3: The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield

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1. 00:00:00 -The big question here, Mike, is how's the meditation practice going?
2. 00:00:04 -This one's going to take a little bit to become sticky.
3. 00:00:09 This is definitely not something that I naturally embrace.
4. 00:00:13 But every time I do do it, it feels really great,
5. 00:00:19 which is not as often as it should be.
6. 00:00:21 -Do you notice, because I've been trying to do this as well,
7. 00:00:25 and I feel like I've been getting pummeled on all sides to start meditating?
8. 00:00:31 And so I'm dedicated to making it work.
9. 00:00:35 I just don't think I'm there yet.
10. 00:00:36 But can you see a difference the day you do it?
11. 00:00:41 I assume you do it in the morning.
12. 00:00:42 -Yep.
13. 00:00:44 Yeah, I can notice a difference.
14. 00:00:47 And usually it's just by the end of the day,
15. 00:00:51 feeling like I'm still in control as opposed to being ready to snap.
16. 00:00:59 It's like my crap tolerance wears out otherwise.
17. 00:01:03 By the end of the day, just like, stay away from me.
18. 00:01:08 -It's like I just want to go to bed. Everybody leave me alone.
19. 00:01:10 -Exactly.
20. 00:01:12 -I'm kind of jealous because I feel like I'm one of those people that I need to,
21. 00:01:18 I guess, stick with it multiple days in a row before I see or notice any difference
22. 00:01:26 from meditating.
23. 00:01:27 And maybe that's just my lack of self-awareness, which is possible.
24. 00:01:33 But I just don't see whenever I do it that morning.
25. 00:01:36 And I'm using the app com for it.
26. 00:01:41 And they've just got a timed version of it.
27. 00:01:44 I don't do any of the guided pieces.
28. 00:01:46 I did those a while back and they never really helped me.
29. 00:01:48 So I just kind of do the silence thing.
30. 00:01:51 And that seems to work pretty well for me.
31. 00:01:53 But at the end of that session, I'm just like, "Okay, now what?"
32. 00:02:00 By the end of the day, I don't really notice it until I get a streak of about four or five
33. 00:02:07 days in a row.
34. 00:02:08 If I can get that streak of four or five days in a row, then I feel like I can start to notice
35. 00:02:14 it, which I guess is a pretty good instigator to keep a series of days going in a row.
36. 00:02:22 Don't break the chain.
37. 00:02:23 I know.
38. 00:02:24 I know.
39. 00:02:24 But the nice thing is that because one of the other pieces that I have been adopting
40. 00:02:32 is the journaling piece.
41. 00:02:33 So I try to make sure that at the end of the day, whenever I'm doing that journaling
42. 00:02:37 portion of my day that I'm discussing with myself how the meditation bit went,
43. 00:02:44 and I haven't looked back on them yet to see if there's much of a difference there,
44. 00:02:49 but I'm at least recording that.
45. 00:02:50 Hopefully that'll help me to at least see if there's any difference in the long run.
46. 00:02:55 Yep.
47. 00:02:57 Data-driven decisions.
48. 00:02:58 All right.
49. 00:03:00 It's true.
50. 00:03:00 It's true.
51. 00:03:01 But the other piece of the journaling thing that I've been doing is,
52. 00:03:03 am I working my way towards the goals that I have set?
53. 00:03:08 Am I able to conquer the urges to procrastinate and beat those?
54. 00:03:15 Those are the ones I'm primarily journaling through.
55. 00:03:17 And the nice thing is that just it's kind of like confession time, I guess,
56. 00:03:23 where I need to sit down and be honest with myself and just having that period of time
57. 00:03:29 at the end of the day.
58. 00:03:29 That's extremely helpful.
59. 00:03:31 And it at least helps me see where some of those weak points are,
60. 00:03:35 and where some of the difficult times that I need to be on my game and be aware of,
61. 00:03:41 step in, which is some of what we'll talk about today in today's book.
62. 00:03:45 But I think that journaling piece, and you talked about jumping in and doing a little more
63. 00:03:49 journaling as well or redirecting that a little bit.
64. 00:03:52 But for me, I've just found that being honest with myself and just being aware of
65. 00:03:57 the struggles that go on through the day and trying to figure out how do I overcome those.
66. 00:04:03 That's the big piece there that's extremely helpful.
67. 00:04:06 Yeah, you got to know what works and what doesn't.
68. 00:04:09 And journaling is a great way to create a record of what works and what doesn't.
69. 00:04:14 And then when you look back at it, you have a different idea a lot of times of what actually
70. 00:04:19 transpired.
71. 00:04:19 And then over time, you kind of lose the forest through the trees.
72. 00:04:24 But the journal, going back to your journal, can help you re-center and say,
73. 00:04:28 "Oh yeah, this is actually what happened."
74. 00:04:30 Yeah, it's true.
75. 00:04:32 Has that-- because you made some changes to journaling process, I thought, right?
76. 00:04:36 A little bit.
77. 00:04:39 It's still mainly the same.
78. 00:04:43 I'm kind of rethinking some other prompts that I asked myself, and I've kicked around
79. 00:04:50 some different ones.
80. 00:04:52 But in the end, it's still fairly similar.
81. 00:04:55 Okay, maybe I just--
82. 00:04:56 Really the idea for me is just to, at the end of the day,
83. 00:05:02 actually think through what really happened and then kind of rate myself on how I did.
84. 00:05:08 And usually when I do that, I can find the tipping points for where my day either
85. 00:05:15 became really productive or I got off track.
86. 00:05:17 And then identifying those tipping points helps because then you can avoid those situations in
87. 00:05:24 the future that kind of lead to that.
88. 00:05:27 So it's kind of like you see these patterns, at least for me, and then in the future,
89. 00:05:33 you can see yourself start to go down this pattern and you can catch yourself and say,
90. 00:05:37 "Oh no, I know where this is going to end up," and then you can course correct.
91. 00:05:40 Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
92. 00:05:43 Primarily for me, one of the things that I'm trying to journal about is with my creative work,
93. 00:05:51 because I do a lot of writing, you and I podcast together. I'm stepping into kind of building courses,
94. 00:05:59 online courses as well. So there's a lot of that creative piece that comes in.
95. 00:06:04 And that's primarily what eventually led me to choosing our next book, The War of Art,
96. 00:06:10 by Stephen Pressfield. And the subtitle on this is Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Intercreative
97. 00:06:18 Battles. I chose this primarily because whenever it comes time to sit down and write or generate a
98. 00:06:29 video or a podcast of some kind, for me, the podcast not so much, especially when there's
99. 00:06:34 someone else on the other line, just because there's the accountability piece there.
100. 00:06:39 But whenever it comes time to write, for a long time, I have had the mentality of,
101. 00:06:46 I just don't feel like I know what I'm going to write about, so I don't at all.
102. 00:06:50 And I know it doesn't make sense now that I'm thinking about it, but
103. 00:06:55 previously, I would always come at it from the standpoint of, "Okay, I need to have
104. 00:07:00 the best scenario to sit down and write." And I could create that scenario, but I don't really
105. 00:07:06 want to, and I don't really know how. And what I mean by scenario is mostly a mindset.
