The Resistance

The Resistance is any act that favors immediate gratification in rejection of long-term growth, health, or integrity. It’s procrastination in its true form.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call of action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance.

When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.

Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.

Turning Pro

The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. The amateur does it until he gets it right. The professional does it until he can’t get it wrong.

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham 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.”

The pro:

The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished. The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

When people say an artist has a thick skin, what they mean is not that the person is dense or numb, but that he has seated his professional consciousness in a place other than his personal ego.

The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself 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.

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page.

Consider yourself a “Myself, Inc.” Be a corporation. Have Monday morning assignment meetings, with yourself.

The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.

Beyond Resistance

What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die, Tom Laughlin contends, is that the seat of our consciousness shifts.

It moves from the Ego to the Self. Tom pushes people to return to what they want to do deep down. Why do people get back to what they really want to do like writing a book, or knocking things off their bucket list, As a result, cancer goes into remission; people recover.

When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.

Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? If you do, that’s your territory. Your center.