My business partner Shawn Coyne has a term that he can’t utter without personal and emotional abhorrence. “Third party validation.” He HATES it. He hates the very idea of it. When he sees it in others, he shakes his head. When he discovers even a glimmer within himself, he’s horrified and moves heaven and earth… The post Third Party Validation first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
Have you read Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit? I quoted a passage in one of my books and she made me pay 250 bucks. It was worth it because the passage was so great. Here it is: I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put| Steven Pressfield
Patronu aradığında sürekli hasta olduğunu söyleyerek iş yerine yalan söylüyor | stevenpressfield.com
It’s 4:30 in the morning and we’re on our way to the gym. This is six days a week, rain or shine, Christmas, Fourth of July, your birthday. I hate it. Everybody does. We’d all rather be home in bed munching bon-bons. Why do it then? For me, it’s not because I imagine I’m going… The post Going to the Gym in the Dark first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
I got a note this morning from Phil Britton about the Wednesday 8/6 post, “Empathy.” Phil writes, “I’d love to hear your take on how to balance this with the idea of ‘never play to the gallery.'” Great question. I can see I haven’t been clear enough in the past couple of posts. What I… The post To Pander or Not to Pander first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
We said in last week’s post that Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. And that as soon as you and I grasp this concept, we have made a primary Artist’s Breakthrough. We have acquired empathy. When we understand that nobody wants to read our shit, our mind becomes powerfully concentrated. We begin to understand that| Steven Pressfield
While we’re on the subject of hardball lessons that the aspiring artist needs to learn, let’s go straight to the Big One. What follows is the underlying truth that every writer and artist from Homer to R. Crumb needs to know and deal with: Nobody wants to read your shit. My first real grownup job… The post Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
I’m borrowing (again) from my entrepreneurship guru, Dan Sullivan. Dan has crystalized the statement that every entrepreneur makes to him or herself, whether she does this consciously or not. It’s the entrepreneur’s code, the independent businessperson’s declaration of principle: I will expect no remuneration until I have created value for someone else. Let me repeat| Steven Pressfield
The first thing I do when I enter my office each morning is to say a prayer to the Muse. I say it out loud in dead earnest. The prayer I say (this is in The War of Art, page 119) is the invocation of the Muse from Homer's Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence,| Steven Pressfield
We declared in the first post in this series that an artist is an entrepreneur. Let’s go further. An artist is a working stiff. Are you a ballerina? You are not a sweet, sylph-like damsel. You are a jock. You are a professional athlete. You are tough. The ordeals you put your body through would… The post Artist = Working Stiff first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
I hate the word “creative.” Particularly when it’s used as a noun. That a person is a “creative.” Why do I hate it? Because it implies someone who is different from—and better than—the average blue-collar working stiff. There’s a romance to being an artist, isn’t there? The novelist starving in a garret like Dostoevsky. William| Steven Pressfield
If you think about it, the artist is the ultimate entrepreneur. She is in business entirely for herself. She has no boss. No mentor. No paycheck. No medical, no dental, no safety net. She has no imposed daily schedule, no externally prescribed structure. The artist possesses total workplace freedom. She can tackle any project she… The post The Ultimate Entrepreneur first appeared on Steven Pressfield.| Steven Pressfield
Are you a writer? A filmmaker? A dancer? Then you're an entrepreneur. You have more in common with the young Steve Jobs and the early Bill Gates than you do with your dad who worked all his life for AT&T or your aunt who's five months away from collecting her pension from the Post Office.| Steven Pressfield
Read this one first. It identifies the enemy—what I call Resistance with a capital “R,” i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, all the forms of self-sabotage that stop us from doing our work and realizing our dreams. Start here. Everything else proceeds from this.| Steven Pressfield
Last Wednesday I posted in this space the first two chapters from Turning Pro. This week I want to include the following four. Mainly because I think they work nicely as a unit---and because together they give a real flavor for what the book is and what it's about. Next week: back to our regular Writing Wednesdays.| Steven Pressfield