106. 00:07:12 And I'm coming around to how do I do this and how do I understand this creative work. And
107. 00:07:19 Stephen Pressfield, in the book, he talks about not necessarily saying that art has to be
108. 00:07:27 something creative in the sense of writing or painting or anything on those lines. He could
109. 00:07:32 also talk about building businesses, which I thought was interesting, because so many of us are
110. 00:07:39 building at least a side project or we're solo-preneurs type. So just how do you
111. 00:07:46 deal with that? How do you bring yourself to do that work and what's the fight that's going to go
112. 00:07:50 on the war in this case to keeping you from doing that? So I know that I struggle with that,
113. 00:07:56 and that's one of the reasons I wanted to read the book.
114. 00:07:58 Yeah, it's great for any creative type who's making anything. I talks a lot about the
115. 00:08:08 roadblocks and the resistance that people who have that creative mindset face. So
116. 00:08:16 you want to just jump in and I know resistance is kind of where the book starts.
117. 00:08:21 Yeah. You want to talk about that?
118. 00:08:23 I think so, because ultimately he starts, well, the whole book, if we back up here a little bit
119. 00:08:28 and say the whole book, the layout of it, he's got it broken down into three sections.
120. 00:08:33 I think it makes sense, Mike, to just work through him.
121. 00:08:36 Like go through the first one and then go through the second and the third. And the first one
122. 00:08:39 is all about resistance and what is it that we're fighting against? In other words, who's the enemy?
123. 00:08:48 Who is it that we're fighting against here? I have some ideas on how to define resistance,
124. 00:08:54 but Mike, what are the resistance pieces that stood out to you when you went through the book?
125. 00:09:03 Well, I think that resistance could have a little bit different definition for just about anybody.
126. 00:09:08 Anybody who's a creative type who has had a project that they've been working on or they know
127. 00:09:12 they should be working on has encountered resistance in some way, shape, or form. And they probably
128. 00:09:17 know exactly what you're talking about when you say resistance, which is one of the things
129. 00:09:21 that I really liked about this book. Like you were talking about the resistance that you face
130. 00:09:28 when you sit down to write. He has a quote and I've just wrote down a ton of quotes from this book.
131. 00:09:33 He says at the very beginning, it's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting
132. 00:09:37 down to write. So for a writer, you're like, yes, that is exactly the issue. And you can identify
133. 00:09:45 with resistance in that particular scenario. One of the craziest analogies, or maybe a sudden
134. 00:09:55 analogy, the stories that he told, conclusions that he drew was when he was talking about Hitler
135. 00:10:01 at the beginning of the book. Do you remember that?
136. 00:10:03 Vaguely. He talks about how Hitler actually wanted to go to art school. And all right, right,
137. 00:10:13 right. He just couldn't hack it. He has this quote at the beginning. He says,
138. 00:10:18 it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank piece of canvas.
139. 00:10:25 Which sounds a little bit extreme, sensational, whatever word you want to use there. But
140. 00:10:33 if you've been in that particular situation where you're like, okay, I have to create this thing.
141. 00:10:38 Like it feels like the entire world is fighting against you at that point.
142. 00:10:42 It's so true. And, you know, if you use the writing example, which is easy to do because
143. 00:10:48 you and I are both writers in some form, whether it's for a blog or a book or anything,
144. 00:10:55 we tend to write quite a bit. And the struggle really is to get your butt in the chair
145. 00:11:01 to start writing. I mean, it's just not, at least for me, the process of writing is enjoyable. But
146. 00:11:10 getting myself to go do it is always a struggle because I don't know what I'm going to write about
147. 00:11:15 for the most part. And when he talks about resistance and he puts all kinds of types of labels on it
148. 00:11:23 and Pressfield is awesome at cutting, I guess would be the word for it. He can condense things
149. 00:11:31 down into a very small package, but it says a ton in very few words, which is awesome. But it
150. 00:11:38 also means that you end up rereading little sections quite a bit. And he does this significantly
151. 00:11:43 through the resistance definition piece. And it's just page after page of resistance.
152. 00:11:50 It's the most powerful at the finish line. And it comes through procrastination. He even talks
153. 00:11:55 about resistance and sex. So it can take a lot of different forms. And for me, a lot of those,
154. 00:12:03 yes, it's a war. And for me, a lot of it is the procrastination piece. So if you go back to
155. 00:12:10 Kelly McGonigall's book, from last time, The Willpower Instinct, I struggle a lot with
156. 00:12:16 the thinking tomorrow is going to be better. That mentality of not getting to it today,
157. 00:12:22 because I think I'll be in a better position tomorrow. So I put it off to my tomorrow self,
158. 00:12:26 instead of my today's self, which is horrible. And it continues. And the next thing, you know,
159. 00:12:31 you got to cycle and it's three weeks before I do anything. And it just continues. But yeah,
160. 00:12:36 he actually says procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance. We don't say I'll
161. 00:12:41 never do it. We say I'll do it tomorrow, which is exactly to your point. Yeah. And I don't know why
162. 00:12:47 for me, and maybe I should say I do know why. It's mostly because I don't want to
163. 00:12:56 try to put something out there that's not perfect. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I always want it to
164. 00:13:02 be as good as it could be. So it's easy for resistance to step in and say, well, you're not
165. 00:13:07 in the mood to do it perfectly today. Let's do it tomorrow. And that cycle kicks off from there.
166. 00:13:15 It's not that I'm saying I'm not going to write or I'm never going to write. It's just that tomorrow
167. 00:13:21 will be a better time. You know, the kids will be out of the house. I'll have better coffee at that
168. 00:13:25 time. The whole space will be in a better place. I'll have it cleaned up at that point. I mean,
169. 00:13:30 you see have a list of excuses can just go on and on and on.
170. 00:13:36 Yep, exactly. And that's what he would define as self dramatization, I believe,
171. 00:13:42 which he says feeds resistance and it keeps us busy, but we're not productive.
172. 00:13:48 You know, if we focus on our situation and all the things that are preventing us,
173. 00:13:52 all those built in excuses from actually doing the work, then we can say, well, I'm not going
174. 00:14:00 to have to deal with this situation in the future, but I'm going to go back to Kelly McConaugall's
175. 00:14:05 book. We tend to view the future as like the ideal and it never plays out that way.
176. 00:14:12 It's true. I wish it did. That'd be awesome.
177. 00:14:16 But it never does. One of the forms of resistance that I thought was kind of interesting.
178. 00:14:23 He talks about some of these disorders. Did you catch this piece? The self medication
179. 00:14:30 that it was interesting that because he used to work for an ad agency. And one of the things that
180. 00:14:41 his boss used to tell him at the time was to invent a disease and come up with a disease and
181. 00:14:47 you could sell a cure to that disease. And it's interesting that we do that so much. And
182. 00:14:53 some of the disorders that he lists there, I'm not so sure are actually marketing ploys.
183. 00:15:00 They might actually be diseases, but they're at least interesting that like take myself,
184. 00:15:07 for example, I've had a psychologist that says, I'm ADHD. Well, just having that label
185. 00:15:15 immediately starts to give you an excuse for not doing something. And it's easy to take advantage
186. 00:15:23 of it, I guess. It's not that I'm saying I'm distracted and I can't focus long enough to write.
