Join me as I revisit Steven Pressfield's insightful book, "The War of Art," spurred by author Judi Holler's recommendation in a recent conversation with her. In this episode, I delve into the profound lessons within Pressfield's work, unraveling the subtle intricacies of resistance that silently weave through our lives.
As I navigate the pages of "The War of Art," we shine a light on the often overlooked adversaries of distractions, self-doubt, and fear that persistently challenge our pursuit of change and creative endeavors. Drawing from my personal experiences and pivotal decisions, hidden paths come into sharp focus, creating opportunities for transformative moments.
With the impending release of my book, "The Reset Button," this discussion takes on a heightened sense of personal connection. Together, we explore the transformative power inherent in facing fear and pushing beyond the boundaries of comfort. This episode extends an invitation to listeners to join me in recognizing the unseen barriers that may be impeding their progress and finding the courage to make profound changes aligned with their deepest passions.
Join me as I revisit Steven Pressfield's insightful book, "The War of Art," spurred by author Judi Holler's recommendation in a recent conversation with her. In this episode, I delve into the profound lessons within Pressfield's work, unraveling the subtle intricacies of resistance that silently weave through our lives.
As I navigate the pages of "The War of Art," we shine a light on the often overlooked adversaries of distractions, self-doubt, and fear that persistently challenge our pursuit of change and creative endeavors. Drawing from my personal experiences and pivotal decisions, hidden paths come into sharp focus, creating opportunities for transformative moments.
With the impending release of my book, "The Reset Button," this discussion takes on a heightened sense of personal connection. Together, we explore the transformative power inherent in facing fear and pushing beyond the boundaries of comfort. This episode extends an invitation to listeners to join me in recognizing the unseen barriers that may be impeding their progress and finding the courage to make profound changes aligned with their deepest passions.
Hello and welcome to the Cameo Show. I'm your host, cameo. Today we are going to talk about resistance and how it shows up in our life, sometimes when we don't even recognize it, and how to overcome and get past some of the resistance that we might be feeling. Last week, I had a conversation, a one-on-one conversation, with one of my mentors, judy Holler. She is the author of Fear, is my Homeboy, so she is no stranger to addressing fear. One of the things that she suggested as we wrapped up our call, that I do, and that she was also going to do, is reread the book the War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. I read this book probably last summer of 2023, and I don't really remember it. It's a very quick read, so I'm almost all the way through it already. I definitely recommend picking it up. I'll link it in the show notes for Amazon to make it easy on you. But it's all about breaking through the blocks and winning your inner creative battles. Esquire says right on the cover a vital gem, a kick in the ass. So we all need that every once in a while.
Speaker 1:
Today, I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about some of the content, or at least the principle of this book addressing resistance. This comes on the heels of my newsletter, the Weekly Reset, last week, talking about identifying blind spots. Last week I was a little bit emotional, and when I wrote that newsletter I was thinking about someone I recently found out is making a major change in their life, and it's like a life-altering change, one that changes your relationships with your spouse, your kids, yourself, and it is a change that I myself made 10 years ago, and it was a very difficult decision for me to make. And so it made me emotional thinking about this person making this change in their life, knowing that it's necessary if they want to really start leaning into who they are and making things better, whatever that means to them in their world. So I'm writing this newsletter, I'm kind of emotional about it, and it makes me start to think about the idea that 10 years ago, this change was a blind spot for me. It was something that I didn't even realize. It was an option for me to do and it was something that was seemingly irresponsible for many people from the outside to look into my situation and see me do. And this isn't the I stopped drinking decision. This is a different decision, and so it made me start thinking like that was a complete blind spot for me. Then, 10 years later, it's been absolutely life changing and necessary for a lot of the things that I've been able to accomplish and implement into my life over the last decade. So what are my blind spots now? What are the areas where I just don't even see roadblocks, where I just don't even see things that are holding me back or keeping me from making more meaningful change in my life that could next level everything? And so this conversation with Judy, this book suggestion, was very timely because I was kind of already feeling and living in that space of exploring that.
