Modern WisdomHow To Turn Pro | Steven Pressfield | Modern Wisdom Podcast 220
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 24,093 words- 0:00 – 15:00
A lot of the…
- SPSteven Pressfield
A lot of the modern maladies that we all suffer from, anxiety, depression, isolation, et cetera, et cetera, that we blame ourselves for, right? We- we put a judgment on ourselves. We say that, you know, either we're weak or we're... There's something wrong with us or we're sick or something like that. I think a lot of those problems are really just about the difference between being an amateur and being a pro, and just having... Flipping that switch in our mind. And, uh, the pro is hard on themselves. Not down on themselves, but hard on themselves, and an amateur is usually pretty easy on themselves. The professional's world is a lot more rigorous mentally.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by Steven Pressfield. Steven, welcome to the show.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Great to have- to be here, Chris. Thanks for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolute pleasure to have you on. So we'll have some people listening whose lives could be changed forever by turning pro. Can we make that happen within the next hour, do you think?
- SPSteven Pressfield
We'll give it our best shot here. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) That would be a pleasure. So as a tiny bit of background, I read both The War of Art and Turning Pro this year, and they had a very profound impact on how I view the things that I do in my life. And I wanted to kind of gift the audience hopefully with the same insights that your book gave me. Uh, so first off, why did you write Turning Pro?
- SPSteven Pressfield
Um, you know, it was just a- a follow up to The War of Art because I... You know, in The War of Art there is a section, as you know, called Turning Pro. It's the middle section. But I felt like, uh, I hadn't really said everything that I wanted to say and that it needed, you know, a little amplification, so, um, you know? So I just kind of amplified it a little bit.
- CWChris Williamson
It's another sequel, right?
- SPSteven Pressfield
But let me ask you something, Chris, before we even start. How does, uh, the concept of- of resistance in The War of Art, how does that- how does that affect what- what you do? Where did it, uh, impact your life?
- CWChris Williamson
So resistance, thankfully, in podcasting is not as much of a burden to bear. Reason being that you naturally are on this treadmill with the other person. You have this external accountability, right? So I c-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... I can't just stop this conversation if resistance arises-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... because you're there and you can't stop this conversation 'cause I'm here and I'm here to help you. I'll ask you a question, you'll help me. So resistance to me, um, manifests much more when I'm writing newsletters, which again-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
... your experience is writing book, sitting down, blank page in front of you-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you struggle. Um, but it's interesting to- for me to have that dichotomy, and there may be people listening as well, for whom they have resistance that manifests very strongly in certain areas of their life and then doesn't in others. And I certainly think-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... things that you can do with other people, uh, team sports. Um, you know, you turn up to training for rugby and the resistance kind of doesn't really seem to be there. You turn up to do a solo session in the gym and you're just swimming in resistance, right? So that's something-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
That was an insight that I gained this year.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh-huh. Okay, great.
- CWChris Williamson
So yeah, that was something that I saw. I absolutely adored the idea of Turning Pro. So how do we define an amateur? Let's start, before we even get into professionals, how do we define an amateur?
- SPSteven Pressfield
One of the ways, I think, is an amateur as a- um, as a- as a rule, is kind of a weekend warrior. And, uh, an amateur, when they hit, uh, adversity, are going to- going to quit, you know? Um, that's probably the- the ultimate sign. And I lived for years as an amateur, you know? And dropping a ball or fumbling the ball on the one-yard line, to use an American football analogy, that kind of thing, being unable to finish something. Whenever adversity would- would strike, I would cave into it. Um, and, uh, an amateur... There are many other aspects of an amateur, but an amateur usually does a lot of talking about what they're going to do, whereas the professional usually just shuts up and does the work. Um, and, uh, I think, uh, a lot of the modern maladies that we all suffer from, anxiety, depression, isolation, et cetera, et cetera, that we- we blame ourselves for, right? We- we put a judgment on ourselves. We say that, you know, either we're weak or we're, you know... There's something wrong with us or we sick or s- or that we're sick or something like that. We have some neurotic, you know, issue, whatever it is. I think a lot of those problems are really just about the difference between being an amateur and being a pro and just having... You know, flipping that switch in our mind. And, uh, you know, we'll get into this a lot, I'm sure, but a pro is- is, um, hard on themselves, you know? Not really- not down on themselves, but hard on themselves. Um, and an amateur is usually pretty easy on themselves. Um, the pr- the professional's world is a lot more rigorous mentally and- and emotionally, psychologically.
- CWChris Williamson
How did being an amateur, before you took the- the step to becoming pro... You say you've got two stages to your life, before and after you turned pro. How did the amateur lifestyle manifest for you before you made that change?