187. 00:15:30 Or maybe I'm using that as an excuse. And that's one that I've previously used as an excuse.
188. 00:15:35 And to be honest, once I finish reading this book, my ability to sit down and write went up
189. 00:15:40 dramatically just because you understand that it's a war and you start to put better labels on it,
190. 00:15:48 I guess. There's the label of the ADDPs, but having a label of something that combats that
191. 00:15:54 or potentially challenges that there's even the thing there to begin with will at least put you
192. 00:16:00 in this place where you're better able to go to battle. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah, definitely.
193. 00:16:06 And I thought that part was really interesting when he was talking about the marketing of the
194. 00:16:09 diseases. And he used a statistic, I don't know where he gets this, but he said that doctors estimate
195. 00:16:15 that 70 to 80% of their business is non-health related. Did you catch that? I did. I thought that
196. 00:16:20 was interesting. I brought it up to my wife and she thought it was probably true, but I don't know.
197. 00:16:25 Yeah, I guess I could see that. But yeah, I thought I used specifically when he mentioned the
198. 00:16:31 ADD stuff. Like, I wonder what Joe thinks about that. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I'm,
199. 00:16:37 I don't know if I'm coming to grips with the ADD thing or if I'm just rejecting it entirely.
200. 00:16:42 I've been calling it a racecar brain. I'm not going to instead of anything. I like that.
201. 00:16:49 Yeah, I don't know how I feel about the labels in general, but it's, it's at least interesting. And
202. 00:16:54 for me, as someone who's been given that label, I tend to use the book, The Willpower Instinct.
203. 00:17:04 And now with this, The War of Art, I see them as tools to combat it, if that helps at all. Because
204. 00:17:13 there's so much that goes on in your mind. And for me, I can bounce from thing to thing,
205. 00:17:18 extremely fast. Just in general conversation, I can throw some people off, just be like,
206. 00:17:24 how on earth did you get there, Joe? I don't know. I just jumped for topics and landed there
207. 00:17:29 somehow. But just knowing that when I sit down to create that there is this force, if you will,
208. 00:17:39 that's an enemy to be fought. And just knowing that there's something there
209. 00:17:46 to fight against and that there is a war against, that in and of itself helps tremendously for me.
210. 00:17:54 Yeah. And the phrase that I really took from that first section was resistance understands
211. 00:18:06 nothing but power. So you're going to have to deal with this resistance and you can't
212. 00:18:11 deal with it any other way than to smack it in the face and say, no, I'm going to beat you.
213. 00:18:16 You can't ask it to leave. You have to overcome that fear that he talks about.
214. 00:18:22 Here's another quote. It says, if you find yourself asking, am I really a writer? Am I really an
215. 00:18:28 artist? Which I can totally relate to? Having published a book, I still ask myself that.
216. 00:18:33 He says, chances are, if you're asking those questions, then you are. The counterfeit innovator
217. 00:18:39 is the one that is wildly self-confident. They're the ones who say, oh, I can do that tomorrow.
218. 00:18:45 But the real one he says is scared to death. So recognizing that that fear is going to be there
219. 00:18:51 is kind of comforting in some sense because when you deal with that stuff after reading the book,
220. 00:18:58 it's kind of like, oh, that's normal. Everybody in my situation is going to go through this sort of
221. 00:19:02 thing. It's not just me. When you were writing your book, did you deal with this a lot?
222. 00:19:10 Was that something that you found difficult to overcome? And I don't know if you had read this book
223. 00:19:16 because I think isn't this a reread for you? Yeah, it's the second time I've gone through it.
224. 00:19:21 I can't remember when I read it the first time. It may have been before I wrote my book.
225. 00:19:26 But yeah, this was definitely something that I dealt with. But the thing that kind of grounded
226. 00:19:32 me, I guess, was the why I wrote the book in the first place.
227. 00:19:39 I mean, just being really straightforward, I guess. My book is a Christian take on productivity.
228. 00:19:49 So obviously I have a Christian mindset that I approach it from. And my belief in God was
229. 00:19:55 really the thing that drove me to write it. I believe that I had to write this book, that I would be
230. 00:20:00 held accountable when I die for not writing this if I hadn't written it. And I guess, you know,
231. 00:20:07 depending on your belief system, anybody could feel that way, you know, where this is something
232. 00:20:14 that I have to do. But it was really tangible for me. It really like put a face or a picture
233. 00:20:23 on the reason for why I wanted to write it in the first place, which made it a lot easier to
234. 00:20:30 relate to and then follow through with actually doing the work.
235. 00:20:33 Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that because so many of the ventures that I've taken on in
236. 00:20:39 the past, there's a lot of strong motivation purely from, like in your and I case, from a Christian
237. 00:20:48 and spiritual standpoint, that there's such a strong pull towards that mission that the resistance
238. 00:20:56 is almost just gone at that point because you have so much of that drive and that purpose behind
239. 00:21:03 what you're doing. And I can definitely see that, you know, there are some sometimes when
240. 00:21:09 resistance really isn't there. Some of the articles that I write, some of the
241. 00:21:14 scripts or the small business ventures that I've taken on, they just happen. Like, I don't have to,
242. 00:21:22 it's not a war to sit down and do those things, just because it's enjoyable and it's something
243. 00:21:30 that I can get excited about and I'm definitely on board with the mission behind it. So the
244. 00:21:35 resistance piece, I mean, who cares, it's not even there, it's not something I have to fight for.
245. 00:21:40 But whenever I go into something like writing articles for the blog, because I write to a week,
246. 00:21:49 that means that it's pretty easy to run out of ideas pretty quick or it's not always
247. 00:21:56 something that you're crazy excited about because you've done it so much. And whenever you have
248. 00:22:01 something that you're continually trying to do repeatedly, that's I think when so much of this
249. 00:22:08 resistance and that enemy can step up and the fear of putting it out there or doubting what it is
250. 00:22:14 that you're doing, it's pretty easy for that to creep in and overtake it.
251. 00:22:19 Yeah, and I don't think you need to have a Christian mindset in order to have like a spiritual
252. 00:22:27 why. I mean, even in the Stephen Pressfield book, he talks about the prayer to the muse and he talks
253. 00:22:34 a lot about the supernatural stuff, angels and things like that later on in the book. He's got a
254. 00:22:39 little bit different take on it. But the motivation is and a lot of the
255. 00:22:47 mental imagery that he uses, I completely agree with. My definition of an angel is probably
256. 00:22:55 different than his, but I think we in terms of the whole spiritual realm at least, it sounds like
257. 00:23:06 there's a lot of synergy and agreement there and what is actually driving this work forward.
258. 00:23:14 Yeah, and I'm going to kind of pivot on you a little bit here. Are you familiar with
259. 00:23:21 Jeff Goins at all? Yep. Okay, so Jeff, he's an author, writer, and he writes about writing,
260. 00:23:32 primarily, which is interesting. It's very meta. His big turning point in his whole career
261. 00:23:39 that I thought was interesting and he talks about this quite a bit was the day that he was
262. 00:23:45 talking to a friend and he was grappling with whether or not he was a writer and whether or not
263. 00:23:52 he wanted to be a writer and all of this stuff and how do you go pro, if you will?
