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The Russell Brunson Show
Winning the War of Art: Overcoming Resistance with Steven Pressfield
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- [00:00]
Russell Brunson
Want to shop Walmart Black Friday Deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart plus see terms@walmartplus.com this episode is brought to you by Merrill. Join one of the most iconic names in wealth management, Merrill. You'll be part of a dynamic team of advisors and specialists working hard every day to grow their clients wealth. And with the support of best in class research, advanced digital and the resources of a global institution, it's truly an opportunity you can be bullish about. Learn more at careers.bankofamerica.com Copyright 2024 bank of America Corporation. What's up everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast, which is soon, maybe it already is. We're in the process of rebranding it to the Selling Online podcast. So depending on where you are right now. Welcome back to the podcast. Pumped to have you here. And if you haven't been paying attention to the YouTube channel lately, we have been crushing it, doing a lot of really fun things. And so this episode is going to be based partially on a YouTube YouTube video we published recently. YouTube video was about one of my favorite books of all time called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And so you have a chance, first off, if you haven't read that book yet, it's all about how to overcome resistance. So what I'm gonna do is first part of the podcast, you have a chance to listen to the audio from the YouTube video because it's gonna help you guys to see just the highlights from that book, War of Art. And then after that, I actually had a chance to interview Steven Pressfield for over an hour. And so after that we'll jump over to the actual live interview and you have a chance to hear some brilliance from the man himself. So with that said, we're going to jump right in directly to the YouTube video, the audio version of it at least, to learn about resistance, how to overcome resistance. And then I'll jump back here with you guys and then we'll set up the interview with Steven Pressfield. All right? That said, let's overcome resistance right now. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. 99% of people in this world fail because they can't conquer one thing. This book right here is one of my favorite books of all time. They teach you how to overcome resistance. Every single one of us feels resistance every single day. Most of us, multiple times throughout the day. Every time the alarm clock goes off, you feel resistance. Like, I want to turn it off, right? You want to check your phone. You want to scroll one more time. You want to watch one more episode on Netflix. Like, there's these things that keep holding us back. They think it's some external force. I don't have the time, the money, the energy. But the reality is all of us have the same resources. The thing that keeps you from being successful is learning how to control resistance. When you can control the internal resistance you're having, then externally you can achieve the things you want in life. This book, if you haven't read before, is called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors of all time. I'm going to walk through four different steps to. To help you to overcome resistance so you can get your goals, accomplish your dreams, and change the world. All right, with that said, I want to walk you guys through the four steps that you need to learn to be able to overcome resistance in your life. And over here, we got them. So these are the four steps to actually beat resistance. If it's been holding you back for any amount of time, today is the day. It's going to be gone forever. I'm so excited for you to learn these things. All right, so step number one is called Expose the Enemy. The first thing you need to do is understand exactly what resistance is. Okay? A lot of people don't even know this. That internal force is the thing that's keeping them from success. It's happening every single day over and over and over and over again. So what is resistance? Well, inside of the book, the War of Art, in here, he's talking about people who are creating some type of art, right? So everyone's got different art. Some of you guys are writers or you're designers or you're content creators, or you're an athlete. But everyone's got a different art, right? And so the war of art is this internal war we're having as we're trying to create our art. And obviously, Stephen is the writer, so he's using a lot of these metaphors in terms of someone who's an author, who's writing. But it's true for anybody, right? So this is what he says. He says there's a secret that real writers know that wannabe Writers don't. And the secret is this. It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is called resistance. I can replace this with any type of art. Let's say, for example, you are a bodybuilder, you're trying to get in shape. Or maybe not a bodybuilder, you're just out of shape and you want to get in shape. So I might say the same sentence. Like, the secret that people who are in shape know that the people who aren't in shape don't know is this. It's not the working out that's hard, right? It's the getting to the gym that's the hard part. What keeps you from getting the gym is resistance. So I want you to think about this inside your life. Like, what are all of the times the resistance is hitting you? Now, I had some of my clients this one time, we sat down and said for an entire 24 hour period of time, let's map out every time resistance hits, okay? And I did the exercise with them. The craziest thing is my alarm goes off every morning at 4:50. Alarm goes off, 450. First thing is I turn it off and instantly, within a half a second waking up, Resistance hits me and goes, roll back over, go back to bed. So I grab my pad of paper, I'm like, 4:50am Resistance wanted me to go back to bed, right? Then I get out of bed, it's cold. And my resistance is like, get back in bed, it's cold. Hit it again. By the time it was like 5:00 in the morning, Resistance already tried to stop me like 10 times. And what's crazy for me, as soon as I became aware of the enemy, as soon as I was able to understand this is who it is, then I was able to address it and figure out ways to protect myself from the enemy, okay? That's why step number one is exposing the enemy. One thing Press Phil talks about here inside the book, he talks about what he calls the unlived life. He says it's the athlete who doesn't compete, or it's the writer who never writes, or it's the painter who never paints, or the entrepreneur who never actually starts his own business, right? And for most of us in parts of our life, like, we're not doing that. We're not living the life that we were called to actually live. So that is the very first thing to understand, is to understand who the enemy is. Because when you're aware of it now. We can actually beat it. Which now brings me to step number two in beating resistance. Step number two is this is ready for. This is understanding the lies of resistance. Okay? Now, resistance is going to give you a whole bunch of lies to keep you from being successful. And I'm going to walk you through a couple of these lies that are. That most of us hit every single day. So the first lie is the lie of procrastination. Now, this is one of the worst lies that resistance uses, because resistance is not going to tell you, oh, don't go to the gym, right? It's going to say, go to the gym tomorrow. Resistance is not going to say, don't write the book. It's going to say, I'm going to write the book tomorrow, right? It's trying to get us to procrastinate the thing. And this was fascinating for most people. I don't know about you, but if we procrastinate something till tomorrow, till mana, when manana comes, right? What happens? They get procrastinate the next day and the next day till we never actually get things done, right? It happens for all of us in every single area of our life, right? So understand that the very first lie that resistance is going to tell to you is procrastination. Not that you're not going to do the thing, but you're going to do it later when you understand that, right? And I know my enemy. I know when procrastination is coming. I'm saying, that's resistance. I got to stop that. I cannot procrastinate. I got to take action today. The second lie is what's called the shadow calling. This is where resistance will allow you to do a version of what you're called to do, but not actually the thing that you were called to do. For example, with Steven Pressfield, in this book, he talks about, for a long time he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write books. He wanted to write screenplays for movies, all sorts of stuff. And eventually he actually did. If you know this, he's the one that wrote the screenplay for the movie Bagger Vance, right? With Will Smith, like one of the best movies of all time, he wrote that. But it took him like 40 years of writing before he did this. Okay? First he was doing writing copy for advertising companies. Then he was writing scripts for these projects he didn't like. He never actually did the thing he wanted. He was doing a shadow version of it. His calling was to write books, to write screenplays. And he was doing a version of it, right? He was writing copy for clients. He was doing things, these other projects where he was writing, but he wasn't pulling into his calling. Now, shadow calling is a metaphor for your real calling. It looks very, very similar. The difference is, is there's no risk if you fail inside the shadow calling. That's why resistance allows you to do that. Right? If you're writing for somebody else and it doesn't work, it doesn't really matter for you to put yourself out there and to write something and put it out into the world, right? There's consequences if it doesn't work. It's scary, it's fearful. So resistance is always trying to push you to a shadow calling. So that's lie number two is that the shadow calling is your actual real calling. Lie number three is what we call pleasure, not fulfillment. Okay? Resistance is always trying to get you a cheaper form of the thing you actually desire the most, is trying to give you the dopamine. Hit. We get the reward without the actual effort. Nothing good comes in life when you're getting just the reward without the effort that goes into it. And this is true in all sorts of things. A couple examples I wrote down, Number one is having an actual relationship with somebody you love versus pornography. Right? One, you get the. You get the reward without the risk. Number two, you get actual fulfillment reading about something all day long but not actually doing it. Right? How many of us are reading and listening to podcasts and like going through the motions, but we're never actually doing the thing that we're called to do? Okay, another one. I have so many friends who get in this trap where they go to school and they keep going to school and they keep going to school and they're so scared to get out of the school system because they don't want to actually do the work. And then lie number four. This is one step deeper than a shadow calling where you're kind of in the thing. Step number four, lie number four is literally full sedation. When you're just sedated, you're trying to like, not even focus on the dream. You're getting into drugs and alcohol, anything to get your brain away from the pain of knowing that you're not living into your calling. So these are the lies the resistance is giving you to keep you from stepping into your actual calling. Alright, you guys ready for step number three on how to beat resistance? This one is one of my favorites of all time. This one is really cool. It is called the Bigger the Dream. The Bigger the resistance. Now, I hear people say all the time, they come to me like, hey, Russell, I want to do this thing. But, man, there were so many obstacles, so many things that are happening that there must be a sign. This is not something for me to actually do. If I was supposed to do this, it would be easier. And so they step away from their calling because of the trials and the headaches and the heartaches that come when they're trying to pursue the thing, right? And this is the reality that's not true. The opposite is actually true. Now, I was lucky enough, after reading this book and freaking out because it's one of my favorites of all time, I messaged the author, Steven Pressfield. I said, can I interview you for a few minutes? I want to find out some more stuff about resistance, how I can beat it inside my own life. And luckily for me and for you, he said yes. And so I actually have a clip over here of Steven Pressfield from my interview. And I wanted to show this clip specifically because he's talking about this concept of the bigger the dream you have. The bigger resistance is going to be. So with that said, let's check out this clip from the man himself, Stephen Pressfield.
