Do the Work by Steven Pressfield - book of the week
📖Books
Two weeks ago I posted about Al’s Meeting Manifesto and this week I’ll continue with the manifestos from The Domino Project and this time around is a short book by Steven Pressfield about doing the actual work.
Consciously fight the resistance and do the work!
The “Lizard brain”, the resistance inside of yourself doesn’t want you to do great work. It tells you that you shouldn’t try because you might fail… Acknowledge it, fight it and do the work!
Here are some quotes I found refreshing and interesting the haven’t been covered before on my blog:
“When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.”
That’s it. We have to conquer the fear and only then we’ll find the passion that will serve us as additional power to pursue our true calling.
“The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are.”
Over the years I found it so true. I’ve seen it in my friends, colleagues and even closer family. The ones closest to us don’t have the same point of view that we have and they strive to keep us at their point of view. Their business is to keep us as they see us and they sincerely believe that’s where we should be. They don’t see the inner us who wants to be unleashed and be just better and larger than life. We must love our friends and family but think of ourselves in pursuing our dreams and doing our work.
“I like the idea of stubbornness because it’s less lofty than “tenacity” or “perseverance.” We don’t have to be heroes to be stubborn. We can just be pains in the butt.”
I used to tell people that perseverance is key. Now I like Steve’s stubbornness better. That’s what exactly we should be doing. We should be painstakingly moving forward and think of it not as as an act of heroism but as a service to ourselves. We are supposed to be stubborn and keep on keeping on.
“The more you know… the less you know.”
When I heard that quote I thought: “Yeah, cool, deep, whatever”. Now I know for a fact that it’s so true. I’m running my Nozbe business more than four years now and the amount of work it needs just keeps piling up. The more we’ve achieved, the more work we have and the more there is to achieve. That’s why Steve’s book so resonated with me.
“Resistance aims to kill”
Resistance wants to kill our passion and our drive to do great work. Seth Godin says it should actually indicate you where you should go. The more resistance you feel towards doing something should mean… that’s exactly what you should do.
How do you fight resistance? How do you do your great work? What tricks do you have up your sleeve?