264. 00:23:58 And the thing that his friend told him was, well, you just have to say I'm a writer
265. 00:24:02 and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, but just the definition there completely changed the game
266. 00:24:10 for him. And it's interesting to me that Pressfield basically says the same thing. Whenever you want
267. 00:24:19 to combat resistance, you need to turn pro. You need to step away from being an amateur and go
268. 00:24:27 pro with it, which is a simply simple process of making the decision that you're a pro.
269. 00:24:33 And he goes through a lot of different pieces on defining what a professional is,
270. 00:24:39 which I think are really, really interesting and just the concept of turning pro and that it's a
271. 00:24:46 decision by itself. I thought that was interesting because I've never really thought about it that way.
272. 00:24:52 Yeah, and one specific aspect of that, he said that the professional tackles the projects that
273. 00:24:59 will make him stretch. So I think a lot of people have this picture that once you turn pro,
274. 00:25:05 you're really good at this and it's autopilot after that. But that's not my experience at all.
275. 00:25:14 And it sounds like that's not Stephen Pressfield's experience either and not how he would define it.
276. 00:25:18 But it's constantly seeking out those projects where you feel like you're over your head.
277. 00:25:23 So when I wrote my book, for example, I had no idea how to write a book. I just figured I better
278. 00:25:31 learn how to write. So I started, I started a blog just so I could get some practice,
279. 00:25:36 you know, do some, do some reps. And there wasn't ever a point. It wasn't, you know, after I
280. 00:25:44 published the book that I was like, okay, yes, now I have arrived. Now I am a pro. But looking back
281. 00:25:51 at it after I read this book, the moment I turned pro in my eyes, and according to Stephen Pressfield's
282. 00:25:58 definition was the moment that I decided to chase this project that I had no idea how to complete.
283. 00:26:04 And if you do that enough, you'll find yourself, you'll end up somewhere that you never thought
284. 00:26:12 you would get. Because when you take on those projects that stretch you, you don't know what the
285. 00:26:17 end goal is going to look like a lot of times, right? You at least don't know what the process
286. 00:26:21 is going to look like to get there. You have to kind of figure it out as you go. And recognizing
287. 00:26:28 that that is part of the process, that is what a professional does. It's not just the things that
288. 00:26:33 you know how to do and doing them over and over and over again until they become automatic.
289. 00:26:38 That makes me feel a lot better about my process and my story and what I've gone through.
290. 00:26:45 So does it still feel weird if somebody calls you an author? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.
291. 00:26:54 So I've written a book as well, and I've had a couple people refer to me as an author. And
292. 00:26:59 I almost want to contradict them. I don't agree with you. I'm not an author. I just happen to
293. 00:27:08 have written a book. That's all it is. So it's not something, it's definitely an internal thing.
294. 00:27:15 And you kind of just have like Pressfield says you have to make that decision. But it still feels
295. 00:27:20 weird if somebody else calls you that. Yep. I would argue that the thing that makes you
296. 00:27:28 a professional is the fact that you're going to show up and do it. He had a quote in there that
297. 00:27:34 I really liked in that section on Turning Pro about the athlete. This is the athlete knows that
298. 00:27:40 the day will never come when he wakes up pain free. He has to play hurt. And then there was another
299. 00:27:46 quote kind of related. It's Somerset Meigem, is that how you say their name? It says I write only
300. 00:27:53 when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. Yep.
301. 00:27:57 You know, it's recognizing that there's never going to be that perfect scenario. The circumstances
302. 00:28:03 are not going to be ideal. The stars are not all going to align where you can finally now,
303. 00:28:09 I've got the time to sit down and make your thing or write the book or launch the project,
304. 00:28:15 whatever the case may be. But to show up and do it every day anyways, even if it's not a big
305. 00:28:23 substantial amount of time that you're investing in that project, just the fact that you show up
306. 00:28:29 every day, I would argue is the thing that makes you a professional as opposed to one of the spectators
307. 00:28:36 who sits on the sideline and is like, I'll do that tomorrow. They've got the ideas, they've got
308. 00:28:42 the inspiration, but they never actually take any action on those goals and those dreams and
309. 00:28:49 those visions that they have. And you combine this with his, as he's going through the definition
310. 00:28:57 of a professional, he also has one where he says a professional plays it as it lies. And
311. 00:29:03 it makes a lot of sense too, because he comes at it from a golf standpoint, you have to play the
312. 00:29:09 ball where it lands. And whenever you're fighting against resistance, whenever you turn pro,
313. 00:29:16 the circumstances like you're saying, they're not always going to be perfect. It's not like you're
314. 00:29:20 going to be sitting with a straight, perfectly level green, ready to putt exactly with no win,
315. 00:29:26 no anything, birds not going to sweep in and take it. Everything's going to be perfect and ready
316. 00:29:31 for you. It's just not the way it is. Instead, you have to make sure that you're willing to,
317. 00:29:36 in this case, go to war to continue to do the work. So talk action items here. I couldn't help
318. 00:29:45 myself, so I got a head start on this mic. And for me, and I've written about this in the past,
319. 00:29:52 I have two different desks in my office. One is a writing desk and one is my computer desk. And
320. 00:29:58 I do all my writing with pen and paper. I don't do it with a keyboard. I always end up transcribing
321. 00:30:04 it, dictating it into the computer later. Well, with that writing desk, I have found, since reading
322. 00:30:12 this, that I just have to make sure that there's a certain time of the day, which for me is first
323. 00:30:17 thing in the morning. And then again, after second breakfast, I'm semi-hobit. Whenever I get back
324. 00:30:23 down in my office after second breakfast, that's another time when I sit down and write. And in both
325. 00:30:29 cases, what I have to do and going through some of his suggestions here, accepting no excuses,
326. 00:30:36 just doing the work, making sure you're ready for it and setting up all the environment for that,
327. 00:30:44 I have to make sure that my phone stays upstairs or is somewhere else in the office where I can't
328. 00:30:49 get it. The computer's off and I'm able to just sit down. And the only thing that's in front of
329. 00:30:54 me is a pen and paper. That's all that I have available to me. If that's all that I'm able to
330. 00:31:00 do at that time, then my only choice is to go to work and to do the work and beat resistance in
331. 00:31:07 that case. So I've had to set some of those pieces up. And it's interesting how once you
332. 00:31:16 sit down in that chair after you do that for three or four days in a row, just sitting in the
333. 00:31:20 chair with a cup of coffee, it's crazy how everything just kind of magically takes over.
334. 00:31:26 I think that's what he gets into in the third book of this, the third section of the higher
335. 00:31:32 realm and the muse that he talks about. I think I would disagree with him on a lot of it, but
336. 00:31:37 the interesting part for me that I found is if I sit down and I've got that set time and I've
337. 00:31:44 got that set set of those circumstances put in place and I don't really have any other choice,
338. 00:31:50 then the work is pretty easy to do, honestly, which is a very good thing.
339. 00:31:55 So Joe, I have to ask you this because you have a separate writing desk. So you're probably the
340. 00:32:04 most qualified person that I know to answer this question. Okay. Since I watched Alison
341. 00:32:11 Wonderland with Johnny Depp, I have been wondering how is a raven like a writing desk?