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Steven Pressfield
Imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The minute the tree appears, a shadow appears. And the shadow is equal to the tree, right? If it's a big tree, it's a big shadow. So in the terms of resistance, the tree is the dream that you have, the book you want to write, the venture you want to do, whatever. And resistance is the shadow. So there would never. There would not. What I want to say is resistance always comes second. There would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream, if there wasn't a calling that was inside you. So the good news of that is when you're feeling big resistance, that big shadow that shows that there's a big tree there or something, there's a big dreams, because resistance always comes like Newton's third law of motion, equal and opposite reaction. It's a reaction to an aspiration, to a book you want to write or a movie you want whatever it is. So don't be freaked out. I would say to anybody by that dark cloud, that dark shadow is an indication that the dream is for real and it's big.
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Russell Brunson
Okay? So that is the key for you guys to understand, right? The bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. If you have a big dream, you start pursuing it and it gets hard. It doesn't mean. Oh, it's not meant to be? No, it means that it is meant to be. The greatest things in life don't come from simplicity. It comes through the pain, through the hard work. It's going through the effort, the risk, the trials. And from the other side, that is when the greatest things come out. Understanding step number three here is that the bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. And that's okay for me now in my life, I'm going after something big. I'm like, man, the resistance is huge. Here. I get doubled down, even more excited knowing that it means that this calling, this thing that I'm chasing, the thing I'm pursuing, is something that's going to change a lot of people's lives. And the same thing is true for you. So when you're in your own personal war of art, when you're trying to create your art, whatever that thing is for you, and you feel the big resistance, don't step away from it. Lean into it. Knowing that means you're on the right track. That brings me to step number four. So how do we actually beat this thing? Obviously, we got to become aware of it. Number two, we got to understand the lies it's using to beat us. Number three, we have to understand that even if the resistance feels so heavy and so big that we can't pursue it, knowing that that is a sign that you are on the right path. The last step here is, then how do we beat it? And this is one of my favorite ones. And the reality is, the way we beat it is through action. And you've heard people talk about this before, but this is the key to actually beating resistance, okay? Now, in life, there's different types of motion, right? There's circular motion, okay? And most people get stuck in circular motion where they're just kind of spinning their wheels. They're going around these ruts over and over, and they're never progressing. They're never moving forward. How many of you guys feel like that sometimes? Maybe you feel like that right now? Napoleon Hill calls that drifting because we drift into this hypnotic rhythm where we're just like. Nothing's changing our life. We keep succumbing to resistance, and so nothing ever progresses. The second type of motion is forward is taking action. You're actually moving forward right now. The problem with direction is when you decide to move forward, there's always a cost. Sitting here and drifting, there's no cost. You're just kind of bouncing off the walls, doing the same thing over and over again. When you decide to move forward into momentum and actually Take action. There's a cost, which is why it's scary, it's why it's hard. It's why the resistance starts coming every time you decide to move forward. When you are creating your art and you decide to move forward, there's always going to be that resistance. The reason why is that our brains are programmed naturally to do a couple things. One thing our brain is naturally built and coded, hard coded our brain to do is to avoid pain at all costs. You feel pain, it's like, I don't want to go there. I don't want to do that. Okay. So our brain tries to avoid pain, number one. Number two, our brain is trained to seek pleasure. Let me go find the fastest hit of pleasure possible. How to get my dopamine hit as quick as possible right on my phone. Whatever we can do to try to get sleek pleasure. Number three is our brain wants us to conserve energy, conserve calories, so you don't run out of the calories we need to survive. And number four is our brain wants to prove itself right? We call this confirmation bias. So those are the four things our brain wants to avoid pain, seek pleasure, conserve energy, and prove itself. Right? Now, to be successful and to beat resistance, you literally have to do the exact opposite of what your brain has been trained to do. Number one, instead of avoiding pain, we have to move out of our comfort zone over and over and over again. Creating art is not going to be simple. Writing books, not simple. So not only do we can't avoid pain, we have to step into the pain. Number two, instead of seeking pleasure at any cost, we can. To be successful in any area of life, you have to actually delay gratification. You have to allow that to build up before you get the reward. Number three, instead of conserving energy, to be successful, you have to take massive action. That's the opposite of conserving energy, right? It's waking up early, it's working hard, it's doing the things that your brain does not want to do. And then number four, to be successful, you can't just try to prove yourself, right? To be successful in anything. Like, you have to question your beliefs, question your assumptions, and become teachable and becoming a student. So those are the steps for how you can beat resistance. Now, I want to give you guys one more key to being successful with this. Every single time you do something, you start moving forward, you're into a direction instantly. Just like Steven Pressfield talked about. As soon as you do that, resistance is going to show up. And our default Our brain quickly wants to go back to drifting to the simpler version of it. What's our job? There's a quote from Viktor Frankl is one of my favorites. He says, between the stimulus and the response, there's a space. And in that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and freedom. So as soon as resistance hits us, there's a space, right? Most people hit resistance, they give up. For all of you guys, as soon as you hit resistance, there's this little gap of space where you actually have the ability to choose and say, no, I'm going to move forward. No, I'm not going to believe that lie. No, I'm not going to procrastinate. And that's where all success and growth and happiness comes. So that is what resistance is. That's why the War of Art is literally one of my favorite books of all time. This is one I say about once a month. I read it or listen to the audiobook. The nice thing is it's really short. It is the key to help you to overcome resistance in your life. Because the reality is, like you, being successful, not successful is almost never about the external circumstances. It's not about your resources, about the money you don't have, the time you don't have. It's almost always an internal thing. It's your the fight and the battle you're having with your brain every single day. Resistance is that thing that's trying to keep you back from being successful. So if you have art that you know you are called to create, to change people's lives again. It could be a business you're launching, it could be a video on YouTube you want to make, it could be a podcast, it could be anything. Whatever your art is. If you want to learn how to win this war of art to beat resistance to be successful, this book is one of my favorites. I hope you guys love it. Now, a couple really cool things. Number one, I did this entire interview with Steven Pressfield. It is insane. We had so much fun going deep into this book, talking about resistance, how to beat resistance, how to go pro, and a whole bunch of other things. Unfortunately, I'm not going to attach that on to the end of this video because it's about an hour long. But if you go and search for the podcast, I'm going to have the entire long form version on the podcast. Just go to your favorite podcast app and search in Russell Brunson or selling online or marketing secrets, and you'll probably find the Steven Pressfield interview. It'll be the entire thing and you are going to love it. So check that out. Number two is if you are enjoying videos like this or I'm going deep into my favorite books, let me know in the comments down below. I'm really enjoying making these videos and I hope that you love them. And if you do love them again, let me know in the comments down below. But on top of that, please share these videos with other people. The more people that watch these videos, the more I know you like them and the more likely I am to make a whole bunch more of them. I've got so many books that I want to break down and share with you. In the last two years, I've bought over 18,000 books. I haven't read them all yet, but I'm trying to and I would love once a week to share my favorite books with you guys and that way you don't have to go read all the books. My goal is for me to take the coolest parts out of them and share them with you. And then the ones that you're like, I want to go deep on this. You have the ability to do that. So let me know. And then also down below in the description, we're going to give you some really cool things. We're working on some study guides that go with each of the books, outlines and other things that will all be in the description down below. