Essentials Only: Book Club — The War of Art
I’ve been listening to a podcast called Aspire with Emma Grede.
At the end of most episodes Emma asks her guests what book changed their lives. For me—like her guests—there are many.
But each time she asks, this one comes to mind: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.
This book has been with me through purchasing the beautyisabundant.com URL back when it was shaping up to be a nice lil blog.
It was with me through 2020.
It rocked my world again with a recent re-read, as Beauty Is Abundant the design firm approaches eight official years in business.
You may not like some of the hard truths Pressfield unearths. And that’s OK. They’re worth their weight in gold.
The book is about Resistance and how, left unacknowledged—or worse, undetected—it can lead to catastrophic circumstances, most of which can be avoided entirely by doing the thing.
Here are my top 15 takeaways I wholeheartedly hope serve you well.
We get to pick one of two lives. The life we live daily with the pesky feeling we could be doing more—contributing more, creating more—and the life we know we are meant to live. Between us and the life we want most is Resistance.
Surrendering to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and prevents us from achieving our fullest expression.
Allowing Resistance to overcome the thing our hearts call us to do creates a perfect condition for neuroses, addictions and other ailments to thrive.
Resistance sets its sights on any endeavor that elevates us from a lower vibration version of ourselves to a higher one.
Ever notice how the more important an action is, the more Resistance we feel toward pursing it? Big questions like “Where do I even start” crop up and help us sleep at night—because it’s too hard, right? Resistance loves procrastination.
Resistance is sabotage—self-imposed and, due to Resistance’s recruitment of friends, family and haters alike—it’s at the root of sabotage from others.
The only meaningful thing a person who overcomes Resistance can do is become an inspiration to others—even the folks Resistance recruited to defeat you.
Resistance is fear.
Resistance knows how to rationalize anything so persuasively we happily postpone our highest calling(s) forever.
Resistance is formidable and deserves our attention, otherwise we’re bamboozled into believing it’s not there looming over our most precious aspirations. It is. Always.
Overcoming Resistance means doing a thing that will, at times, cause isolation, rejection, humiliation, criticism, self-doubt, people just not getting it, contempt, jealousy, schadenfreude and all types of other BS from the sidelines. Feeling the fear (Resistance) and doing “it” anyway is rewarding. And it’s hell. That’s fine. You’re worth it.
Resistance tricks us into believing our big one is gonna take 2 seconds to achieve. So that when it doesn’t take 2 seconds, we give up. Resistance is a lyin’ ass liar. It’s not gonna take 2 seconds.
Resistance wants us to allow the opinions and actions of others to define our realities—to hand our agency over.
Sometimes a diagnosis, or the threat of one; a loss too close for comfort, or some other existential shakeup is what causes us to muster the strength to overcome Resistance. Thing is, we always had it.
When we don’t overcome Resistance, we cheat the world of our unique gifts.
When we do overcome Resistance and commit ourselves to whatever our calling is, forces mobilize, momentum compounds and we give birth to the person we were meant to become: A person who does hard things and knows that negativity is noise.
Sending my love,
Leah