342. 00:32:16 I can't answer that question, Mike. Darn, thought for sure you would know.
343. 00:32:23 Very good question. I don't have an answer. But I digress. One thing that I wanted to go back to
344. 00:32:32 when you were talking about your setup, this whole section on being professional really
345. 00:32:38 spoke to me. One thing he said though is that being a productivity guy, I really like this,
346. 00:32:47 he said the professional will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to
347. 00:32:53 banish it from his mind, which I would argue is exactly what you did when you set up your writing
348. 00:32:57 desk. You wanted to make sure that there was no distractions, there was no chaos. When you
349. 00:33:03 sat down to write, everything was in order. You've got your pens, your notebooks, I'm sure just
350. 00:33:09 sitting there ready to be picked up and you've eliminated all that friction that could
351. 00:33:13 get you to the point where you say, I just don't feel like it. I'll do it tomorrow. Correct?
352. 00:33:20 Yeah, absolutely. Everything has to be clean. It literally, the notebook has to be open in the
353. 00:33:27 title of the article or whatever it is I'm writing has to be already written at the top.
354. 00:33:31 All I can do is grab the pen, uncap it and go.
355. 00:33:36 Right. So that actually led to the, again, I'm just quoting different quotes that I really
356. 00:33:42 liked from this book, but the professional dedicates himself to mastering technique.
357. 00:33:47 Not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration, but because he wants to be in
358. 00:33:53 possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration comes. That to me is the whole reason
359. 00:34:01 for productivity and the whole reason for the organization that he's talking about is you want
360. 00:34:07 to make sure that there is nothing in the way when that inspiration does happen. You want to make
361. 00:34:14 sure that you can click in as easily as possible. And as Kel Newport would say, do that deep work.
362. 00:34:21 The deep focus work that's really important. That's Stephen Pressfield's approaching it from
363. 00:34:28 a creative stance in Kel Newport. I guess he would define deep work a little bit different where
364. 00:34:34 it could be literally anything. But I think there's definitely some alignment there
365. 00:34:39 where when that state of flow is there for the taking, you want to make sure that you're not
366. 00:34:47 too distracted or there's not friction in your system to the point where you don't recognize it.
367. 00:34:52 Yeah, absolutely. And so much of, because we're heavy in the productivity space, Mike,
368. 00:34:59 and there's a large amount of productivity tips and tricks and apps and tools that
369. 00:35:06 their whole purpose is to eliminate friction and resistance. I mean, look at tools like
370. 00:35:11 take drafts, for example. It's an app for iPhone that you open it up and you can start typing into
371. 00:35:17 it. And then after you type the text, you can send it somewhere else. The whole point of that app is
372. 00:35:22 to remove resistance and getting something out of your head or to send it somewhere else,
373. 00:35:28 but you don't know where it's going to go yet. Like the whole point is to remove that resistance.
374. 00:35:32 Exactly. If you spend any time in the productivity space,
375. 00:35:37 you start to see that this is a recurring thing. Like so much of what we do in the tips and the
376. 00:35:43 tricks and the stuff that we come up with, the scripts and all of it primarily comes down to
377. 00:35:50 removing resistance to the point where you could almost define productivity as removing resistance.
378. 00:35:56 It's kind of ridiculous if you get down that far. That's true.
379. 00:36:03 The other thing, I'm kind of going back to the middle section and we were talking a little bit
380. 00:36:10 about the third book. The other thing I want to just touch on, I guess, is the whole idea of you
381. 00:36:17 incorporated. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. That was really a light bulb moment for me because
382. 00:36:25 when it comes to especially my personal projects, I am a terrible self-promoter.
383. 00:36:31 I created a video course which I give away for free. I don't even sell it. I can't even get myself
384. 00:36:39 to tweet about it. I did it one time when I launched it.
385. 00:36:42 It's true. I did the same thing. I recently sold a thousand copies of my book, so I wanted to be
386. 00:36:53 awesome and offer a huge discount on it. To say thanks, I guess. Of course, I write the email.
387. 00:37:02 You send out your almost obligatory tweets and posts and emails to everybody to let them know about
388. 00:37:09 it. You inevitably get people that are upset about it. This is another set of things that
389. 00:37:16 Pressfield talks about is when you get those critics that come in because you put something
390. 00:37:20 out there. You're doing something to help. You're putting your heart on the line. Whenever you do
391. 00:37:26 that and you're doing it to help, you want to promote it. You want it to be successful.
392. 00:37:32 You're always going to have people upset about it. It's just the way it goes. But the trick is to
393. 00:37:39 not listen. We know this for a long time. Don't feed the trolls.
394. 00:37:45 So much of that is true here because if you start creating things to not get critics in order to
395. 00:37:54 not get the negative feedback, it ends up being, how would you put that non-successful, non-dramatic,
396. 00:38:05 I don't know what you want to say there, but something that's not as beneficial or helpful to
397. 00:38:11 other people. Even though you're putting a lot out there, it's not as impactful. That's what I'm
398. 00:38:17 trying to say. It's got to be authentic. It's got to be who you really are. He talks a lot about
399. 00:38:23 the self versus the ego. He talks about how specifically in that last section, he talks about
400. 00:38:33 the hack versus the professional basically. The hack he says doesn't write what's in his heart.
401. 00:38:38 He writes for his audience. Then he asks a question which was really, really good.
402. 00:38:44 If you were the last person on earth, would you still do this? Because a lot of times we can get
403. 00:38:51 caught up in writing for the audience and writing because we want to create things that we think
404. 00:38:58 are going to be successful or are going to sell. There's definitely a place for that.
405. 00:39:05 That's part of the equation, I would say, but really that whole last section of the book where
406. 00:39:12 he's talking about the muse and he's getting into his spiritual reasonings and his spiritual
407. 00:39:21 why, stuff like that. It really hit me between the eyes. You wrote this book because you say that
408. 00:39:29 you believe that you had to do it. Why wouldn't you promote it? If you really do believe in this
409. 00:39:37 thing that strongly, let's see it. Where does the rubber meet the road? If this was just something
410. 00:39:45 so you could check it off on a list, then yeah, don't tweet about it. Don't promote it. But if
411. 00:39:51 you really do believe that you got this thing because the world needs to hear this, then you
412. 00:39:57 really can't care. It has to go farther than just the creation, I guess. If you really believe in
413. 00:40:03 the message and the thing that you're creating, it's going to be a natural extension to promote
414. 00:40:10 that and get it out there so that other people can see it and you're not going to care about the
415. 00:40:13 criticism or at least you're going to keep going. You're going to overcome the criticism.
416. 00:40:18 The criticism is really just the manifestation of the fear that he talked about in the first
417. 00:40:27 part of the book. It can be really tough. I know with my book it's available on Amazon. I don't
418. 00:40:34 remember the people who leave the glowing five-star reviews. I remember the one guy who says,
419. 00:40:41 "I don't like it because of this, this, and this." I'm like, "No, you don't understand. That's not
420. 00:40:46 what I'm saying." For example, if you're on my email newsletter, all it really is is there's some
421. 00:40:55 original content that goes with it and then it's mostly just a feed of the articles and podcasts
422. 00:40:59 that I put out. I never send out these promotion type emails. I don't ever do that. It's partly
423. 00:41:09 because I don't like getting them. I'm okay with one or two every now and then but not every day.