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. That's how you can find out when the next video is going to drop as we go deeper into the next book. With that said, thank you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I love sharing these things with you. And if you haven't yet, go read the War of Art. There's a link in the description as well where you can get a copy of this book. And this is one of those books that changed my life and it'll change your life as well. All right everyone, hope you enjoyed the first half of this podcast. So by the way, if you haven't subscribed to YouTube channel yet, make sure to go to YouTube search for Russell Brunson. Go subscribe to my channel. We are dropping bombs every single day like the one you just heard. I hope you enjoyed it. But now I want to give you guys some bonus stuff because you guys are my podcast listeners, my faithful few, the ones who I love the most. Don't tell the YouTube channel that, but you guys are. You're my favorite. So I'm going to give you Guys, access to. It's an hour long interview I did with Steven Pressfield. We haven't launched this live yet anywhere else, but I thought you guys want a sneak peek, right? You want to hear my interview with him? I'm not going to lie. I was so nervous to interview him. I've looked up to him for such a long time. I love his work, I love his art, I love his writing, I love everything. And so I probably sound a little. A little nervous in this one, but I was. I don't know why, I just, I kind of was. But I had a really fun time interviewing him and going deeper into resistance and turning pro and all the cool things he talks about in his book. So I hope you enjoy the last half of this podcast, which is my interview with Steven Pressfield. What's fun for me about this is a couple things again. I read War of Art initially, and in there you talk about resistance. We'll go deeper into that here in a little bit. But I read that and it was funny because at the time I was in the middle of trying to write a book and I was like, I was feeling that as a writer. Like, I was feeling that as such a big thing. But then in my audience, like, we have, you know, we have a hundred thousand entrepreneurs that use our platform. So I started talking to them all about it. It was crazy because a lot of them aren't writers, but they're, they're all sourcing from, from marketers to copywriters to designers to, you know, people being social media, social media people or podcasters. And everyone is just like, as soon as I would, as soon as I would talk about that, I was like, you guys read the War of Art. I talk about resistance. All of them instantly like, oh my gosh, yes, that is the thing. Like, I feel that all the time. And it gave everyone something very tangible to think about and talk about. So I'm excited to share some of those things. But before we do, sorry, I'm just so excited your new books came out, Government Cheese. And I had a chance over the last week and a half to read the entire thing. And I finished it two ago, which was fun because it's your whole story. It was fun for me because it kind of pieced together all of your stories from all the different books into one timeline. And I feel like I know you so much better because of that. And the thing I want to start with is this book, the Government Cheese book, which I have right here. Basically, it's kind of like your autobiography. Right. Going through everything.
- [20:12]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah, it's really a memoir. And you're in Boise. I used to actually drive a truck to pick out potatoes in Boise. That's not in the. That's not in the book. But so there's connections everywhere there. But that is. It's a memoir. It is kind of my life story. And the reason I wrote it is just like what you're talking about for your entrepreneurs and people that are writers and copywriters and so on and so forth, that are struggling, you know, with their own stuff and sometimes feel like, oh, this has taken forever and I'm bouncing around, I don't know where I am, you know, And I figured if I would tell kind of my story because it took me such a long time to kind of break through that that might be encouraging to people that, you know, if this guy can, you know, live through all that stuff, that there's hope for everybody else too, for sure.
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Russell Brunson
So I think before we go into, like, the resistance side of things, like, what I think normally happens, at least for me, is like, I felt. I feel like. I call it a lot of times a calling. I feel called to do something. I feel this mission. I feel something. It was interesting when I was reading this. It was fascinating because the first. I can't remember how many, 10, 20 years when you were driving and doing all the different things. You talked about your huge typewriter that you literally carried in your car everywhere. And so I'm curious, curious, like, when did you. Like, when did you know that was going to be your calling to be a writer? Because it was. It was a long time before you actually became a writer. But it sounds like at the very beginning you knew that was something. So much so that you were hauling this huge typewriter, you know, from place to place, from apartment to apartment, and carrying everywhere you were going.
- [21:38]
Steven Pressfield
Well, I was to do the sort of longer version of the story. I was working. My first job was as a copywriter in New York City at a big, you know, Madison Avenue ad agency. And I had a boss named Ed Hannibal and he wrote a novel. And it was. And it was an instant hit. And the guy quit his job and became like a full time writer. And I thought, I saw this happen. I thought, well, why don't I do the same thing? You know, so. So I quit and I tried to write a book for about two years. And of course it was like I had no business doing it. I had no concept of how hard it would be. I was way too young, etc. Etc. And so my life sort of collapsed at that point. I was, you know, divorce, blah blah, blah. I wound up kind of on the road and I felt like the only way I could get out of this thing was to sort of write my way out of it. You know, it was like I tried this thing, I failed. You know, resistance was what defeated me. Resistance with a capital R. But at that time I had no idea that there was such a thing. So anyway, I just was sort of in a position kind of Russell of shame. You know, as I kind of talk about in government cheese where I felt like I've let everybody down, I've let myself down. I've somehow gotta right the ship. And so it just took any another 27 years or something like that as.
- [23:00]
Russell Brunson
You'Ve known it was take 27 years. Would you've gone on that journey? That's.
- [23:03]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah. But if somebody had told me that, it would've been a different story.
- [23:07]
Russell Brunson
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- [26:00]
Steven Pressfield
This is actually not it. My original one is in a storage space, but this is kind of a standard for the original one.
- [26:10]
Russell Brunson
Well, I'm going to see offline. I'm going to beg you to see if I can buy Your original one. The reason why is so. One of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill. And recently the Napoleon Hill foundation actually gave me Napoleon Hill's typewriter he wrote think and grow Rich on. So I have that in my collection now. But it's fun because again, I was never around during typewriter time, so I never had a chance to actually write on there. I can't even imagine. I write in Google Docs and it's stressful. And I got me. And editors can all edit in one spot. I don't know how people wrote. Just sitting down and writing that way. I can't imagine. In the book you talked about your editing actually copying and pasting, literally cutting and gluing things around to make it.
- [26:46]
Steven Pressfield
It's like the reason why they have those phrases copy and paste is because that's what it really used to be. You literally would cut it and you literally would paste it. But because you didn't know any better, there was no such. No alternative, so you just did it.
- [27:01]
Russell Brunson
I'm curious back then, like, when you would write, you write a book again? Because for me, it's like, I have some rewrites. I'm copying huge sections of the book. Like when you're writing something like that, like some of your early novels, I know the first, I can't remember how many didn't get published. But like when you're writing those, like, was it hard to know like from the beginning to the end, like where you were even going on this journey with. With the story? And then would you have to retype huge sections or. I'm sure I'm trying to visualize what that even would look like. Because I think nowadays so many, like me and other writers complain about stuff versus, like, I can't imagine what it been like back then, you know.
- [27:32]
Steven Pressfield
Well, you would wind up kind of with pages that would. That would be scotch taped together and it'd be like, you know, three feet long, sprawling across your own. You're just like, you know, you would do on a computer, only actually had to do with real paper. And it was. It was a kind of a crazy situation. Try to read it over to see if it makes sense now. But yeah, that was the way it went. You know, it was definitely handmade stuff.