- SPSteven Pressfield
Kind of like what I was just- just talking about, Chris. Like, uh, um, my life was pretty chaotic, you know? Not- not necessarily in a bad sense. I mean, there was a lot of kind of adventure going on, a lot of drama and stuff like that. And, uh, I met a lot of people that turned out to be (laughs) interesting people and went with a lot of places that turned out to be interesting places, but I wasn't getting anything done and- and I was feeling worse and worse and worse about it. And in general, I was sort of...... i- in one form or another, running away from my, my real work, my real calling, in, you know, running away physically, going to different places, and running away, you know, in different activities that were, um, what I call in t- the book shadow activities, not the real activities. They were close to them, but they were not really them. Um, and at the moment that, uh, you know, I finally did (laughs) turn pro, I really just decided, look, th- this is my calling, this is what I wanna do, which is writing. And I just, I have to organize my life in such a way that I can do it. I can't allow chaos to dominate everything and, and my, you know, um, and, and my resistance be defeating me every mo- every morning, you know, procrastination and all that kind of stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
So you mentioned there one of the, the key points that kind of self-identifies an amateur, which is these shadow activities or even shadow careers. How can someone work out if they're going through with a shadow activity or a shadow career?
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh, it's a... Well, let me see if I can define it first, Chris, and then, um, c- it's all obviously nobody can make that judgment except the person themselves. And it's very, very hard a lot of times, but like, uh, I worked in the movie business in, in LA as a screenwriter for, you know, about 10 years or so, 10 or 12 years, and one of the phenomenons that you see there, phenomenon that you see there a lot is there's such a thing as entertainment lawyers. You know, there are entire law firms that are about negotiating deals, and if you're an actor, if you're a director, if you're a writer, you have an entertainment lawyer. And, uh, the entertainment lawyer, you know, uh, sometimes will actually find work for you and cer- certainly will negotiate all the deals for you. And it's sort of a commonplace there that a lot of entertainment lawyers wanna be writers or wanna be producers. And I think that, uh, and I've talked to people and they admit it, they laugh and they admit it, that they sort of chose being a lawyer because it was kind of adjacent to the creative field. You know, they didn't chose to be, like, oil and gas lawyers or corporate lawyers. They chose to be entertainment lawyers. And, uh, I think this applies sometimes to agents as well. They're sort of in a field that's adjacent to a creative field, but is not really, is not really that field. And, um, I can understand. It makes a lot of sense. You figure, "Well, if I go to law school, I'm gonna have a degree. I'm gonna have something I can fall back on. I'm gonna have an actual, uh, job that pays me, whereas if I just plunge in being a writer or actor or director, God knows what'll happen." Then another, another kind of manifestation of this is, Chris, is, um, this is more... I don't wanna be sexist here, but it's more women that kinda fall into this, and that is to sort of... But men too, so women that... Don't get mad at me. People will be somebody else's assistant. They'll kind of sign up to work for a musician or, uh, a director or a producer or something like that, and what they really wanna do is they really wanna produce themselves or they really wanna be a musician themselves. And so they have this kind of shadow career, and, um, I know that you're doing a thing of six months sober and stuff like that, and I think that, um, a lot of times, addictions are shadow careers. Um, uh, I could get into this in great detail, but I think that a lot of times people will, um... If they get into alcohol, they get into drugs, they get into heroin, they get in- into, you know, all the things you can get into, their life as a d- alcoholic or their life as a, as a drug addict becomes their shadow work of art. And rather than write the book that they were gonna write or, or produce the movie or whatever it is they were gonna do, they create this, their own sort of personality, their own drama. Their own, their life becomes like a m- like a movie. You know, it's, it's got everything, right? It... Sometimes it e- (laughs) you know, it, it even has violence and God knows what else. Um, so I'm probably wandering on too long, but there's also-
- CWChris Williamson
Not at all.
- 15:00 – 30:00
I really loved... There…
- SPSteven Pressfield
that come from that are not as bad, it's a protective thing, are not as bad as really trying to be the artist or to speak of or to follow the, the things that you really wanna f- that you really are interested in, you really do wanna pursue and you're afraid you won't be cool. You're afraid that people will think, you know, "What kind of a, you know, what kind of a guy is this guy interested in this stuff? He should be interested in rugby and that kinda stuff." So, and, and of course, that's, that's part of growing up too, you know. When you're young, peer pressure is tremendous and it, you know, very few people have the guts to, to really be themselves. It only takes, I think, a lot of pain living that artificial self before the moment comes where you finally say, "I just can't do this shit anymore, you know. I've just gotta, I gotta be, you know, I've gotta, I gotta be me," whatever, you know? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I really loved... There was an example you used. I think you used Charlie Sheen as one of the examples. And you said that the addict's life is really boring. Um, from the outside-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... it looks, it looks super colorful. But in reality, it's the same boring excuses, the same boring turning up late to work, the same boring story about how many drugs or whatever it was that you had last night. There's no trajectory, right? It's Groundhog Day over and over. And I'd never-
- SPSteven Pressfield
It is Groundhog Day, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I'd never heard that said about addicts before because you see... And it almost gets romanticized in movies and popular culture as well, you know.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
The addict lifestyle. Rock'n'Rolla, if you've seen that wonderful British film, um, has this almost super romanticized view of how the addict spends their time. He's a dying artist, but he's so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, "Yeah, that, that is true." But it isn't in place of art. It's instead of art. It's not as if you, you can substitute the art for the addiction and it still is beautiful. It's everything that takes up the space of the addiction with none of the beauty.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes. And it's funny that when you turn pro and you start really doing your work, then your life from the outside really does look boring, you know? It's all of a sudden, you know, you're getting up early, you're going to the gym-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SPSteven Pressfield
... you're going to your studio or whatever it is. And somebody looking from the... one of your old buddies that used to know you in your addicted days, you know, they'll say, "What happened to you, man? I mean, you used to be fun."