424. 00:41:17 It just gets to be overwhelming. I don't like sending them out. I recently sent one out.
425. 00:41:24 Of course, there's a lot of people that were saying thank you because they loved the thing I was
426. 00:41:29 promoting but at the same time, there's one or two guys that come back and say, "A marketing advert?
427. 00:41:36 So sad. Really? You did this?" Well, of course I did this. I want you to know about this. It's
428. 00:41:42 something awesome and I want you to be able to participate in it. You really have to get past
429. 00:41:48 all the haters out there because you're not doing it for everybody. You're doing it for a small
430. 00:41:55 subset. Now, the part that's interesting to me on that whole story with the email bit is that
431. 00:42:00 nobody unsubscribed over that at all, not even one. If you're so upset about it, why did you stick
432. 00:42:07 around? Anyway, it's interesting to me how because the anonymity that comes with so much of the
433. 00:42:15 critics today just means there's a lot of them. I don't want to belabor the whole critics and
434. 00:42:21 haters and trolls a bit, but there's a lot of it out there. You don't have to write online very
435. 00:42:28 long before you start getting pummeled with things that really, really don't matter. You just have
436. 00:42:34 to look past it. Yeah, and I think writing maybe is one of the safer ones because when you write a
437. 00:42:40 book, it's expected that you're going to think about all the developers who spend three years
438. 00:42:44 creating an app that they sell for 99 cents. People are leaving one star reviews because they have
439. 00:42:49 to pay for it. It's the same principle times about 100 with the App Store economics, but that's a
440. 00:42:57 whole other conversation. Good grief. That's a nightmare there. Anyway, so if you go on to the
441. 00:43:03 third book, the third section here, Pressfield gets big into spiritual forces, angels. I don't know
442. 00:43:13 what else you'd call them, but he gets pretty heavy on this. His view, and I'm pretty sure you're
443. 00:43:21 with me in disagreeing with him here, but his view is that when you sit down to write, let's use
444. 00:43:28 that example because it's what we've been talking about. You sit down to write and whenever you hit
445. 00:43:34 that flow or that creative juice starts to come through, he's saying that's not you. That's what
446. 00:43:41 he's calling the muse, and it's them putting the words and the creativity into your mind so that
447. 00:43:49 you can impart it on the world. Is that a fair description of this? Yeah. Kind of struggle to
448. 00:43:57 understand it a bit. That being said, I do think that there are like me specifically, I guess,
449. 00:44:07 there have been times where I will be doing something and evaluating the effectiveness of it and
450. 00:44:16 be praying in Stephen Pressfield's instance, he'd be praying to the muse. I would be praying to
451. 00:44:23 God. Yep. And I'll get an idea which I know, like that's not something I would have thought of myself,
452. 00:44:33 so and it ends up being the right thing. Yep. So I do agree with him on the point that
453. 00:44:40 you can get ideas from, I'll just say the spiritual dimension. I do believe in that part of it,
454. 00:44:50 but I definitely don't think it works the way that he thinks it works, where you kind of just
455. 00:44:56 tap into it. There is a big part of it. You have to create the environment. You have to show up.
456. 00:45:02 You have to do the work like he's talking about in the first part of the book. And because there's
457. 00:45:08 a whole book devoted to this, I think it maybe is emphasized a little bit more than even Stephen
458. 00:45:15 Pressfield would if you sat down and had a cup of coffee with him, I'm not sure he would put this
459. 00:45:21 on the same pedestal as or at the same level of the turning pro section. Yeah. I would agree with
460. 00:45:27 you. And I would certainly agree with you on the spiritual realm. I'm definitely with you in that
461. 00:45:31 camp. And I think there are times when this spiritual dimension, as we're calling it, would
462. 00:45:38 give us words in that sense. And I'm definitely on board with you there. I think it starts to get
463. 00:45:44 a little funny when he starts to, when it's not necessarily a, you know, if it's not someone coming
464. 00:45:52 from God in that sense, I would tend to disagree with him there, but that's, that's the Christian
465. 00:45:58 worldview coming through. But the part of it that's interesting to me is because he even calls out,
466. 00:46:03 he even gives you the exception saying, you know, if you don't believe in these spiritual beings,
467. 00:46:08 then just think of it as this force of nature in some form. Right. And I get that. And at the same
468. 00:46:15 time, every time I was reading the muse, I kind of translated it to the mindset in my mind.
469. 00:46:24 To me, it's, it's less of a force, like when I rest it down to right. And I definitely hit that
470. 00:46:31 flow. And at this point, it's almost every morning, which is awesome. And whenever I do that, I don't
471. 00:46:37 necessarily think of it as some external force giving me all of those creative words. I tend to
472. 00:46:43 think of it just as a mindset. And given the circumstances in me setting myself up for it,
473. 00:46:50 creates that trigger to allow myself to think in the way that I need to think in order to
474. 00:46:58 write the words that I need to write. Does that make sense, Mike?
475. 00:47:01 Yeah. I mean, that's basically what my book is, is about is the, that from the Christian
476. 00:47:09 perspective, there are a lot of people who think that God will just show up and do everything for
477. 00:47:14 you, not my experience. He'll tell you what to do. And then you have to get busy and actually
478. 00:47:20 follow through and do it. He's not going to just snap his fingers and poof. You're in your dream job.
479. 00:47:25 Right.
480. 00:47:26 Fact, my, my experience, my story is I've kind of lived it out now. You know, when I started to write
481. 00:47:34 the book, that's kind of what led to me getting my job at Asian efficiency. I started blogging.
482. 00:47:41 And for about two weeks, I posted every day, five a.m. before I left for the office. And then
483. 00:47:48 Asian efficiency posted that they were, they were hiring at the time. I wasn't even interested in a
484. 00:47:52 full time job. I said, not, no, I don't really want to do that. But any opportunities for guest
485. 00:47:57 posting. And they said, well, we really don't do that. But if you have anything, send it over,
486. 00:48:00 send over my blog that I started two weeks earlier. And they said, yeah, there's a lot of synergy
487. 00:48:05 here. We've read a lot of the same books, a lot of the same mindsets. We're going to give this a
488. 00:48:09 shot. Now, you know, one thing led to another. And now I'm full time with the, with the company.
489. 00:48:14 And there's a lot of synergy between my Christian belief system and the company's core values,
490. 00:48:19 even though they don't share the same, same mindset. But you have to do something with that idea that,
491. 00:48:26 in my opinion, God has given you, you have to be a good steward of it. So once you do that,
492. 00:48:32 the score takes care of itself, as Don Schuller would say, but you've got to step out there.
493. 00:48:39 If you never make the first step, nothing's ever going to change.
494. 00:48:42 Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's some of this that comes out in, you know, you don't want to
495. 00:48:48 go back to the very beginning here, where my experience was always waiting for that perfect
496. 00:48:53 scenario, like you're waiting for this mindset to just kind of creep up and take hold of you.
497. 00:48:58 It's not going to work that way. You have to create the circumstances and the place for that mindset
498. 00:49:06 to come out. And this is where I think it's about two thirds of the way through the third book.