Speaker 1:
So in Steven's book the War of Art, he talks about resistance and he gives examples of how resistance manifests itself in our daily lives. Again, we don't even necessarily recognize it or tie it to resistance or blind spots. It's just something that we feel and experience and maybe can't put our finger on. Those are things like distractions, distractions are. For me it was alcohol, it's being busy, you know, wearing busyness as a badge of honor, not necessarily because these things are meaningful or important to us, but because we feel like we have to do them. We have to run, run, run, run, run, fill up all of our time.
Speaker 1:
Resistance shows up as self-doubt, which, if you're a listener, you have heard many high achievers talk about their own self-doubt and the tenacity it takes to overcome that. It shows up in our life as fear, as Judy wrote an entire book about Percrastination. The resistance shows up in all of these different ways that are just a part of our daily life. They're just things that we experience literally from minute to minute, hour to hour in our daily activity. I love this one quote from the book where he says the more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it, and I like that so much because I feel very connected to it. I feel like the things that we fear the most, the things that we want to do the most, are the things that we need to lean into, and they are the areas where resistance is showing up the strongest. So fear is resistance.
Speaker 1:
I'm writing this book called the reset button, which I'm sure you've heard me talk about or seen on my social media if you follow me, and the thing that I'm the most afraid of talking about and sharing in that book is the thing that makes my story so impactful. It's the thing that was the catalyst for change in our life and I'm so afraid of talking about it. And that's resistance. And we also look at the things that we love so much, the things that we're passionate about, the things that we feel purpose and find purpose in, and we resist leaning into those things. We find all of the excuses and the distractions and the reasons why not, and that's resistance showing up, and often it's because our ego is jumping in to save us and protect us, because this thing that we love so much, that's so meaningful to us, we identify with and if it's not received well or it doesn't work out, what will we be? How will we feel? And so resistance shows up and it keeps us from doing the thing that we love the most in various different ways, by procrastination or fear, and I thought that that sentence in the book was very, very spot on.
Speaker 1:
So what do we do about it? What do we lean in to doing these things that we fear the most or that we love the most, but we distract ourselves or keep ourselves from pursuing. The strategies that he brings up in the book for overcoming resistance in our day to day life are things that we've talked about on the podcast before, things that you read and see in your Instagram feed, things that are in many other books, and they are discipline, routine, dedication, and one of the things that he talks about in the book is this idea of doing work consistently and we've discussed that too that word consistent because we don't always feel inspired, we don't always feel motivated, but we can chip away at our resistance. We can step into and lean into the things that we love the most by being consistent about how we approach them. So, if it's writing for you, you wake up, you write a little bit every single day. Some of it will be garbage, right, sometimes you may not feel like it, you do it anyway. It might be a holiday, you do it anyway.
Speaker 1:
And actually I saw John Maxwell speak Greg and I did a few years ago, and that was one of the things that he said. He's written who knows how many gazillion books that are amazing. Gazillions, probably probably reaching but several books, and that was what he said. People ask him how do you write so many books? And he said I write every day and they're like every day. And he's like, yes, every day, and they're like well, what about Christmas? And he's like I wake up and I write. What about when you don't feel good? I wake up and I write.
Speaker 1:
So the point being that consistency will beat perfection. It will beat when you feel like it every single time and it will beat resistance If you implement a routine for yourself where you show up and you do a little bit, not start striving for perfect, not striving for done, just striving for doing. You can work around resistance and that also overcomes the idea that maybe I don't feel like it, I'm not inspired and not motivated, you do it anyway. Consistency. The other piece in suggestion that he made in the book for dismantling resistance is and again, I'm not done with the book yet, so I'm sure there's plenty more, but I wanted to talk about it because it's fresh and timely.
Speaker 1:
But is this idea of self-awareness and accountability and having a support system? So you may not wake up and feel like running every day. You may not wake up and feel like completing your training schedule if you're planning to run a marathon, for example, but if you have a support system, you have people who are holding you accountable to that, whether it's people on social media, because you're sharing it and your progress, or someone that you're doing it with, waiting for you to show up to actually go run those miles, having a support system, having an accountability partner and being self-aware enough to say this isn't really about just me, this isn't just about my fear or how I feel right now, or my resistance. This is about doing the thing that I said I was going to do when it was important to me, still doing it when it doesn't feel as important. And that's how we begin to overcome resistance, also breaking down that ego with self-awareness, saying, okay, this is my ego trying to protect me from Not achieving whatever it is that I'm setting out to do and the disappointment that may come with that. And I need to be self-aware and remove myself from my ego and say, ah, if I do or I don't fail, that's okay, I'm just going to pursue what it is that I'm doing. And if I don't do it right or I don't win, or whatever the case may be, I'll learn something and I'm great with that too. So, ego, you can pipe down self-awareness.
