War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a popular book on creativity, how to harness our creative
powers and becoming a professional in our craft by overcoming an enemy called Resistance
which stops us from starting and pushing through our work.
In this blog post, I’ll be distilling key insights and lessons from the book that you don’t need to read the book to start applying its principles.
What is Resistance?
“ When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. We become like magnetized rod that attracts iron fillings, ideas come, insights accrete.”
Steven Pressfield
Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet, it is evil and prevents us from achieving the beautiful, great life God intended when he endowed us with our unique genius. Resistance is what stops us from doing that which our inner genius is calling us to do. You must retrace your steps.
The secret to writing is this, the writing part is not hard but sitting down to write. This can be
applied to any field. You have to start something before you can achieve success in the thing.
Creativity demands labour. When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.
The thing that keeps us from sitting down to start our work is resistance. We all have our lived
and unlived lives, that which we can become but in between both stands the demon called
Resistance.
Characteristics of Resistance
Resistance is invisible; an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. Resistance is internal
and insidious. It is unstoppable. It acts objectively not emotionally. Resistance is infallible in that
it must allow you not to take action on things important to you. Resistance is universal, everyone
experiences it and it must be fought daily.
Resistance aims to kill our genius and the unique gifts God blessed us with.
Fear, fuels Resistance master your fear and conquer Resistance. The more Resistance or
fear you have about something, the more important it is for you to do that thing. Resistance is
more powerful at the finish line because it knows we are about to win. Most importantly,
Resistance recruits allies, people to sabotage your work and dreams especially when you start
breaking out. The best you can do for others struggling with Resistance is to serve as an
inspiration to them.
Symptoms of Resistance
- Procrastination: it mostly manifests itself in the form of procrastination because it’s easy to rationalise. This causes harm in subtle ways in that we don’t just put off our lives today but put it off till our death bed. Resistance makes us choose the easier route and bad habits because they provide immediate and powerful gratification. It causes one to
self-rationalise on why they shouldn’t take a particular action. Procrastination causes
unhappiness and wasting your time and energy on useless things. - Self-dramatization: taking actions or habits that are harmful to us or even allowing others to brainwash us into taking actions that are detrimental to us is a symptom of
Resistance. - Choice of partner: most times, instead of being conscious of our Resistance and pursue our unlived lives, people prefer to choose a partner that has successfully mastered their Resistance and end up supporting them to pursue theirs because we believe we cannot go for ours.
- Criticism: busy criticizing others who are living out their purpose because you couldn’t face yours. Stop it!
- Fear: The degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. The more fear you have for something, the more important it is for us to do it. The more you face and complete tasks with high Resistance, the more gratified you feel.
- Afraid of being alone. Seeking too much support before you start can hold you back. Believe you can beat and overcome that Resistance.
How to Combat Resistance.
To combat Resistance, you have to take charge of your work and imbibe the attitude of a
Professional. A Professional is someone who has overcome Resistance. He builds inspiration by
sitting down to work. Strive to be a professional and apply Professionalism to your work.
Attributes of Professional
A Professional is patient, he knows his work would take a lot of time and effort to accomplish
and is willing to follow through till the end. They understand delayed gratification. A Professional
seeks order and demystifies. He acts in the face of fear, accepts no excuses and does the most
important things first before Resistance sets in. A Professional is prepared to go on the long
haul, and confront his self-sabotage and any challenge that he faces daily. He doesn’t crave
attention and dedicates himself to mastering his techniques.
They recognize the work of those ahead and learn from them. They seek help when needed. A
Professional doesn’t take failure or success personally. She takes constructive criticism and
looks for areas to improve. They self-validate, always reinvent themselves and are recognized
by other Professionals.
Treat yourself as a corporation because it reinforces the idea of professionalism by separating You (yourself) from your will and consciousness running the show. It gives us a healthy distance from
ourselves. The essence of professionalism is to focus on your work and its demands to the exclusion of all else. See yourself as a pro and stick to the work required.
Beyond Resistance (Higher Realm)
We have allies who support and sustain us in our purpose and calling. These invisible psychic forces are muses and angels. Since there’s Resistance who acts to prevent us from acting on our work, we also have allies who are equal and opposite powers who counterpoise Resistance forces. It’s only when we sit every day to do our work that the heavens come to our aid, unseen forces enlist in our cause, and serendipity reinforces our purpose. Power concentrates around us. The muse takes notes of our dedication and approves us. You must sit to work to attract the help of allies.
How to Invoke the Muse
Say a prayer to your muse before you start work. Show respect to the unseen power who can
make or mar you. They need corporeal beings (us) to birth ideas from higher realm to
material plane. When you decide to start, providence moves too. You get help and clarity when you start.
Boldness has genius, magic and power in it.
Angels and muse are here to help when we get stuck. When you start and commit to your work,
even in the face of fear, angels congregate around us and assist us in giving birth to our real
selves and genius.
Ideas can come to us as a still inner voice in us. God speaks to us through this voice.
Pay attention to the voice and allow it to help you create more original and excellent work. The
voice is beyond our conscious thought and more intelligent. They know deep down what’s truly
important and counsel us wisely. Follow what is truly important and live out your unlived life.
The Jung Model of the Psyche
This model represents the psyche. It contains the self, ego and divine ground.
The ego is the conscious person ‘I’ that plans and thinks about daily activities. This is the seat of
Resistance.
The self is a greater entity that includes the ego but also incorporates personal and collective unconsciousness. This self houses the ego, unconscious, angels and muse.
Faced with the likelihood of death, our seat of consciousness shifts from ego to self. This charge
us to know what’s truly important. The self is constantly fighting against the ego to help us
actualize our unlived lives.
The Divine ground is God himself. The self and ego lives and exists here. Everything that exists
is God in one form or another. Everything is sustained by God. The divine ground is the source
of infinite wisdom and mystery.
You should work towards reducing your ego and tap into your real self. You tap into the self by
fasting, praying, meditating, and doing activities that alter consciousness.
The real fear is that we will succeed and become the person we sense in our hearts that we truly are. Find out who you are already and become it.
Territory vs Hierarchy
Individuals define themselves in one of these ways;
- By their rank within a hierarchy.
- By connection to a territory.
This is how they achieve psychological security.
A professional must define himself territorially as part of something bigger and not hierarchically
because someone in a hierarchy is always in competition with those above and below. This
helps you not to rely on external validation. Do what you want to do because of yourself and not
for validation. Find your territory and occupy it. You know you’re acting territorially if you’re
energised and sustained by what you’re doing. Not on the impression it makes on others.
In summary, there exist the higher planes of reality which are timeless, spaceless and in love
with time which always want to communicate with us to send out their intelligence and inventions into the physical plane. Our job as artists is to bring the vision that the angels and muse communicate to this plane. The enemy of an artist is the ego which births Resistance. Move
away from the ego and embrace the self while tapping into the infinite wisdom on the divine
ground.
If you don’t become what you’ve been called by God to be, you deprive the world and yourself.
Creative work is not a selfish act but a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat the
world of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
I hope you found this summary helpful, it should encourage you to read the book and also be
conscious of Resistance and fight aggressively against it.
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