Contrary to the title, it’s not just for artists. It’s for anyone that wants to make a good life for themselves and their families.

It’s a tribute to persistence and industry, and some of its core messages are…

Don’t just wander through life from pillar to post. Find something that matters to you and pursue it passionately.

Don’t whine about how much hard work it takes to succeed. Learn to love the work and despise failure and quitting, instead.

Don’t let your feelings dictate your actions. What you want is rarely what you need, and you can create the right feelings by taking the right actions.

Don’t wait for inspiration. That’s how amateurs stay amateurs. Do the work, grind it out, and eventually you’ll get inspired.

These bits of advice are all well and good, but what really makes it stand out among the many other books that say many of the same things is it doesn’t just tell us what we “should” be doing to succeed, which is pretty commonsensical, really, but it goes deeper, and tries to get at WHY we find it so hard.

The biggest obstacle in our way, Pressfield says, is something he calls “Resistance,” which is the central theme of the book.

He defines Resistance as a mysterious force within us that works to sabotage our dreams and abilities and prevent us from creating the life that we really want.

Pressfield points out that most of us have two lives, the life we live, and the unlived life within us, and Resistance’s sole mission is to ensure that we never realize that unlived life. That we remain small, weak, and unhappy.

That’s why Resistance resists any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. It will tell us anything to keep us from doing any of those things. It will feed us all kinds of enticing excuses, justifications, and bargains. You know...we’re too tired right now...we can just do it later...we’ve been working hard enough or maybe even too hard...why not start next week...does it really matter?...is it really that important?

We’ve all been there, and I think Pressfield is right that this alone is one of the biggest barriers that we face in creating the type of life that we want.

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