Speaker 1:
I know from reading the book before I remember he discusses this idea of turning pro and the mindset shift it requires to become Focused and productive enough to be a pro at what you're doing. Go back in the catalog of the cameo show. We have professional athletes, professional musicians, who talk about exactly that, this mindset shift of like this is what I'm doing and this is what it requires of Me. I believe it was our friend, dave Prater, who is the vice president of Supercross, who said I need to ask myself and I'm paraphrasing, so I'm not quoting Dave exactly here but I need to ask myself what does it look like to show up in the way that's required to fulfill that position? That's, if I remember correctly, that's where Steven Pressfield is going. Again, I have to finish the book. You should pick it up and read it as well, establishing your goals by viewing it in that way. What does it look like when it's done? What is it, what is required of me To show up in that way, getting into a routine, doing it when you don't feel like it anyway, separating yourself from your ego and being self-aware enough to recognize that. Those are all ways that you can move past resistance.
Speaker 1:
And the last thing that I will leave you with and I I ask these questions in my newsletter is Where's resistance showing up in your life. What is keeping you from living your best life or showing up as the best version of you? And the examples I gave in my newsletter are maybe it's not Picking a goal. Maybe it's a toxic relationship that's keeping you from living a better version of yourself. Maybe it's a career that you Feel tied to because you don't feel like there's any other option and you, you need money to survive, so you haven't given yourself permission to maybe think of things in other ways. Maybe it is alcohol. For me, it was alcohol in a lot of ways that was distracting me and keeping me from setting any goals, because I could just make excuse after excuse after excuse to never even get Started.
Speaker 1:
The other question that I asked in my newsletter after you kind of identify what it is, I Then what's the? Why Do you feel unworthy? Do you feel overwhelmed? What is the feeling that you are feeling inside of your body that's keeping you from making those changes? And now, if you can give it a name resistance, fear is resistance, procrastination is resistance, all of those things I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. If you can give it A name and you can remove it from yourself and separate yourself from it, you can more easily identify that that's where it is.
Speaker 1:
So Ask yourselves those questions so you can see where it's showing up in your life. And it may be in areas that you don't even suspect. But leave nothing off the table. So even if it feels hard to get out a pen and pad and make a list of where you think Resistance might be showing up in your life, even if it feels hard to write down a name of someone who maybe isn't Helping you live the life that you want to and you're resistant to ending that friendship, for example, write it down anyway. Write it down, especially when it feels hard, so that you can really get to the root of where the resistance is showing up in your life. And I've been really ruminating over that over the last week or two. That's why I sent it out in the newsletter. That's probably why the universe brought that into the conversation with Judy and I and that's how this book ended up back in my hand. So that's the gist of the book the idea. I'm probably not, I'm not, probably, I'm definitely not doing it justice and never will Read the book.
Speaker 1:
Listen to it on audiobook. If you're looking at the video, you can see like the pages are little. They're not. It's not a Super crazy long, in-depth read that's scary and overwhelming. So don't be resistant to it.
Speaker 1:
See what I did there and go ahead and pick it up so you can begin Taking on the things in your life and addressing the things in your life that are most meaningful to you without any resistance, because you'll have the tools to know how resistance is showing up in your life in the first place. Thanks so much for listening. I Will link the book in the notes below so you have easy access to it. It'll be there in a day if you're an Amazon or Amazon or we're gonna go with that, and I, as always, appreciate that you're here and part of the cameo show community. All of my social media is also linked below. Please do share with a friend if you find this to be helpful in your life each week and I hope to hear from some of you on this book and if you pick it up and read it, what your thoughts are and maybe where you discovered resistance was showing up for you that you Didn't anticipate you.