"The War of Art - Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles" - by Steven Pressfield: I bought this book on a whim after hearing someone quote Steven Pressfield from this book and I am really glad I bought it. Coincidentally, the night before I heard the quote, my husband shared with me that his most favorite book ever is 'The Gates of Fire' by Steven Pressfield. So, I guess I shouldn't say it was a whim... it was more like I was heeding the call of one those messages trying to make it's way to me. And, boy, did this book have some significant messages to hear.
As I've mentioned before it's not often that I find a book anymore that doesn't say the same ol' thing. So for me to even remotely give a great review is saying a lot in itself.
My only 'complaint' is I wish Steven Pressfield would have chosen a different subtitle. This little gem of a book reaches far beyond the scope of breaking though creative blocks and a lot of people may pass it up and miss out on some of his profound messages by thinking that it's only for writers and artists. It really is for anyone who is pursuing a dream that may be wondering why they're not there yet.
I found a great synopsis of the book from a reader review on Amazon by Joe Tye. I couldn't have said it any better myself so I'm posting it here:
Know the enemy, know yourself, wrote Sun Tzu in his classic The Art of
War, and your victory will be certain. For anyone who is stuck at a
level below their God-given potential, who can't seem to get on track
to do the things they need to do in order to achieve their most
authentic goals, knowing the enemy and knowing yourself are one and the
same.
Steve Pressfield's magnificent little book The War of Art is about
being more creative - but more important, it's also about fulfilling
your potential as a human being. To do this, he says, you must overcome
Resistance (the "R" is capitalized be Pressfield to represent the fact
that it is a very real entity - as real to your authentic Self as
Charles Manson or Genghis Khan were to their victims).
The whole aim of Resistance, says Pressfield (who is the
bestselling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire), is
to prevent you from doing the work you are called to do. Resistance
wants you to take it easy, to be ordinary and mediocre, to take the low
road. Resistance is the reason so many people place a basket over the
brilliant candle that shines within them. The fight against Resistance
is, Pressfield says, a war to the death.
Pressfield disputes the standard motivational clich that you can
have, do, or be anything if you follow the right formula and just work
hard enough. Rather, he says: "We are not born with unlimited
choices... Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some
ideal that we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already
are and become it."
There are two occasions when Resistance will be the most
relentless, and they are related. The first is when something really
matters to you. "Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is
to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward
pursuing it." If your lifelong goal is to be a writer, a rejection
letter from a publisher will hurt a whole lot more than if you
submitted your manuscript on a dare.
The second occasion that Resistance is most dangerous is related
to what Pressfield calls "the mother of all fears," namely the fear
that you will actually succeed. Resistance builds as you get closer to
the finish line. "At this point, Resistance knows we're about to beat
it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us
with everything it's got." There is a real paradox here: the closer you
get to reaching that proverbial tipping point, where things are really
starting to click, the more likely you are to engage in the
self-sabotaging behavior that is the calling card of Resistance.
Pressfield offers a prescription for defeating Resistance. You
must, he says, become "a pro." But he does not mean that in the sense
of earning a living at the work, in the sense of being a member of a
certain profession, or in the sense of being looked up to by your
peers. Rather, he simply means showing up every day with your lunch
pail and getting to work. Much of the book has to do with how you make
this transformation so that you can do the work that you are called to
do.
Over the next couple of days I will be posting my thoughts, inspirations and ideas that arose for me out of the book that I would like to share with you here.
