Who: Steven Pressfield

• Born in 1943 – age 78
• Port of Spain, Trinidad
• Graduate of Duke University, class of 1965
• Served in the Marine Corps in 1966
• In 1966, he joined the Marine Corps.
• Historical novel writer and author.
  Pressfield has authored 20 fiction and non-fiction books and various Hollywood screenplays.

  “Pressfield’s first book, The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was loosely based on the Bhagavad Gita, was published in 1995, and was made into a 2000 film of the same name.” [1]

  “His second novel, Gates of Fire (1998), is about the Spartans and the battle at Thermopylae. It is taught at the U.S. Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico. [2]

  “Pressfield was an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout, attendant in a mental hospital, fruit-picker in Washington state, and screenwriter. His struggles to make a living as an author, including the period when he was homeless and living out of the back of his car, are detailed in his 2002 book The War of Art.” [2]

• His blog is called, “Writing Wednesdays” [3]
• “Resistance:” In a book written by Steven Pressfield titled “The War of Art,” Pressfield attempts to identify a number of factors that mark “resistance.”   He is not speaking of war, but of human reluctance in life and living.  The full title is, “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”He is addressing resistance to most anything . . . . writing that book, painting that picture, launching an enterprise, beginning a diet, working on your physical fitness, beginning an education, running for office, overcoming an addiction, et al.

  Sunni Brown, known for these unique works of art (Infodoodling and Visual Thinking), drew this picture of a number of the elements of resistance that were identified by Pressfield. . . . . . .  [1]

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Quotes: (from “Resistance”) [4]

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

“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.”

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.”

“Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

“Most of us have two lives.  the life we live, and the unlived life within us.  Between the two stands Resistance. . . . Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture?  then you know what Resistance is. . . . . Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. . . . . It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.”

“If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.”

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