499. 00:49:13 He actually shifts away from the spiritual realm, which makes me think that he's
500. 00:49:19 not putting the emphasis on it that we originally think he is, even though he spends a lot of time
501. 00:49:26 on the muse and the spiritual forces. He spends a lot of time there, but he does shift off of it
502. 00:49:33 before the end of the book to talk about territory and hierarchies. And what he means by that is,
503. 00:49:41 take the hierarchy thinking, for example, so you tend to put yourself in order, like,
504. 00:49:46 that person's better than me and I'm better than this person. Like, well, that's just,
505. 00:49:49 we tend to want to do that as humans. He's saying not to do that, which makes perfect sense. If
506. 00:49:56 you're going to be an artist in some form that you would want to think of it more as this is my,
507. 00:50:02 this is my place. This is my territory. This is where I go to work and nobody can touch me here.
508. 00:50:07 That's what he's getting at there. I think that makes an awful lot of sense. Take the writing
509. 00:50:14 desk, for example, Mike, if I, if someone else were to sit down at that desk, well,
510. 00:50:21 it's not going to work for him. It's not going to do a whole lot for him. It's set up for me.
511. 00:50:25 That's my territory. I know that whenever I go down to that desk and I go to work,
512. 00:50:30 I'm going to be writing about productivity or tools or apps or something.
513. 00:50:33 If I'm doing that, then that's, that's my game. That's where I'm at and I know I'm good at that
514. 00:50:40 and I need to be okay with saying that because that's a place where I am a professional.
515. 00:50:44 That's what I do. So that's my territory and I know it and I know your territory is similar to
516. 00:50:50 that, but I think you're a little more broad than I am. Yeah, my territory is basically wherever I can
517. 00:51:00 sit with my computer and then my latest toy is these Bose QC 35 headphones,
518. 00:51:06 which are awesome. They are Bluetooth noise canceling headphones. So I now, for the first time,
519. 00:51:15 have the ability to basically create that territory wherever I am and it is a game changer because I
520. 00:51:22 do have an office, but it's about 10 minutes from my house, which is where I'm recording this
521. 00:51:28 podcast from right now. I have my mic set up here and it's my probably eight by 10 office with no
522. 00:51:35 windows. I call it my hobbit hole where I go and I need to need to just focus on something and
523. 00:51:40 so we're both projects. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But yeah, so the ability though to to sit down
524. 00:51:50 at my writing desk, which is literally just my laptop, I have been around computers my entire
525. 00:51:57 life. I mean, my dad was taking me to to do presentations with him when I was three years old and you
526. 00:52:02 know, booting up the Apple two E's. So it's just really comforting for me. Mine, you know, it's
527. 00:52:09 digital. It's not analog like like yours, but it evokes that same emotion and that same,
528. 00:52:17 I don't even know how to describe it. It's the sense of like, okay, I'm home. Now it's time to
529. 00:52:24 just like, this is my territory like you were talking about. This is my domain. This is where
530. 00:52:29 I can make stuff happen. And so yeah, the principle definitely still applies.
531. 00:52:35 One of the quotes that I thought encompassed a large portion of the book here as a whole.
532. 00:52:43 He's talking about a professional and the order that's needed for that. And this is what he says
533. 00:52:51 because he's also got a story right before this where he talks about living in the back of his
534. 00:52:56 Chevy van. Do you remember this? And he had to dig out his typewriter underneath layers of tire
535. 00:53:01 tools, laundry, books, and he had a bunch of stuff in the back and he had to dig out his
536. 00:53:06 typewriter in order to write. And then he says this, the professional cannot live like that. He's
537. 00:53:12 on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to
538. 00:53:17 banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed, the threshold swept so the muse may
539. 00:53:22 enter and not soil her gown. I thought that made a lot of sense. And it really encompassed so much
540. 00:53:27 of what he says in the entire book that there's a lot of chaos and resistance, for lack of a better
541. 00:53:35 word, that can try to prevent us from creating. And we need to keep everything in order to allow us
542. 00:53:45 to step in and do that creation and allow that mindset to skip away from the muse words,
543. 00:53:51 to allow that mindset to step in and take over and help us to create the thing authentically and
544. 00:54:00 honestly, in that case. So I think that really helped me a lot to just think about it that way.
545. 00:54:05 Yep. Yeah, definitely. The organization aspect of Going Pro is so important. And then
546. 00:54:14 like you were talking about the key then is to once you have the environment set up, you have the
547. 00:54:21 atmosphere created, you're organized to the point where all the friction in the system is gone,
548. 00:54:26 then being authentic. That was the big thing that I took away. You mentioned a little bit earlier,
549. 00:54:32 you can't define yourself hierarchically. You can't compare yourself to other people. If I were
550. 00:54:37 to compare myself to Jeff Goins, I wouldn't do anything because I don't know the level of experience
551. 00:54:43 or the level of success that he has. And that would be in Stephen Pressfield's terms, a win for the
552. 00:54:50 resistance. But another thing he said at the end of the book is that the biggest fear we have
553. 00:54:58 is that we will succeed. Never really thought about that before. But when I read that, it was like,
554. 00:55:08 yeah, that I can totally see how that would apply. Like the whole being bad at self promotion thing,
555. 00:55:14 as long as I don't self promote, I have a built in excuse for my book to stay small.
556. 00:55:22 Yep. But if I were to step out there and to really go all in,
557. 00:55:28 I don't know what would happen. It's possible that it would not be a New York Times the best
558. 00:55:37 seller probably wouldn't be, honestly. But it was interesting to think about the fact that
559. 00:55:44 we stay with the things that we're familiar with. We stay where we think it's safe.
560. 00:55:50 And we don't step out there because we don't, we don't at some level want to deal with
561. 00:56:02 with the, if the book were to blow up, I have no idea how to handle that situation. So it's
562. 00:56:09 on a psychological level, almost easier to just say, I'm fine with things the way they are.
563. 00:56:15 I don't want to see what happens, which is kind of sad when you think about it that way.
564. 00:56:20 It's kind of a depressing note there, Mike.
565. 00:56:23 It is. Well, I don't mean it to be depressing, but it's also my big takeaway, I guess,
566. 00:56:31 was like, okay, how much do you really believe in this thing that you created?
567. 00:56:36 You know, it's time to put your money where your mouth is.
568. 00:56:41 You know that there are things that you can do to promote it and get it out there that you
569. 00:56:47 aren't doing at the moment. And so I was forced to look at myself through the eyes of, okay,
570. 00:56:54 am I am I sure? Am I a professional? Because the professional is just going to get out there
571. 00:56:59 and they're going to make this happen, let the chips fall where they may. The amateur is going to
572. 00:57:03 say, well, I'm too busy. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. And I'll get to that tomorrow.
573. 00:57:07 And it was kind of compounded because I also had a conversation this week with somebody else
574. 00:57:14 in the productivity space, Sean Blanc, that I respect. And he was asking me the same thing.
575. 00:57:22 He's like, well, you know, is this a priority for you? Like, is this something that you really
576. 00:57:28 believe in? Or are you okay with the fact that this may never be something big? And when you
577. 00:57:36 frame it that way, it's like, yeah, I got to just shut up and do it. Yep. You got to get to work.
