Quote

When we are succeeding - that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level - that's when panic strikes. When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.

Steven Pressfield

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Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Level
Planes
Evolving
Higher
Evolve
Advancing
Levels
Overcome
Threshold
Doubt
Strikes
Begun
Means
Overcoming
Plane
Poised
Experience
Cross
Craft
Doorstep
Self
Crosses
Panic
Sabotage
Mean
Succeed
Crafts
Succeeding

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Start before you’re ready.
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Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.
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When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.
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The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.
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The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.
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Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.
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I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.
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Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
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When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us... Ideas come. Insights accrete.
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Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.
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In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.
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Traditional publishers will be dominant, and they should be because they really do assure quality. But eBooks, which are huge already, are going to eclipse everything. They will save traditional publishing the way DVDs saved movie studios (for a while) and they'll greatly expand the number of readers.
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It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
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When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
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I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.
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The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.
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The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.
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A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.
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Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we’re thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don’t show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin’, no matter what.
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The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.
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