- [27:58]
Russell Brunson
So I want to go a little deeper with this concept of like this calling that people feel. Right. Especially we're going to talk about later. I want to ask you about the shadow calling, but initially the calling. Right? So for me, it's like, I know the things I've pursued in my life. It's like I felt something that was. Again, I always think my head. It's like, I feel called to go do this thing, and it doesn't always make sense. A lot of times it's like, I'm not qualified to do this. Not ready. But, like, I feel there's something that pulls me towards that. And I'm curious, kind of twofold for you. Like. Like, did you feel like that, like, you wanted to be a writer? And I don't know if it was like you wanted to write movies or books, like. But did you feel that? If so, like, what did that actually feel like? I want people to be able to identify, like, when they're feeling something more so than just like, oh, I should go do this thing. But, like, they're feeling something that's bigger than just themselves, like, what that feels like, you know?
- [28:41]
Steven Pressfield
Well, it definitely feels like that's who you really are, right? That's kind of your. It is your calling that you should be doing that. And at least for me, when I would try to do anything else, you know, like, if I would get a copywriting job or something like that, I would be so depressed at the end of the day, really, you know, that I would have. The only thing that would save me would be to sit down at this old clunky typewriter and try to write something of my own, you know? But the other thing, from a writer's point of view, is that you're. You feel a call to a certain story. You know, there's a book you want to write. Like, I'm sure you felt this, Russell. Or you're feeling it right now. You know that there's this story about whatever it is, and you just got it and you start it and you're hooked on it, and now you've got to finish it. And you go through the same sort of things you're talking about where, you know, once you're a few weeks into it, you say to yourself, what am I doing? You know, this is crazy. This is not going anywhere. I'm lost. Nobody's going to buy this. I'm not good enough, that kind of thing. And those are the sort of resistance points that you have to sort of learn to overcome. Just like an entrepreneur, right? Where you start something and you think, oh, shit, what have I done? Right? There's no way this is going to pay off, et cetera, et cetera. But that just seems to be part and parcel of any creative enterprise where you are called. You get this. You do get that feeling right. You feel like, I've got to do this thing. Nothing else is going to make me happy.
- [30:10]
Russell Brunson
I'm curious for you. Do you feel like that calling is it? I've heard a lot of people, some people think it's something internal, some people think it's God. Like, I'm curious for you, like, what do you feel? Like that. Where do they think that comes from?
- [30:20]
Steven Pressfield
Well, I'm definitely a believer that life happens on two levels. That there's the material level that we're on and there's a higher level above that. And we get called from that level. You know, it's. It's the muse, it's the goddess. That's the way I look at it. That it's sort of, you know, like they say about songwriters, they might be driving along the freeway and suddenly a song will come into their head completely, you know, from start to finish, right? And they have to like screech over to the side of the road and write it down before it goes away. So I definitely feel that ideas are coming from someplace else and it's our job to, you know, grab a hold of them and bring them into material. Being on this material plane, so cool.
- [31:09]
Russell Brunson
I always think about that with mine. Like, I similar. I feel these things come up and then I feel like there's times where like I take those things, I run with them, there's times where I don't. And then it's weird when you see you don't. You don't run with something and then later you see somebody else runs with it. I feel like God, whoever's giving those things, it's like he gives it somebody. If you're doing something and he gives somebody else, he's like, someone's going to be a good steward of this idea. Someone's going to take it and run. And so now I'm always like, when I have that impression, I'm like, I want to be the. I want to be a good steward of this. I'm going to take it, I'm going to run with it. Even if it doesn't make any sense. I'm like, I don't want someone else to have this. And anyway, it's kind of interesting.
- [31:39]
Steven Pressfield
Let me ask you, Russell, how do you deal with like the self doubt that hits you when you start something? Like, I mean, when you were first messing around with potato guns, said to yourself, what am I doing with this thing here? How do you, how do you deal with self doubt when you're starting something new?
- [31:55]
Russell Brunson
First off the fact that, you know, the potato gun story is literally like the coolest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
- [32:00]
Steven Pressfield
So.
- [32:02]
Russell Brunson
So anyway. So that's number one. Yeah, it's. It's one of those things. I think it's interesting because in different areas of my life, it affects me differently. Right. Like now in business, I've had success over years, so most things come to me now, it's like more easy. But like, there's other parts where maybe my relationship where it's like I have way more fear that goes into it. And I think a lot of times sometimes the fear wins where it's just like, ah, you know, resistance or fear, like, it keeps me. But other times it's like, at least for me, like, I'm able to see like, not a vision, but I see like the calling, like where it's supposed to go. And I see the benefit of it and like, okay, I'm going to go pursue this. And again, sometimes you make it far, sometimes you don't. But it's just like the pursuit of it, I think is the key. It's not so much like the attainment as much as the pursuit, which is interesting. It kind of leads to my next question I had for you, because I hear a lot of entrepreneurs sometimes, and usually this is after the fact, where they're like, oh, I created this thing because I wanted to help these people over here, whatever. And which I think is a good. Like we create to help other people, obviously, but. But I also think when people, when they're trying to create for someone else besides themselves, it typically doesn't work. And there's a quote you had in Government Cheese I wrote down. It says, you said, the thought of tailoring my output for some market or to please some imagined audiences never enters my mind. This is for me. I'm writing to save my own life. I think that, like, I love, I love your perspective on that, but I, I think it's like the fact, like, you have to become obsessed with things we're doing for ourselves or else you're not going to have the energy to go through it. Right. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
- [33:30]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah, that's my theory, actually. I just was. Did a podcast a little while ago with Rick Rubin. You know, he is the music entrepreneur, the guy that's some sort of the godfather of hip hop. And that's absolutely what he believes, and I believe it completely that when you're trying to imagine some audience and so you're going to fill the need for them. You're coming from a place of the ego, I think, and not from a place of the heart. And the other cons. The other way to look at it is to say, I've got to lead the audience. They don't know what this story that's in my head or this idea that's in my head. If they did, they'd go for it. So it's my. Like, when Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone, nobody was looking for that, right? Nobody said, you know, do me a phone that's got apps and stuff on it. They didn't know what it was. But he believed, if I fall in love with this thing, everybody else or other people are going to fall in love with it, too. And I think that's. That's just the way that the world seems to work. You know, you have to. You have to fall in love with it yourself. Believe that if it's fun for you, it'll be fun for somebody else.
- [34:37]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, I just want to jump ahead where I was going to go and we'll come back. But, like, in Government Cheese was really cool because, like, you tell your story in such a way where you see, like, you know, you were driving, trying to write, and then you were writing books, and you wrote, I think, three or four novels that failed, right? And then you shifted to screenplays, and then you were doing that, and it got a point where, like, I feel like in the story, I'm like, you were almost a success. Was like, oh, you're about to be there. Like, I was, like, cheering for you. And then you're like, I'm gonna go write this book. And nobody wanted you to write this book. And I'm assuming this is where that came from, Right? Like, you were like, this is the thing I want to write. And from that came Bagger. The Legend of Bagger Vance. I'd love to hear just like, what were you thinking in that period where it's like, everything's finally working for me? And then you're like, I feel called to this thing I want to create for myself. I'm going to leave this thing I'm working on for 20 years of my life and to go this whole other direction.
- [35:24]
Steven Pressfield
Well, the longer version of this story is that I had had a screenwriting career for about 10 years, you know, kind of a B, a C level. Not an A level, man. But I was sort of getting there. And my agent, who was a good friend of mine, had done a lot of work for me, you know, to get me out to the town and get people to know who I was and then suddenly talk about, you know, I was just seized by this idea for the Legend of Bagger Vance, but it was as a book, not as a movie. And I just knew that completely, you know, there was no doubt in my mind. And when I told my agent that he basically fired me, said, you know, I've been busting my ass for years for you to get you out there. You go off for a year or something to write this book, people forget you and they town in a week and a half, you know. But I was just so seized with it that I just absolutely had to do it, you know, come hell or high water. And you know, not, not wood. It worked. But that sort of goes to what we were talking about before about you, the creator, you, the entrepreneur, have to lead the audience, you know. But I was had tremendous self doubt about that book. I thought as I was writing it, I thought, a golf story, you know, that's mystical. I mean, who's going to be interested in that? But again, I was just seized by it. I just had to do it. So sometimes, you know, that higher dimension takes over and you don't have a chance, you just got to do it.
