Summary

Resistance is the enemy within, fueled by fear, in service of the ego, whose sole purpose is to prevent us from realizing our true selves. You overcome the Resistance by doing the fucking work, the thing you would do no matter what, with no expectations, and sharing it. Because doing the work feeds your soul and is a gift you owe to the world.

Notes

All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction.

Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.

Resistance is the enemy within.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.

We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us.

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.

When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance—in other words, when she actually starts to write—she may find that those close to her begin acting strange. They may become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of “changing,” of “not being the person she was.”

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

Cruelty to others is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others.

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it.

What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.

We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.

These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They’re not easy because the human being isn’t wired to function as an individual. We’re wired tribally, to act as part of a group.

The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.

The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

In order for a book (or any project or enterprise) to hold our attention for the length of time it takes to unfold itself, it has to plug into some internal perplexity or passion that is of paramount importance to us.

I hadn’t written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn’t matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work.

Rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.

In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits fulltime.

I’m keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.

Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.

The amateur has not mastered the technique of his art. Nor does he expose himself to judgment in the real world.

The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it.

The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing.

The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. The payoff of playing-the-game-for-money is not the money (which you may never see anyway, even after you turn pro). The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude.

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

A pro views her work as craft, not art.

The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.

The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art.

It uses fear of rejection to paralyze us and prevent us, if not from doing our work, then from exposing it to public evaluation.

Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads.

we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.

The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance.

Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work.

Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it.

There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

I remember rolling the last page out and adding it to the stack that was the finished manuscript. Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I’d been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath.

When we make a beginning, we get out of our own way and allow the angels to come in and do their job.

Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all-important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance.

The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as “I.” Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious dwell there. It is, Jung believed, the sphere of the soul. What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die, Tom Laughlin contends, is that the seat of our consciousness shifts. It moves from the Ego to the Self.

The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are.

Dreams come from the Self. Ideas come from the Self.

The Ego produces Resistance and attacks the awakening artist.

We’re not born with unlimited choices.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Most of us define ourselves hierarchically and don’t even know it. It’s hard not to.

There’s a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down.

We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.

For the artist to define himself hierarchically is fatal.

The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake.

In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within.

A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.

He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’ s hot, what can I make a deal for?

If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?

Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue. By confining our attention territorially to our own thoughts and actions—

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.