Do The Work by Steven Pressfield Quotes
In today’s world where there is an overload of information, less time is spent doing the work.
Doing the work is a miracle.
Let me rephrase it as the string that pulls the miracle and dreams you want to see.It is the bridge between the dreams we have and reality.
After reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I decided to read the next book Do the Work by the same author. (Steven Pressfield)
In this blog post is a list of the best quotes from the book( Do the Work).
Enjoy.
1.” In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity”
2. “Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work”
3. “We can use this. (Resistance) We can use it as a compass”
4. “Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it”
5. “In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”
6. “Resistance aims to kill.”
7. “The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are.”
8. “Prepare yourself to make new friends. They will appear, trust me”
9.” A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don’t think. Act.”
10. “Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop”
11. “Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love.”
12. “You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.”
13. “Don’t prepare. Begin”
14. “The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.”
15. “H. Murray said: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.”
16. “You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more.”
17. “Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work”
18. “Babies are born in blood and chaos; stars and galaxies come into being amid the release of massive primordial cataclysms.”
19. “This idea is the size of a postage stamp! If it were any more miniscule, I’d need an electron microscope just to see it! Go back to your cubicle and bring me something BIG!”
20. ‘Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel.”
21. “That’s Why They Call It Rewriting The old saw says there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting. This is true. Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all.”
22. “Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.”
23. “Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish.”
24. “Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there”
25. “Your movie, your album, your new startup … what is it about? When you know that, you’ll know the end state. And when you know the end state, you’ll know the steps to take to get there.”
26. “End first, then beginning and middle. That’s your startup, that’s your plan for competing in a triathlon, that’s your ballet.”
27. “When you and I set out to create anything—art, commerce, science, love—or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction. That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals”
28.”Chatter is Resistance.”
29. “The universe is not indifferent. It is actively hostile.”
30. “We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.”
31. “Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything.”
32. “This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz”
33. “Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart.”
34. “Ideas come according to their own logic. That logic is not rational. It’s not linear. We may get the middle before we get the end. We may get the end before we get the beginning. Be ready for this. Don’t resist it.”
35. “Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time.”
36. “Your work-in-progress produces its own gravitational field, created by your will and your attention. This field attracts like-spirited entities into its orbit. What entities? Ideas”
37. “Assistance is the universal, immutable force of creative manifestation, whose role since the Big Bang has been to translate potential into being, to convert dreams into reality.”
38. “Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working.”
39. “If you’ve got a head, you’ve got a voice of Resistance inside it.”
40. “What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us.”
41. “What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us.”
42. “The only items you get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse”
43. “The Big Crash is so predictable, across all fields of enterprise, that we can practically set our watches by it.”
44. “Our greatest fear is fear of success.”
45. “When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.”
46. “Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing”
47. “I’ve never read anything better on the subject than this from Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
48.” A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN”
49. “When we ship, we’re exposed.”
50. “That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure”
51. “Just because you’ve shipped doesn’t mean Resistance is finished. Like the Terminator, it’s morphing into an even crueler and more diabolical form. It’ll be back.”
Conclusion
I am curious to know which one of these quotes from Do the Work by Steven Pressfield is your favorite.
Let me know in the comments section below.
If you would like weekly Blogposts on writing and the craft as well as book summaries for writers click here.