- CWChris Williamson
So much fun.
- SPSteven Pressfield
"You used to, I could hang out with you. Now, look at you. All you're doing is practicing ballet steps in your studio," or whatever it is. But, um, so it, it is interesting how what we do think is, is, is exciting is really boring as hell, and what we do, what looks to be boring on the outs-, of course, it's not boring. You know, like people used to say to me, I think I even wrote this in Turning Pro, that I used to work in this office here where I am right now, that my desk used to face the other way, facing into that wall. And people would say to me, "Well, you know, don't you wanna have a view outside? How can you, how can you look like that?" But the, but the answer is, "I'm living up here, you know? The world that I'm inhabiting or the world that the artists is habi- inhabiting in their studio may look pretty dumb from the outside, but inside, a lot of stuff is going on." It's, you know, Game of Thrones is going on inside there. So you're... And, and if, and if you're really doing your work, then you are getting traction. You're not just spinning your wheels constantly.
- CWChris Williamson
It feel, you talk a lot about tribes and about how the, uh, social imperative, the, the social influence of other people, um, can cause us to compromise and dilute down our, uh professionality, I suppose, and our, uh, ability to overcome resistance. And it makes total sense with this, right? Like why wouldn't you want to do the thing that everyone else thinks is cool that-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... just looks like so much fun? "Oh, he's leading this life." And that's been turned up to 11 with Instagram and F- Facebook and TikTok and-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... YouTube now.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, people live these meta lives where they exist only to create the content. They go on holiday purely to film the content, to make-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... to put ... Do you know what I mean? This is the, we're going-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... back to this sort of meta life that people have, um, and that happens in, again, small parts for everyone. Um, but I, I really think the bravery to be able to be called boring is a-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... or, or weird or different is a, a powerful mechanism because as my good friend George McGill says, "Ordinary people get ordinary results. Extraordinary people get extraordinary results."
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
The closer that you get to normal, the closer you regress to the mean of the results everyone else gets.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like that's precisely-
- 30:00 – 45:00
Not at all, Steven.…
- SPSteven Pressfield
I was not in con- in touch with, uh, my muse or whatever you wanna say, whatever that inspiration is. I don't know. I'm probably babbling a little bit here, Chris, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Not at all, Steven. I, I absolutely love this and it's so insightful. Um, something that I've just realized there, going back to the addict thing, I wonder whether having multiple projects or having a lot of different...... um, pathways on the go is a form of addiction. So myself and a number of friends I know, um, we rationalize doing lots of things as hedging.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
And we say that by, by having that, I'm spreading risk. I've got multiple streams-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of whatever it might be. But that's just a form of resistance as well. That's just a form of fear from going all in on the one thing-
- SPSteven Pressfield
I think that's absolutely right.
- CWChris Williamson
... that you know you should do.
- SPSteven Pressfield
I would absolutely define it, I would absolutely define it as a form of resistance. And bel- I get a lot of letters from people li- like that, where people will say, "I've got so many ideas, I d- I just don't know which one t- to follow," you know? And it's resistance throwing these shiny objects at us, you know, like, uh, what do they call it? Chaff? Like when a, a missile is trying to track an airplane, the airplane will release this, these, uh, you know, uh, what aluminum foil shiny objects, and the missile doesn't know what to do and it gets lost, right? And I think we will create those shiny objects ourselves to distract ourselves, you know? And I think a lot of times when you read, uh, the biographies or you listen to somebody like a Bob Dylan or somebody like that talking about their life, there was no plan B, you know? That they were, (laughs) they were all in for whatever it was. So, um, yeah, I think if, uh, when I find myself having, like, a bunch of projects, I will really try to sit down and, and whittle those away and just kinda be ruthless in throwing the... uh, it's not so easy to do. It's hard to do. In fact, I'm in a place like that right now, (laughs) where I've got two or three things and I'm not sure which one to go. It's very hard. But I do, I do think that that, the idea of hedging your bets is not such a great idea.
