Resistance Always Lies
Here’s another way we can use our own Resistance, jiu-jitsu style, and turn it in our favor.
Remember, Resistance is always lying. Every statement it presents to us (I’m talking about the voice we hear in our heads) is the diametric opposite of truth.
If we hear, “You’re not good enough to write this book (or make this movie or start this business),” it’s almost dead-certain that we are.
This principle applies to ALL FIELDS, including those far apart from the arts.
If the voice of our Resistance tells us as we’re signing up for the marathon or the Spartan Race, “You’re not an athlete! Who are you kidding, thinking you can do anything except embarrass yourself?” … it’s almost a lock that we ARE an athlete (or can train ourself to become one.)
Spies and intelligence agents are taught three rules if they’re captured by an enemy:
- Admit nothing.
- Deny everything.
- Counter-accuse.
That’s Resistance’s playbook too. It loves to counter-accuse, i.e. tell us the exact opposite of what’s true.
“You’re not a filmmaker.”
“You have no talent.”
“You can’t stay the course.”
The voice of Resistance in our heads will single out our hidden or as-yet-unrealized strengths and present the opposite as if it were true. It will tell us we’re weak, we’re ungifted, we don’t dare tackle the dreams we feel inside ourselves.
Dismiss this.
Remember: Resistance is ALWAYS lying and always full of shit.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
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Exactly! And always right on cue
You are the best… I can not say anything else. You help me all the time with your work. Thank you dear teacher
Love this read in the morning. Keep it coming. “Resistance” is my Jon Gordon word for 2025
The winter sun is struggling up to the horizon. There’s a fiery red glow to precede it. Then the glow fades to orange before the bright stab of the sun appearing through the bare trees like a signale flare. Now it is officialy DAY. What yesterday was, what it contained, can be crossed off the calendar. Writing Wednesday, new insights, a new opportunity to look at what I DO, and HOW I go about it. This is my morning Meditation. Thanks, Steve!
Thank you so much dear Steve!
Counter-accuse, wow, I have seen that in all its glory for years. Resistance is also people of counter-accusation, uneducated people, wrongly raised people like O’ Hara from Gone With the Wind. People who can feel their energies, but their insticts of survival prevailed when they were downgraded by outside forces (in O’Hara’s case her mother and her environment) and they seek only instict-satisfaction and not wise paths (a Platonic or Aristotelian one perhaps, but mostly their own, a satisfaction from higher in terms of wisdom, but be careful, not authoritarian causes). A satisfaction that is mehr als “I want my candies and you are an obstacle”. Not only O Hara -also the kids in the villa who desired war with laugh, not tears in their eyes. It is impressive: they can’t see through you, they are total animals. We are animals UNLESS we do something. And I mean SOMETHING. A dear school friend of mine, I remembered when there was tention between Greece and Turkey in about 1996 or so. And he came to my home jumping with a kind of preverse happiness, saying “we ‘re going to war!” Today he’s into drugs after years in a passionate religious path. In the name of.
Truth. Gosh, Steve, truth. We don’t say truth to ourselves. BUT I now believe we hide the truth by not talking to ourselves on most occasions, it’s that simple. Routine. Automated animalistic responses. Even the more knowledgable of us can fall on that trap. You know who the man of truth may be? The one who does something that is lower of their standards, but is always, every day it happens, vigorous to actually say to his head: “I failed. I ruined my day. I have all those great priorities and I only chose to do (this).” If we don’t say it the moment we must, then that “thing” hides in our mind, in the dark depths where the Gremlins (always speaking symbolically) live. It’s not so much that we say lies to our self -the mind won’t bother lying to it, it takes hard work to form any idea. It’s just boredom, from my experience, ignorance, the failure to say the truth. Bored enough to say the truth to the brain. Is boredome the source of our destruction? Bored are those failures who kill children. Bored is me when I don’t do what i always know is best. Bored is the human who blames. Me when I blame. All bored to think the truth.
So let’s be truthFULL to our selves. But if we do today, tomorrow we will forget to do itagain. It takes, I read,100 to 150 cycles of learning > implementing > forgetting > relearning a thing before we master, we internalize it. But like you said: this very second is the 1st of the 150.
Your message, so true and perfect it is the first thing I read today. After finishing an outline yesterday, my first real outline for a feature I can say I needed to see your message right now. Thank you 🙏 . Resist the resistance
Despite a head full of shit, I typed chapter eleven yesterday. I chose to listen to your wisdom. If it’s hard, it’s worth it. Thank you.💗
Yes, thank you, and the humming of one of those old black spirituals.
Your words are so helpful. I quote them in my head like a mantra. They get me through.
I just bought your book, The Daily Pressfield. I cried when I opened it. The drawings are so clever, the packaging so thoughtful. It was as if the impact your advice was about to have on me was the gift I was unwrapping.
I glance at your book on my shelf and look forward to the next discovery I will make through it—the next portal that will open.
Thank you.
Thank you, Steven.
I’ve been reading your Wednesday comments and encouragements to keep fighting up the aritistic hill. I had almost given up on writing. But then, you kept coming back again, again, and again to poke at my muse, my journey.
I wrote these words on my refreshed website thinking about you: Why I Write
“I never let the muse get my full attention, even though I kept authoring poems and short stories, primarily for my family or wife. I always wrote my own Christmas or Birthday cards, a bespoke practice. It was my rebellious creative outlet in an otherwise normal day-in, day-out life. But it was a safe place to exist.
The funny thing is that God has perfect timing and dangles alternative paths for humans to consider. These are not safe places to exist. I do not know if we have free will or not, but I do know that we are all given unique gifts. If we do not use those gifts, they die off, and we are left to wonder the worst question of all time: ” What if?””
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All I can think to express or write to you is simple, thank you.