- [36:52]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, I've never written a book that's not a how to book yet. So I'm just curious, just personal, because like when you decide to go down and do the Legend Bagger Vance, like what did you see first? Was it the golf story? Was it the character? Like who, what was. How does that work in your mind as these characters starting developing? What's, what's the chicken, the egg in that process? I have no idea how that works. I'm so curious.
- [37:14]
Steven Pressfield
Well, in this, this probably going to bore our listeners completely, but there's a famous Hindu scripture called the Bhagavad Gita. I don't know if you've heard of this, but it has. You know, it's about the great warrior Arjuna and his charioteer. And I, I was a fan of this book. I read many times, you know, and one day I just thought this is a great structure for a story. I can just put this in a modern context and it'll work, you know. And so I was kind of seized by that. I thought this is, the structure is great. It's like ripping off Romeo and Juliet or something like that. Right. You know, it's going to work. So then once you're into it, it acquires a momentum of its own and characters appear and scenes start and new Ideas come in just like an entrepreneurial venture. You know, we start with one crazy thing, your potato gun, and next thing you know, you got. You know, you got a whole industry.
- [38:09]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, that's so cool. Oh, so cool. Okay, I want to jump back then. So what I want to do is I want to talk about this. So most creators or entrepreneurs or writers, they have this. This calling. They feel this thing that keeps pushing and to make them, it creates desire in your mind, right. That puts you on the. On motion, into. Into momentum. And then as soon as that starts happening. And it's funny, in the Artist's Journey, you talk about the hero's journey, which is like one of my favorite frameworks I talk about in one of my books. But like in the Hero's Journey, the hero hears the call to adventure and then immediately hears refusal to call. Right. Like, I'm not going to do it. And I feel like in my mind, when you first start talking about resistance, I was like, that's what happens, right? The second you feel this calling, then it's like, oh, it hits you, and then it hits you. And then as you're moving through the process, keeps hitting you over and over again. And so I love to start, though, like, with you just kind of explaining what the resistance with the capital R. What is resistance? Because again, I think everyone feels this, but you made it such a tangible thing in my mind, where now it's like, anyway, I'd love to hear. To kind of talk about resistance with the capital R. Okay, well, first let.
- [39:11]
Steven Pressfield
Me just say that for the first eight or nine years or longer than that of my career, I was being defeated by this sports called resistance, and I never knew it even existed. So let me see if I can define it. It's like when you sit down in front of one of these things and you're facing the blank screen, you can feel a force radiating off that screen, a negative force trying to make you get up and leave, you know? Right. It's definitely doesn't want you to do that job, whatever it is, and it'll. And the way resistance appears is as a voice in your head. And a voice in your head will tell you a couple of things. One of the things it'll tell you is you're not good enough to do this. Who do you think you are? You're too old, you're too young. You have no skills. You've never done this before. This is a dumb idea if it's been done before by a million people. Better than that kind of voice. Right. That'll try to force you back and stop you from doing it. The other half of the voice is it will try to distract you and it will say, clickbait, you'll go down this, you know, the rabbit hole of whatever it is, or, let's get drunk or let's have an affair, or let's, you know, go to the beach, let's get whatever, that kind of thing. And after a while, you recognize that there is an enemy. The playing field is not level. When you sit down to do anything creative or entrepreneurial, there's this negative force out there that I believe is like the force of gravity. It just exists in the real world. There's nothing you can do about it. And except you've got to learn to overcome it. One way or another, it's there. It's fighting you. It's going to fight you every day of your life. I've been in this business now for 50 years, and the force of resistance never goes away and never diminishes. It's the dragon you have to slay every morning anew. So I always say to any artist or any entrepreneur, before you even get into the skill of it, of whatever you're going to do, the first thing you have to do is recognize this negative force and find some way to overcome it one day at a time, day after day after day. Yeah.
- [41:30]
Russell Brunson
So interesting. When I first read War of Art and you talking about that, I started thinking about other areas of my life as well. Not just my business or my writing, but, like, for me, initially was like, as a younger kid, I was a wrestler, and that was my thing. And I remember feeling it then. I didn't know what it was, obviously, but you wake up in the morning, it's like, I gotta go run. I gotta go work out. It's like. And like, it would hit. And then you get to the gym, you all work at the gym. They're like, I don't want to work. You know, in every. Like, almost every time you do something, you have that choice again. Like, okay, I can go, like, super hard and push myself on this set of whatever, or I don't have to. Or your practice. Like, I can run 100 or like, I can go 80 this time. And it's like, it's just constantly. I just kept hitting over and over and over again. So after I read, though, I was, you know, I read it a year ago. So in my life, I'm in my business, and we were. We were working towards one of our big events, and I I wanted to. To see, like, how often it was hitting me. So I try. I started like a little note thing on my phone and every time I would. I would feel some version of resistance, I tried to make note of it and it was crazy. It was like just how often, like I kept feeling. It was. It was like sometimes it was, you know, four or five times in a minute. Other times it was like, you know, every 20 minutes, every. It was like every time I was moving forward, it was like this thing pushing back, moving forward, pushing back. And I was thinking about. I make like, the reason why I think most people never have successes. It's not that they don't. That they don't get past resistance. It's like they get past it once or twice, but it just keeps going and it just keeps pushing. So often that it's, It's. It's a brutal thing. You have to have a lot of belief in the calling or the thing you're pursuing, or else it's easy for that just to collapse you. Right?
- [42:59]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah. And like you say, because it never stops. It's like you might defeat it, you know, for a week or two weeks or in training, you know, or work that you're trying to do, and then resistance will even use that success against you. And the voice in your head will say, ah, you've done great for those two weeks. You really got licked. You know, let's take the day off, you know, or it's Sunday, or, you know, our wife wants to do that, blah, blah, blah. And of course, you can't be hardcore 24 hours a day, but you do have to sort of think in marathon terms. You know, I think of this absolutely as a lifetime commitment. You know, when I'm dead, I'll stop worrying about this, but not until then. And so, you know, it is. It. It's so diabolical. The voice in your head in the nuanced ways it'll try to fake you out and get you to stop.
- [43:51]
Russell Brunson
But you're.
- [43:52]
Steven Pressfield
It's really interesting what you did, Russell, with your phone, where you kept track of it. I've never done that, but I would imagine it would hit me 500 times a day.
- [44:02]
Russell Brunson
Oh, yeah, it's. It's. It's pretty crazy. But I think for me, like, again, as soon regret reading your book so big for me because, like, it became such a tangible thing that now I could like, almost call it out, like, ah, no resistance. You're not going to win this time, you know, like, as opposed to like, before you again. You feel guilty or you feel, like, unworthy or, like. Or, you know, these feelings of just like, oh, man, I messed up again, or I didn't do it again, versus, like, no, it's not me. This is an external force. I gotta fight. I gotta win. And at least for me, it made it. It made it more fun and more manageable when I was able to be aware of it. You know what I mean?
- [44:33]
Steven Pressfield
So let me throw one thing out here that maybe. Maybe you're gonna ask me something about this. But maybe this. What I wanna say now, maybe very helpful to anybody that's thinking about this stuff. And that is that if you imagine. Imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The minute the tree appears, a shadow appears. And the shadow is equal to the tree, right? If it's a big tree, it's a big shadow. So in the terms of resistance, the tree is the dream that you have, the book you want to write, the venture you want to do, whatever. And resistance is the shadow. So there would never. There would not. What I want to say is resistance always comes second. There would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream, if there wasn't a calling that was inside you. So the good news of that is when you're feeling big resistance, that big shadow that shows that there's a big tree there or something, there's a big dreams. Because resistance always comes like Newton's third law of motion. Equal and opposite reaction. It's a reaction to an aspiration, to a book you want to write or a movie you want. Whatever it is. So don't be freaked out. I would say to anybody, buy that dark cloud. That dark shadow is an indication that the dream is for real and it's big.
