How to Declare Art

My butt hurts.

Okay, metaphorically. But it still got a pretty good kick.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a person with creative goals of any kind, or an aspiring any-one-of-those, read on. I won’t kick you, promise.

But this other author might.

I’ve finished Steven Pressfield’s phenomenal book The War of Art, and the most difficult part of writing about it will be to NOT quote most of the book. It’s that good.

It’s also intense. Scary intense. Hardcore in the way that taking a good honest look at yourself—and then doing something real about it—is hardcore. This isn’t feel-good self-help, folks. This is gut-wrenchingly honest stuff. And that’s why it’s so fantastic.

The title is a clever reversal of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the classic military treatise. The book itself is about the enemy every creative person (which, yes, really means every person) faces on the battlefield of life—resistance. Pressfield considers it important enough to capitalize.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? . . . Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Got your number there? Mine, too.

I will now give you a micro-synopsis of the book, which, if you are human and breathing and have aspirations toward a better life in any way at all, I urge you to read as soon as possible. It’s fairly short and (hallelujah!) well-designed, but every page is pithy. Many statements are epigrammatic enough to crochet into samplers or emblazon across shields.

Book One defines Resistance, and discusses its many manifestations. (You’ll recognize most if not all of them.) Book Two talks about “turning pro”—the conscious, willful decision to give something your all regardless of the outcome. Book Three discusses the muse, life and death, the ego and the larger self, and other equally daunting yet relevant subjects.

The novel for which Steven Pressfield is probably best known (yep, because of the movie) is The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is a modern reimagining of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. There are many parallels between those and The War of Art as well, but this post is long enough already. More on that if you want it . . . let me know in the comments!

I came away from The War of Art inspired—and also scared. Pressfield says this is good.

If you find yourself asking yourself (or your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

The book feels like a clarion call to me—a clear ringing of trumpets urging me to rise to my highest potential. Very compelling.

But that’s what scares me. I recognize those trumpets. They tend to bring on countless iterations of the “passionately inspired – giving 110% – burning out” cycle, and now that I’ve become aware of my perfectionistic tendencies, I’m careful about anything that might send me spiraling recklessly down that path again.

So I skimmed through the book once more. And I found this:

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book. It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.

(Sound familiar, anyone?)

The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He . . . steels himself at the start of a project, reminding himself he is in the Iditarod, not the sixty-yard dash. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull into Nome.

From one perspective, how depressing! I want to read that success is possible by this time next month, dammit! Don’t talk to me about the long slog through the ice and snow. I’ve been slogging long enough already.

But there it is again. Wanting the magic bullet, the quick fix. Often combined with clever marketers trying to sell me on the latest weight-dropping, muscle-toning, productivity-boosting, time-managing, power-focusing product, service, or package, which is “the last thing you’ll ever need to buy to solve this problem!!!” until the next one comes along to weight down my bookshelf, clutter up my living room, or fill up my hard drive.

But.

There’s another perspective we can take.

What if we all simply started implementing the knowledge and systems we already have? What if we quietly, steadily, without fanfare, just started doing The Work (whatever that means for each of us)?

Difficult, yes. Every day we will face our own stuckness. But Pressfield (rightly, I think) tells us that

Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. . . . We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

If we can calmly face down Resistance every day (or at least keep showing up and giving it our best), how freeing! To not have to care about how good something is . . . to let it just pour out of us, trusting that it will gradually, naturally perfect itself over time?

That’s a mighty soft pillow for a sore butt to rest on.

Tagged as: achievement, persistence, projects