Steven Pressfield Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Dora Sislian Themelis Art

Tuesday, The War of Art, and Wow

Yes, wow and The War of Art in the same sentence! I know you will want to know why and I’m about to explain. As you’ve noticed, I’ve been re-reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, to get my mojo back in action. It’s not an easy thing to push aside resistance and overwhelm. It’s the bane of an artist’s life. Mr. Resistance drops by with Mrs. Overwhelm and they end up having a party at my place without my permission. They’re lousy house guests, too, leaving all manner of distress in my house.

My quest for artistic sanity began quite a while ago when I decided I needed to purchase and work with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Breaking through artist block with various tasks was a welcome relief to the drudgery that comes with the fear of making a mess of a lovely, perfectly white canvas.

Read it, did it, passed the test. I hummed along quite well, for a while, working on my paintings in small segments of time, mostly twenty minutes. Worked well until it happened one day that it didn’t work.

What are you going to do? It happens.

In comes another great book, The War of Art. The kick butt writing style of Steven Pressfield and how he over comes resistance helped me get back on the horse, so to speak. All good. Until it happened again. Dead stop.

I don’t know how that works, but it works really well to stop me from getting anything worthwhile done. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Pain-in-my-neck show up and it’s over. But lately, they don’t stay as long as they had in the past. With my copy of Pressfield’s book close by, and writing about it here, I’m back.

So for the Wow part: Here I am, writing my little blog, working hard on developing this new platform, discussing my displeasure with Mr. Resistance when I received an email to my brand, spanking new dot com email address. I didn’t think it even worked. Mr. Pressfield’s literary representative contacted me saying she read my blogpost about his book, and would I like a few copies of it along with two others he wrote.

Would I? I was doing back flips! Yes I would, and thank you so very much! They arrived last week. I was so excited I couldn’t even think straight to start reading.

I need to breathe.

I’ve decided to have a little fun with my lovely gifts by spreading the love, the words, and wonderful direction these books can bring artists of all stripes. First I have to figure out the what and the how of the idea in my head. And if WordPress acts nicely and cooperates, we can enjoy a little contest of sorts.

Stay tuned.

Back to The War of Art: Resistance Only Opposes in One Direction

RESISTANCE ONLY OPPOSES IN ONE DIRECTION
“Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.
So if you’re in Calcutta working with the Mother Teresa Foundation and you’re thinking of bolting to launch a career in telemarketing…relax. Resistance will give you a free pass.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Isn’t that nice. Mr. Resistance will tell you “Oh that new painting you’re working on? Don’t bother working on it. It’s not coming along so well anyway. Why don’t you just go fidget with some of that junk in your dresser drawer instead.”

Rather than pay any mind to what Mr. Resistance says, we should brush him aside and push harder to finish that painting and accomplish a new goal.

Yes, that’s what we should do, but do we? No. No, we don’t. We, I, listen to his murmurings, his whispers, and my brain believes him, even answers him saying “Yeah, you’re right. That painting isn’t working out the way I thought. I’ll wait for tomorrow to work on it.” And there it all goes down the drain.

It’s just that easy to take the short leap off the path.

Back to The War of Art: Resistance is Fueled by Fear

RESISTANCE IS FUELED BY FEAR
“Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

If we can manage to ponder this idea that Mr. Resistance has no strength, that all the fuss is fed by our own fear, the question is: How do we identify said fear, and more importantly, how can we conquer it?

Back to The War of Art

RESISTANCE IS UNIVERSAL
“We’re wrong if we think we’re the only one struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Isn’t that wonderful? So we are not alone. Everyone, not only we creative types, experience our own kind of resistance. Maybe other people don’t call it Mr. Resistance like I do, but it’s safe to say it happens to the best of us.

The thing we most want and need to work on or at, is exactly the thing we seem to avoid doing. Amazing isn’t it?