- [45:59]
Russell Brunson
Such a cool thing. I think a lot of people look at it the opposite way. Where they're like. They feel resistance. Like, I guess I'm not supposed to do this. This is a sign that I'm not supposed to do it. Versus, like, the opposite you just said is a sign that you are. That the dream is big enough to actually pursue. That's fascinating. So cool. Okay, so the next thing I want to talk about. Because we're talking about resistance, what it feels like. I think one of the things I can't remember again, I've read all these books again in the last, like, month. So I might mess up, like, which book to reference, but everyone should buy all of them and just get them all, because they're amazing. But in. I think it was in War of Ours, he Talked about, like some of the ways that resistance shows up. And one of them that was so interesting was you call the unlived life where. Where that's kind of what it's trying to create or trying to get you to do. Is that correct? But explain what the unlived life is and how that. How that shows through with.
- [46:45]
Steven Pressfield
Because resistance, I mean, well, it's. It's like we're talking about a calling or a dream or whatever it is. We may be working in a cubicle in some office or, you know, we may be at a high end. We may be some, you know, big shot lawyer or something like that. And that's. That's the life we're living. But there's an unlived life within us. And Resistance's job is to make sure we never live that life out. Right. There are so many people who want to be writers, want to be artists, want to start businesses, but they don't for various reasons. They have kids, they got to take care of the kids, you know, all that sort of stuff. Practical things. Got to keep my job. But. So it's a very good question to ask oneself, what is my unlived life? What. What is the thing that's inside me that wants to be born? And that's the call, right? You're talking about the hero's journey. That's the call to adventure. And so, yeah, that's what I mean by the unlived life.
- [47:44]
Russell Brunson
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But you get 20% discount off when you put in the keyword secrets at checkout. So go to workinggenius.com again two GS working genius to GS in the middle workinggenius.com and then use promo code secrets S E C R E T S at checkout. Get 25% off but then go take the test again. It takes you 10 minutes but even in a 10 minute session you will get something that is so insanely valuable to help you understand yourself, to make sure you're working in a spot that's going to be the most joy number one. But then number two, it's going to make sure that you are with your teams getting them in the right seats as well. So anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out@workinggenius.com and enter the promo code SECRETS for 20% discount. Take this test for yourself and for your team and I promise you will change the working dynamics amongst everybody and help your company to grow. I was writing some notes from the book says, you know, unlive life. It's like you see the life we live and the unlived life within us. The resistance stands between them. So like an athlete who doesn't compete, a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who's never started online business. I see that on my community because we have again we have, you know, I think our email lists are 5 or 6 million people. From there we have a hundred thousand so that use our clickfunnels platform. You know. So I look at like again my whole world's all funnels. So you see this whole thing and it's like most of the people I would, I would say probably identify as like an entrepreneur or a creator. Yet how, you know, what percentage of them have never created yet or never done anything because they're, you know, they, they see it, they believe they want it, but they don't act, they never live. It's the unlived life, the part that they're, that they're missing. And like you said, resistance, what stands between that it keeps, keeps you from actually living the thing that they're, they're called and supposed to do.
- [52:01]
Steven Pressfield
So yeah, that's like one you were talking about the refusal of the call, right? Yeah, the hero's journey. The concept is that, well one of the concepts is that immediately when the hero receives the call to adventure, the first thing that pops into their head is, well, I don't want to do that. Right. They refuse to call. Like in the movie Rocky when he gets a chance to fight the champ, people forget this from him. You watch a movie, first thing he does, he turns it down. You know, or in, in the Odyssey when Odysseus is called to go to the Trojan War, first thing he does is turn it down. Even in Star wars when, you know, Luke discovers R2D2 and gets the message, you know, help me Obi Wan Kenobi, first thing he does is he turns it down. He says, I gotta stay here on, you know, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's evaporator farm. You know, they need me. And it's not until they are killed by the sand people that he actually answers the call. So yeah, that's, that's the unlived life.
- [52:58]
Russell Brunson
That's awesome. Now, next thing you talked about. And again, I can't remember exactly which book, but this was fascinating to me. You talked about how a lot of people instead, like, it's not so much that they don't do it, but they settle for something different. You call it the shadow calling, where you know, it's not necessarily, they're not pursuing it, but they're picking it an easier option. I'd love to talk like, what is the shadow calling? And I mentioned, by the way, I mentioned somebody my on my team the other day and it was one of our writers who's a copywriter, like most amazing copy I've ever had on my team. And when I said that to him, he was like, he realized, he's like, he's like, I'm supposed to be a writer. And then I was like, oh no, I need you to be my copywriter. So. But he like, he recognized like, he's like, I'm living in my shadow colony, I'm not the one I actually wanted. And so I love you talk about that because I think a lot of people are probably, that's where they're falling and they're thinking they're going the right path versus like understanding. Like ah, you're actually not hitting it quite correct.
- [53:43]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah, that, that's a great example of copywriter because you know, I was one myself and you know like in any big ad agency where there might be 200 copywriters, male and female, if you open the drawer of any of their desks, they've got a half written novel in there, they've got a bunch of screenplays in there, you know, and they're so the actual copywriting is kind of a shadow career. And a lot of times, like in the movie business, you know, there are. The lawyers in the movie business are entertainment lawyers, which I don't know if you're familiar with this, but they're the people that do the contracts for actors and directors and writers and so on and so forth. And it's kind of a commonplace that many, many of these lawyers want to be writers or directors or producers. And a lot of them do it, you know, and they're good at it. And you can see that they sort of chose this career as a lawyer in the movie business to be adjacent to a creative enterprise, but in a kind of a safe way. They're a lawyer. They've, you know, they went to law school. It's a real job. They're going to be paid money, but that's their shadow career or another time. Another example is a lot of times people will take a job maybe as an assistant to somebody, to an entrepreneur, to a creative person, when really they want to be the creative person, but they just haven't raised the courage quite yet to do it. So it's a real common thing. It's another way that resistance and it's diabolicalness, fakes us out, you know, and gets us sidetracked us away from something that we should be doing.
- [55:20]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, I think it'd be interesting exercise for everyone to kind of sit down and think through that. Like, what am I currently doing today? Like, is this actually the calling? Is it, like, am I fired up about this, or am I settling to kind of, like, appease that feeling? Like, I'm kind of doing it, but I. I'm in the right industry, but I'm not doing the thing that I actually want. And then if they figured out they realize they're. They're. They're following a shadow calling. Like, what's. What would you tell them? Like, what's the process? Like, do they just cold turkey quit and start running or say, like, what do. What should most people do, you think, in that situation?
- [55:47]
Steven Pressfield
I think that it's a great question, too. Like, one of the things I've said before, you know who Steven Soderbergh is? The director. He direct. He won an Oscar for Traffic, and he's done a million things that you've seen. And when he won his Oscar as best director for Traffic, he kind of held up the award and he said, this is for everybody who puts in one hour a day pursuing their art. And I would say that you can be a Full time professional artist, an hour a day. You know, you don't have to quit your job, although hopefully that's, you know, what you will get to do at some point to do it full time. But another way of looking at that is like, I'm a full time professional writer, you know, I don't have to do anything else. But in my day with all the, that I have to do, I really wind up with only like about 2 hours of time to actually do my real writing, you know, so that even if you're a single mom and you've got two jobs, you can carve out a couple of hours for whatever your dream is. And you know, and I figured it out one time an hour a day comes out to a lot of hours over the course of a year. And you can get a lot of stuff done in that time if you just stick with it going for the day when maybe you really can leave that job.
- [57:09]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, it's interesting. My very first book I wrote, I've been talking about it for a decade and then one of my mentors told me, he's like, if you just write two pages every day, he's like, two pages every day? He's like, if you do that and you wake up in the morning, two pages, first thing you do is like, that's two books a year. And I remember him saying that I was like, I've been for a decade like kind of writing it and kind of, you know, I changed the table of contents a few times, like feeling good about it. And then so I started doing that and I wasn't able to keep the pace. Constantly with two pages a day, somebody was one page. But what happened is within the next. It took me about a year to write my first book. Within a year I had a book and I was like, I actually finally did it, you know, but it was, it was like chopping it down to that of just realizing like the consistency of putting in the effort over time. Not that I'm going to write a book in a weekend like I maybe thought I was going to do, you know, it's great.
