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?"
Hell yeah
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.
Just now realized the voice of Resistance can be a person outside of ourselves, too. A person with an actual voice. This post will help me steady myself against the latest, so thank you.
On a lighter note, and in the “you ARE an athlete” vein, I was at a sporting goods store last weekend looking for a weighted vest. In the process of referring me from one store employee to another there was an announcement over the PA system: “Help needed for an athlete in aisle (whatever).” And I thought, “Athlete! I like it!” I felt like Goldie in Back to the Future, sweeping the floor but dreaming of becoming the mayor of Hill Valley 🙂
Maureen,
I am always, always, always recruiting for our race. When I approach someone about the event, I usually start with, “You’re obviously an athlete…” or “I can see you’re an athlete..”
I am sincere, and no matter how many components make up a person–at that moment I am talking to the athlete in them. Everyone responds like you just shared. There is a small, but noticeable straightening–a shoulders back/chest out kind of ‘you’re right, I am an athlete’ change in their posture. Like I reminded them of who they are, and they began to immediately ‘act is out’.
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the weighted vest! Michael Easter writes about it in “Comfort Crisis”.
Merry Christmas!
bsn
So interesting, Brian! Thanks for the validation!
It occurs to me the next Writing Wednesday is on December 25th, so I want to offer preemptive holiday greetings to everyone who makes this space such a delight. I still think it’s the most nurturing of anything online, and I suddenly have so much hope for 2025 based on the little epiphany I just shared (which, granted, Steve has probably been hammering on forever but for some reason it got through this time).
Hahahaha! I love this!
Love this. Here to ask for Daily Pressfield: Year 2: The Never Ending War on Resistance!
I’ve spent some time on Substack this past couple of years. It is where all the non-captured journalists have gone. There is a like button that I wish this site had. I nod my head at so many comments here, but do not always respond/reply to the post. I think this would be both helpful, maybe encourage a bit more interaction from everyone, and provide some feedback to the writers.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. Happy New Year.
bsn
I wonder how many of us have migrated to Substack. I’m on there, too (https://rritenbaugh.substack.com), and I think I’ve seen a few of our fellow Pressfield fans over there.
I’ll check you out there! Thanks for the heads up.
bsn
I crumbled to resistance yesterday. I didn’t go to an event that I had wanted to go to because I was “too tired” to get ready, and I fought with myself for over 3 hours about it. I could have made the decision to not go and then spent the 3 hours doing the creative thing I wanted to do. Or I could have decided to go and enjoy the social interaction, which seems to help my creative process. Instead, I decided to be miserable! I even asked myself “is this Resistance?” Yes it was and it gets a capital “R” because it’s a big bully! Resistance stomps around in my mind throwing out lies about my writing and life. Thank you for the idea of “counter accuse”! Next time, Resistance, next time, I’m coming for YOU! Thank you so much Steven.
Happy Holidays to all.
Spending time here instead of working = Resistance?
The War of Art taught me to never quit any worthy undertaking until I reach “The End”.
Thank you, Steven.
Two years ago, scared shitless, I risked my family’s financial future by striking out on my own and building a financial services company after 18 mostly cushy years at a major Wall Street firm. Resistance was screaming, “You dumbass! You’ll regret this! You KNOW you can’t do this.” even as I faxed in my resignation to a highly litigious employer. I hit send on the machine despite her cursings (you see, faxing gives you a headstart and more time to run out the door before my old company sends their stormtroopers after you–they don’t know where their fax machine is either!).
Two years later, happier than I’ve ever been professionally in my entire life, I’ve ensured my family’s future as OURS, and ours alone…and tripled the value of my 20 years of labor in just two years. 0% owned by me to 100% owned by me. That bitch resistance sits on the end of my big fancy desk with arms folded and eyes squinted cursing me up and down with her eyes, yet she can’t say a damned thing about me professionally. I’m not dumb enough to think she’s muted forever. And I already hear her beginning to make fun of my poor eating, drinking, and exercise habits that have changed majorly in my overhaul of my physical health.
Your body of work replenishes my reserves of belief in myself, so thank you as I haven’t thanked you properly for your walk-on, bit-part role in my life. Cheers!
P.S. I found your work over a decade or so ago from my professional mentor, Nick Murray. Thank goodness, he found you whenever and however he did!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
Wow. Justin! What a burst of “this stuff really works,” my favorite kind of gift. Thank you!
Thank you, Maureen, Merry Christmas! (Loved your Mayor Goldie comment 😉
As always, a great short read. And I love all the comments—although I didn’t quite get the diesel one. It’s so great to feel the community of everyone’s resistance to Resistance!
This is such a powerful perspective! The idea that Resistance is always lying and presenting the opposite of truth really flips the script on self-doubt. It’s fascinating how the voice of resistance can often target our deepest ambitions and strengths, trying to convince us we’re not capable. But as you say, if it’s telling us we can’t do something, it’s probably a sign we can — or at least we should give it a shot. Embracing this mindset is like flipping the switch from fear to action. Every time that voice creeps in, it’s a clue that we’re on the right path. Thanks for sharing this!
Your dedication and effort are nothing short of amazing! The way you pour yourself into everything you do inspires everyone around you.
Keep being awesome—you’ve got this!
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“**Resistance Always Lies**” suggests that resistance or opposition often stems from fear, doubt, or reluctance to change. It implies that growth, progress, and success are often found by embracing challenges rather than avoiding them. Overcoming resistance can lead to new opportunities and personal transformation.