578. 00:57:43 You can't just let it slide because we know what's going on as it slides. Like,
579. 00:57:49 as things are just moving along currently, we know how it works. And when we create something
580. 00:57:57 and we put it out there, it's kind of scary if it goes big. Like, it's scary if it gets to be
581. 00:58:03 something large and more than just not knowing what to do if it does go big. There's also the
582. 00:58:12 problem of lots of people seeing my heart and seeing me. And that's fearful. I mean,
583. 00:58:19 that's not something that's easy to grapple with because you really have to be vulnerable.
584. 00:58:25 There's a lot of hype right now, I guess, for some of the books from Brene Brown, I believe,
585. 00:58:33 Brene. I think that's how you say it. She's written a lot about, you know,
586. 00:58:37 as being vulnerable and stepping out there. And that's not an easy thing to do because there's
587. 00:58:43 so much of the closeness and the potential for lashing back at you from like the critics like
588. 00:58:50 we were talking about. There's so much of that that can just be thrown back in your face.
589. 00:58:55 I don't want to throw them back in my face. I don't like it when people tell me that I need to
590. 00:58:59 just stop writing in general, which, you know, I get some of those every single day. It's like,
591. 00:59:03 okay, what are you talking about? So you really have to just get over that. I mean,
592. 00:59:10 that's one of the action items that I have for going through this book was get to work.
593. 00:59:15 You know, don't wait for perfect circumstances. And just remember that it is a war. And just knowing
594. 00:59:22 that you're in a war at all means that you have the ability to think about it as something I have
595. 00:59:30 to win instead of it just being how you do things. You stop thinking about the how and you start
596. 00:59:36 thinking about the why behind it. And I think there's a lot of power in that because then you
597. 00:59:42 can really start to sit down, know that you have to get your butt in the chair and do something
598. 00:59:49 instead of just waiting for the perfect scenario to come along because it's not going to happen.
599. 00:59:53 Right. And for me, the physical action item that comes out of this, and we were talking about
600. 00:59:58 journaling at the beginning. And I'm adding to that after reading this of because I don't always
601. 01:00:05 have a good view of my own art, the words that I write. I tend to, it's rare, Mike, that I read
602. 01:00:12 something I've written and think that was really good. It's just the way it is. And I know that it
603. 01:00:18 helps people. I'm aware of that. Which is why I continue doing it. But at the same time, I don't
604. 01:00:24 always feel like that's it's not a good place to be. So one of the things that I'm trying to do is
605. 01:00:31 come through the reading of this and come through the mindset of, you know, what I'm doing is good.
606. 01:00:36 And I know that it's helping people. And I see those emails. I see the feedback on that. So I know
607. 01:00:41 that what I'm doing is good work. I need to be okay admitting that and say, yes, I'm good at this
608. 01:00:47 and know that I'm okay with being a professional and then admit that yes, I am a professional at this.
609. 01:00:53 But that's one of the physical action items for me here is to journal about the feelings that I have
610. 01:00:59 about my own art, which can be kind of philosophical, I suppose.
611. 01:01:03 Yeah, the big thing for me was to actually do what I've known for a long time. I need to do in terms of
612. 01:01:17 being willing to self promote and being willing to get the message that's in my book out into the
613. 01:01:23 world, to not be okay with the fact that it just sits on the digital bookshelf as something that
614. 01:01:29 I've done. But to really embrace that if that's going to be my legacy, if that's my personal brand,
615. 01:01:37 if I really believe in that message that I wrote, I need to double down on it. I need to follow through
616. 01:01:45 with the next steps there. And actually, there's a quote in the War of Art that kind of encapsulates
617. 01:01:52 it perfectly. It says, "Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it, boldness has genius,
618. 01:01:57 magic and power in it, begin it now." It's like, okay, I guess I got to do it now.
619. 01:02:01 Yep, get to work.
620. 01:02:02 Yep, exactly. All right, Mike, how would you rate this book?
621. 01:02:09 Man, that's a great question. So I really like the content of the book. Some of his word choice
622. 01:02:18 is a little brash for me. And some of his imagery with the muse and stuff is,
623. 01:02:26 that part was kind of hard for me to get through. It's kind of like,
624. 01:02:29 I don't know, if there was a one point in the book where I wanted to put it down, that was the spot.
625. 01:02:37 But it definitely is very impactful. And I think that it definitely altered my mindset and how I
626. 01:02:47 view things, even the second time reading it. I'm going to say four and a half stars.
627. 01:02:53 All right, I'm with you on, like, when I got to book three and he started talking to muse,
628. 01:03:01 I almost skipped it. But I was like, okay, I can't skip it because I have to sit down with Mike
629. 01:03:07 and talk about it. So I think if we weren't doing this, I probably would have skipped probably the
630. 01:03:13 good half of that third book there. But I'm with you on, it can really change a lot. And I know that
631. 01:03:20 as we were just talking about with the action items here, just knowing that I'm okay with my art,
632. 01:03:28 I'm okay with being a professional and being willing to label myself that. Just coming out of it with
633. 01:03:35 that mentality is huge, in my opinion. I mean, it's just, it has a huge impact. So I'm with you
634. 01:03:40 there. It has a huge benefit in being a book to read. So if you create it all, I would highly
635. 01:03:47 recommend it. But I'm with you on sections that I just completely disagree with or really had to
636. 01:03:53 swallow hard. Like it was tough to get through. So there are some pieces of that that would make me
637. 01:03:59 want to drop my rating quite a bit. So I would put it at a four even, mostly because I would debate
638. 01:04:05 between a three and four, four and a half somewhere in there. So I'm going to land on a four ish.
639. 01:04:10 4.0. 4.0. I'll call it that.
640. 01:04:13 4.5 and 4 ish. Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right. So Mike, next book up is your choice.
641. 01:04:21 What are we reading? The obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday.
642. 01:04:26 Nice. And then so we're going to start reading that one now, which means it will record and
643. 01:04:33 review that. I'm not reviewing it, but we'll talk about it in two weeks. And the one following that,
644. 01:04:40 if you want to get the book for the readers here or for the for the readers, we're going through
645. 01:04:45 books a lot, Mike. For the listeners, we're switching mediums here. For the listeners of the show,
646. 01:04:50 the if you want to get the book that follows that, we're going to step into essentialism
647. 01:04:55 by Greg McKeown. McKeown, right? I think that's how you say I looked it up. McKeown, I think, is right.
648. 01:05:00 Could be. I've heard it from McKeown. I've heard a lot of them. And that's why I looked it up.
649. 01:05:06 It's like, and I looked it up and I still think I'm getting it wrong. But that's the one that will
650. 01:05:10 read following Mike's choice of the obstacle is the way. So that's the one that you would want to
651. 01:05:16 pick up because I know it takes time to get books if you're going to read the physical copies.
652. 01:05:21 So that's the one that would follow it. So obstacle is the way is coming up next.
653. 01:05:25 Following that is essentialism. And then Mike has to decide what comes after that,
654. 01:05:30 but I'm not going to make you do that here, Mike. All right, sounds good. All right, any last
655. 01:05:36 parting words, Mike, on the war of art? Not good to work.