- [57:55]
Steven Pressfield
It's true. It's just like fitness, right? You know, if you run a certain amount and you just do it every day, you know, by the end of the year, you know, you're a lot fitter than you were when you started. So it's definitely doable in increments.
- [58:08]
Russell Brunson
Yeah. Okay, so next question. So after I read War of Art, I was like going crazy with us, telling everybody, like, this is resistance. I Was trying to make everyone aware of this thing that was hitting them in their life and trying to make, you know, I had all my coaching clients. I was like, the same thing. I, like, get a pad of paper out and start writing down every time this hits you so that they were aware of it and then. But I didn't. Like, I didn't have a solution. I was just like. And now I'm aware. Sweet. And I know, like, these different things I was protecting. And then that's when I bought everyone your books and I started going through them. And I think the second or third one I read was Turning Pro, which I feel like for at least for me, it was like, here's the answer now, how to overcome it Again, like you said, it's never completely gone, but how do you actually overcome that? And so I'd love you to talk about the premise of going pro or turning pro and, like, how this is, like the antidote to beating out resistance.
- [58:50]
Steven Pressfield
That's another great question. I mean, this is what worked for me. I mean, it doesn't, you know, I mean, I'm a lot of other things and work for a lot of other people. But I sort of. When I ask myself, why am I constantly being defeated by this force of resistance? You know, why do I cave in? Why do I go halfway, that kind of thing? And I sort of said to myself, what I'm really doing is I'm acting and operating like an amateur and not like a professional. Like, for instance, when an amateur encounters adversity, an amateur folds, you know, but a professional doesn't. A professional shows up every day, right? Think about Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or anybody, anybody like that. LeBron James or something. Another thing that a professional does is a professional plays hurt. You know, if you're right, if you're spraying your ankle or something like that, if you're an amateur, you're going to say, okay, this injury is too much. I can't go through it. But a pro plays through that injury and just knows that you have to play hurt, that, you know nothing's ever going to be perfect on. The shittiest days are sometimes the days that you do the best work. But the thing is to think of it as a real profession and to think of yourself as a professional and ask yourself, when you feel that hit, that moment of adversity, what would a pro do in a case like this? And what's great about thinking of yourself as a pro is it doesn't cost anything. You don't have to go to School, you don't have to take a course. You don't have to do any. All you have to do is change your mind. And, you know, it worked for me. It's not easy, but it's a great way of thinking of yourself.
- [60:28]
Russell Brunson
Yeah. I think when I was thinking about this, when I was reading your book, I was like, it's a shift in identity. Right. I think about myself, like, for a long time. Like, I. I went to wrestling practice, but it wasn't until I was like, I am. Like, I made a goal, and I said, I'm going to be a state champ. I'm going to become a. You know, and I made these things, and it changed my identity. Same thing with business. Like, I was trying to make money for. For months until I, like, identify like, I am an entrepreneur. I am. And when I shifted, my identity again went from, like, me dabbling, trying to figure something out to, like, no, this is. This is what I do. This is who I am. And then I was able to push through things because my identity has shifted. And so I think that's in my mind how it kind of synced and went together.
- [61:04]
Steven Pressfield
I think you sort of hit the nail on the head there, Russell. It's an identity question as much as it is anything else. You know, when you say to. Like, a lot of people will say to themselves, I'm an aspiring entrepreneur or I'm an aspiring writer or aspiring actor, you got to get rid of that adjective, you know, even if you're not making money at it. Now, if you can think of yourself as, that's what I am, you know, I'm a wrestler, I'm an actor, I'm a dancer. Then it works.
- [61:34]
Russell Brunson
Yeah. So cool.
- [61:36]
Steven Pressfield
All right.
- [61:36]
Russell Brunson
I want to ask you some questions more just about your timeline, because I want people to understand this, and. And my goal is to get everyone addicted to you. Like, I've been addicted to all your. All your writing. So Legend, Bagger Vance. So this was. Was this the first book that got published or were other ones prior to this? Yeah. And how many years into your writing career did that?
- [61:53]
Steven Pressfield
I think it was, like, 27. I was, like, 52 years old.
- [61:57]
Russell Brunson
52 years old. And then that came, and it blew up. And I imagine the book went one way, and then did you change, turn into a screenplay? How did it go from becoming a book to becoming the movie and everything else after that?
- [62:11]
Steven Pressfield
Well, for some reason, as soon as I wrote that first book that got published, even though I didn't make a lot of money, but it Had a little bit of a splash. I just somehow knew. I'm now a book writer. Talk about identity, you know. And I don't want to do movies anymore. I don't want to be a screenwriter anyway. And so then the next question for me, I'm sure you've had the same thing was, well, what am I going to do now? So you have to, you know, I just waited for the next idea to come and it was a whole other different thing. A book called Gates of Fire that was about the 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. And then I was sort of off and running and it was just a question of what's next. What's next? What's next? I think I'm up to now like 23 books or something like that, which kind of is amazing to me.
- [62:56]
Russell Brunson
I have, I don't know if you see the shot on stage. I think I have most of them, but. Yeah, so you have all the ones you wrote that are story based. And then you started also doing obviously like the War of Art and these other ones that are more how to ish. Like when did that transition? When did you go from writing stories to like actually teaching and training writers and creatives and stuff like that?
- [63:16]
Steven Pressfield
I, I think the War of Art came out in 2002. So I'd been, it was maybe seven years into my book writing world and I just did that just because people asked me over and over, how do you write a book? I want, I got a book in me. I want to write a book, right. And I would kind of sit down with them, live, you know, in person, my friends. And the first thing I would tell them about was resistance, Capital R. I would warn them, I don't care how great your idea. Idea is, unless you can overcome this thing, you're never going to get anywhere. And of course, nobody ever listened to me. Nobody ever wrote their book. You know, they all were defeated by resistance, but they kept coming. So I finally, I just said, let me just write this down. I'll make a little small book. And then I'll just say, when somebody asked me, I'll just say, here, read this. So that was how the War of Art kind of came about. And it was not successful at all at the start. Took quite a while for it kind of catch on. And then I started to write a few follow ups as, as you know.
- [64:18]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, so you're 53, you said, or 52. 53 when bag of Ants came out. And then, I mean, I look at, I look at as we're getting all the books and put on stage day, I was like, you're like one of the most prolific writers ever. Like, it's insane how much you've written. And so I'm curious, like, is it like one a year, two a year? How, like, how, how often you write? What's your writing style? Like, how, how are you able to produce this much at this point, as I'm trying to understand? Because it's, it's really, it's really impressive.
- [64:44]
Steven Pressfield
Well, I do think that, like, we're talking about being a professional, right? And a professional shows up every day, just like, you know, your mentor said to you, two pages a day and you've got two books a year. So. But I think I'm no different from most writers. You know, I write every day. That's my job. This is what I do. This is my calling. And so. And I'm also a believer in not stopping. You know, some people will finish a project and they'll sort of publish it or release it, launch it, and then they'll kind of wait for the response, you know, is this going to be a hit or whatever. I'm definitely from the other school. I really feel the minute you finish number six, move on to number seven.
- [65:27]
Russell Brunson
And.
- [65:27]
Steven Pressfield
And so that's how, you know, one book follows another and before you know it, you got a whole shelf.
- [65:34]
Russell Brunson
Are you writing fiction, nonfiction at the same time, or do you take the different seasons one at a time?
- [65:39]
Steven Pressfield
You know, I'll, you know, depending on what has grabbed me and seized me at the moment.
- [65:44]
Russell Brunson
Yeah. Very cool. So of all the stuff you've written, what's your favorite of the fiction side? Favor the non fiction?
- [65:52]
Steven Pressfield
Well, non fiction, I would say the War of Art, you know, because that was, you know, the second book after the Legend of Bagger branch is a book called Gates of Fire. That's probably, that's the one that has sold actually more than the War of Art, but to an audience that is probably not your audience. It's probably a different audience. But that would be, I think, my second favorite.
- [66:18]
Russell Brunson
Very cool. And then just like last two or three weeks I bought government cheese and then the daily press field was the daily press filled that come out. Is that brand new as well or did I just miss that?
- [66:28]
Steven Pressfield
That's brand new. Just came out like about a two months ago.
