcome it are so powerful.

Speaker 2 And I'm just grateful for you and your body of work you've created that is helping me now.

Speaker 2 And hopefully I can keep all my people, my audience, getting them more addicted because I think it'll help them all create more.

Speaker 2 And that's what the world needs is a whole bunch of creators who are trying to change the world in their own little way. And I think that you're helping so many people like me.

Speaker 2 And again, mostly people in my world who have read The War of Art, like they're all obsessed with you. And I'm trying to get everyone else obsessed with you as well.

Speaker 2 So I appreciate you jumping on to hang out with the entrepreneurs over here and talking about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 Thanks for having me, Russell. Thanks for inviting me.
It's a kick for me to talk to entrepreneurs rather than, you know, writers and artists and stuff like that, because it's the same thing.

Speaker 5 You know, the same principles apply and the same resistance comes up, which I never even realized when I first started. I thought this is only writers who go through this.

Speaker 5 And it was sort of amazing to me to see that, you know, people starting businesses. Of course, they go through it.
It's exactly the same thing. So anyway, thanks for having me.

Speaker 5 And if you want to do this again sometime,

Speaker 5 I'm delighted to do it.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. I appreciate you.
And everyone who's listening right now, make sure you go buy War of Art initially, start there, and then go through all the rest of them with me.

Speaker 2 And then if you want to hear Stephen's entire life, a government cheese book, that was really fun. And I wasn't, I didn't know that book, what it was about at all.
You just mentioned that it was new.

Speaker 2 And so I tried to get the whole thing done before. And it was so fun just to see your life and actually to see these principles.

Speaker 2 You know, you read the book War of Art and you understand the principles. You see it in your life.

Speaker 2 And it was just fascinating to see on your journey how it affected you and how you overcame it and then all the different pieces.

Speaker 2 And then I look at just the fact that, you know, I think most people would look at this body of work and think, okay, he started when he was 15 years old and that's how he created this much.

Speaker 2 But understanding that the legend of Bag of Ants came out in your 50s and then from there, this is like what came from on the backside of that is really, it's really impressive and really amazing.

Speaker 2 So it should give everybody motivation of like, wow, what's possible? What can you create no matter where you are in the in the journey?

Speaker 2 So thank you for being a, just a great model of, of success and doing this stuff and being a creator and not letting resistance win.

Speaker 2 And I'm I'm just super grateful for you and taking the time today to hang out with me.

Speaker 5 So, all right. Thanks a lot, Russell.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 5 Go out and buy a potato can tomorrow.

Speaker 5 Done.

Speaker 2 How about this? I'll sell, I'll give you a potato gun. You give me your old typewriter.
We'll trade.

Speaker 5 We'll talk about that later.

Speaker 2 Awesome. Thanks so much, man.
I appreciate you. Thanks, Russell.