- [66:31]
Russell Brunson
Okay.
- [66:32]
Steven Pressfield
So yeah, I would.
- [66:35]
Russell Brunson
It's really cool. Like even the box and the packaging, everything is super cool. But like, anyway, that's one of my favorites right now. I'm going through it each day and kind of, you know, as a daily, a daily thing to go through each day. Which is, which has been really cool.
- [66:47]
Steven Pressfield
They give a little pitch for the daily press field.
- [66:49]
Russell Brunson
If you don't pitch it for your.
- [66:51]
Steven Pressfield
For your audience here, this is the newest one. What do I have? I think I have it here somewhere. And this is sort of a book. When people come to me and say how do I write a book? Or how do I do a long form thing, whatever it might be, a screenplay, a startup or whatever, I give them this. This is like a 365 day. I don't know if I'd call it a course. It's not a course, but it's something that you have. You started into it. You'll know what I'm talking about. Something you could put beside your laptop or whatever it is and just pick, take it a day at a time. And it kind of starts for you from day one and kind of works you all the way through a project hitting all of the resistance points, the predictable resistance points, so that like when you start to panic halfway through a project and you oh my God, I wish I had never started this thing. I really go into great detail of what that's all about and how, you know, resistance is trying to fake you out and, and to keep you going. So anyway, I, I highly recommend this new book, the Daily Press Field.
- [68:01]
Russell Brunson
It's really cool. It's like again it's, it's fun because it's such a simple like fast thing. Each day you read one little thing and you keep moving through it, which is, which is awesome. So I guess my last set of questions are what are you working on now? Obviously this is all done. You probably work on the next project. Are you allowed to tell people? Is it top secret right now?
- [68:18]
Steven Pressfield
No, it's not top secret. I actually just finished a book which is a fiction book, a novel, which is a follow up to this book, A Man at Arms that came out about two or three years ago. And so I just finished that. I haven't given it to my agent yet. I'm not sure exactly. I'm fixing a few things in it and then I've started another story. Another story set in another period of time, another fiction book. And just for fun or just to show you that I'm not immune to the stuff I'm talking about, I am riddled with self doubt over this new book. Exactly. Like with the Legend of Agrivance and other things where I say to myself, is anybody going to be interested in this. This is the dumbest idea you've ever come up with yet. You know, et cetera, et cetera. And again, like what I said before about the tree and the meadow with the sun and the shadow, I take that as a good sign. I say, if I've got this big resistance that's trying to get me to not do this book, then there must be something to it. There must be something good here. So I'm sort of forcing myself each day just like, you know, you running or going to the gym or me doing the same thing, saying, I got to. I got to do it. I got to do it. I got it. In fact, I haven't work yet today on it. As soon as we finish Russell, I'm gonna sit down and get on. Even if I only can do an hour.
- [69:46]
Russell Brunson
I was probably resistance fee today. Then you're like, oh, Russell's here. I gotta. I kept you from the goal. Oh, it's so cool. I'm also curious, like, obviously, you've got fiction, nonfiction. Like, those audiences merge across. Are they very separate audiences? Typically. Do they know about each other?
- [70:03]
Steven Pressfield
That's a great question. It's actually one of the big frustrations of my life. The audiences don't cross. And the people that read my fiction, I can't get them to be interested at all in the war of art. And the people who like the war of art, I can't get them to read my fiction. And I'm actually. I've just. I've given up. You know, there are two completely different audiences, and it's very frustrating to me.
- [70:26]
Russell Brunson
Yeah.
- [70:27]
Steven Pressfield
But I'm glad I have audiences at all.
- [70:29]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, it's been fun. I'm very much more on the war bar. Not that south stuff, but my wife and I rewatched Bagger. We watched Bagger Vance like, a decade ago, before I was familiar with who you were or anything. So I rewatched it. The day that I actually sent you a message the first time, I was like, I didn't watch this. My wife and I watched it that night. And now I'm actually reading the book version because I want to.
- [70:48]
Steven Pressfield
Just.
- [70:48]
Russell Brunson
Because I want to understand you and your writing style different. And so it's been fun because you write. I don't know, you write differently. And it's such a. It's just fascinating. And I'm trying to learn your style. Right. And understand your style writing. So it's been fun going through Bagger Vance, and then you. You sold me. I was gonna. That's why Ash? I'm gonna pick one of the. The next ones to go with deep into. So you said the. The Gates of Fire is the next best one, right? Yeah.
- [71:08]
Steven Pressfield
Read Gates of Fire next. Yeah.
- [71:10]
Russell Brunson
Okay. So I'm gonna be your crossover. I'm gonna get.
- [71:11]
Steven Pressfield
By the way, to anybody listening, the book of Bagger Vans is a lot better than the movie.
- [71:17]
Russell Brunson
So it's interesting because, like, there. There are parts in the movie bag events when, like, I think was when Will Smith goes and he does his lines where he's. He shifts over, he's like, giving really good feedback and direction. That felt like you. And I was like, he's delivering those lines. I'm assuming those are closer from the book versus the other part. I'm sure Hollywood does their thing.
- [71:39]
Steven Pressfield
Yeah.
- [71:39]
Russell Brunson
Well, this has been so fun for me. I'm really grateful for this. Parshleaks is gonna help me as I'm into my new book and working through it just to keep these principles in mind, but I think also for our audience, who everyone here is creators, they're creating different things. And it's been so valuable to me to be able to. To put a name to the things that's holding me back from having success and moving forward, like calling it resistance and being aware of it and then figure out ways to overcome it are so powerful. And I'm just grateful for you and your body of work you've created. That help is helping me now. And hopefully I can keep all my people, my audience, getting them more addicted because I think it'll help them all create more. And that's what the world needs, is a whole bunch of creators who are trying to change the world in their own little way. And I think that you're helping so many people like me, and again, most of the people in my world who have read the War of Art, like, they're all obsessed with you. And I'm trying to get everyone else obsessed with you as well. So I appreciate you jumping on to hang out with the entrepreneurs over here and talking about this kind of stuff.
- [72:33]
Steven Pressfield
So thanks for having me, Russell. Thanks for inviting me. It's a kick for me to talk to entrepreneurs rather than writers and artists and stuff like that, because it's the same thing. The same principles apply, and the same resistance comes up, which I never even realized when I first started. I thought, this is only writers who go through this. And it was sort of amazing to me to see that, you know, people starting businesses, of course they go through it. It's exactly the same thing. So, anyway, thanks for having me. And if you want to do this again sometime, I'm delighted to do it.
- [73:04]
Russell Brunson
That's awesome. I appreciate you and everyone who's listening right now. Make sure you go buy War of Art initially. Start there, and then go through all the rest of them with me. And then if you want to hear Stephen's entire life, the government cheese book, that was really fun. And I wasn't. I didn't know that book, what it was about at all. You just had mentioned that it was new. And so I tried to get the whole thing done before, and it was so fun just to see your life and actually to see these principles. You know, you can read the book War of Art and you understand the principles. You see it in your life, and it's just fascinating to see on your journey how it affected you and how you overcame it, and then all the different pieces. And then I look at just the fact that, you know, I think most people would look at this body of work and think, okay, he started when he was 15 years old, and that's how he craved this much. But understanding that legend, bag of Vance came out in your 50s, and then from there, this is like, what's came from on the backside. That is really. It's really impressive and really amazing. So you should give everybody motivation. Like, wow, what's possible? What can you create no matter where you are in the. In the journey? So thank you for being just a great model of success and doing this stuff and being a creator and letting resistance win. And I'm just super grateful for you and taking the time today to hang out with me, so.
- [74:10]
Steven Pressfield
All right. Thanks a lot, Russell.
- [74:11]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, thank you. We'll talk to you soon.
- [74:12]
Steven Pressfield
Go out and buy a potato can tomorrow.
- [74:15]
Russell Brunson
Done. How about this? I'll give you a potato gun, you give me your old typewriter. We'll trade.
- [74:20]
Steven Pressfield
We'll talk about that later.
- [74:23]
Russell Brunson
Awesome. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you.
- [74:25]
Steven Pressfield
Thanks, Russell.