- CWChris Williamson
I think you're correct. And s- you know, to continue to sing Michael Jordan's song, Michael played golf as a way to calm down, but he wasn't trying to be a pro golfer whilst he was trying to be a pro basketballer.
- SPSteven Pressfield
No, that's true. Exactly, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
He was all in on basketball. Uh, hilariously, I didn't know that he'd gone and played baseball, um, which is like just (laughs) such a fun-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But even when he played baseball, he was all in on baseball, you know? He wasn't, "I'll-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... keep one foot in the door with this thing." Like, he was, he was all in. And I, I definitely think that that's one of the more pernicious m- ways that resistance can manifest, because it looks like productivity, it looks like achievement, both internally and externally. And what were we just saying about the way that the tribe and this kind of socialized reward is important? "Oh, Steven-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you've got so many things on the go. Like, you've got three books to be-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... writing and the podcast and you have YouTube and the blah, blah, blah," and you think, again, "What is it? It's boring." Like, it looks from the outside in really exciting and varied, but from the inside out, you're not getting the work done. You're just constantly spinning these plates, desperately trying to-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... stop any of them from falling down.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah. Now, I would, I might disagree with you, Chris, on the Michael Jordan playing baseball thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting.
- SPSteven Pressfield
And of course, we would, we wou- we won't know if until we have him here and he would tell us.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, I'll get him eventually.
- SPSteven Pressfield
But if, if you remember... Now, I've watched this thing, like, five different times, so I was very familiar with The Last Dance. If you remember, his dad died, was murdered right before that. And I think maybe for him, baseball was just sort of a way of taking some time out. 'Cause his dad always wanted him to play baseball, and, and of, of allowing that grief to process itself. 'Cause when the time was right, he went back to basketball, you know? Um, and of course we-
- CWChris Williamson
So was baseball-
- SPSteven Pressfield
We-
- CWChris Williamson
... resistance, do you think, perhaps?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Wow. …
- CWChris Williamson
on YouTube of precisely how Kobe Bryant's physiology worked during the match as his Achilles snapped. Um, and if you have your heel off the ground a little bit, um, and then you push back, what you're doing is you're contracting the muscle whilst the eccentric portion of the movement is happening. And that's one of the real, um, uh, sort of perfect storms for it, that you've got this-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... built-up pressure and then eventually your heel hits the floor and all of that elasticity gets snapped and it, it pulls. 'Cause you can hang a car off your Achilles tendon. But-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Really?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So you can think about how much force is going through it, but it's more to do with that, that snapping, that jerking motion-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Ah. Aha.
- CWChris Williamson
... that comes from the plyometric. Um, so I mean-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Aha.
- CWChris Williamson
... that was, that was a, that was a- an ugly day. But even with that, like, I might, I might sort of just tell yourself and the viewers, uh, what my, um, experience upon reading Turning Pro was, and this has been a, a defining characteristic of this year for me, that a lot of people, and myself as well, I'm still recording in my bedroom. It's still me and one guy, we're an independent show. It's not like we have this big team or some production company-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Aha.
- CWChris Williamson
... behind us. Um, which means that it's much easier to be an amateur. It's much easier for me to just, "Oh, it's a side thing, it's a hobby, it's a this, that and the other." Um, and partway through the year o- upon reading, uh, The War of Art, I thought, "Hang on, you, you love doing this. This is something that you're compelled to do. It's something that you're called to do. Why, why are you not going all in? Why are you allowing these other areas to distract you? Why are you not turning up 10 minutes early to every interview that you do? Why are you not preparing as much as you can for every guest that you do?" All of these things, all of these foots, one foot out of the door situations were me doing the Aubrey Marcus. "Well, if the episode's a little bit crap, I didn't prepare all that much-"
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"... therefore, it's not a comment on my capacity. I could have done better. I just chose not to." You-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Aha.
- CWChris Williamson
... inoculate yourself from public failure by assuring your failure privately. Um-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and, uh, yeah, that's-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Very well said. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, it's, uh, it's something I've thought about a lot this year. Uh, really, really have. And I hope that we can start to give everyone that's listening the impetus, the, the, um, ability to get over that inertia, to move out of amateur and into professional. So we- we've spoken about going all in, we've talked about the fact that you need to be, um, ruthless with yourself. What are some of the other, um, heuristics that people can use to ensure that they make the transition from amateur to professional as well as they can?
- SPSteven Pressfield
Uh, you know, I'd, I, I, I never have like checklists or anything like that because it's so, it's so, um, uh, unique to each individual. Like in Turning Pro, there was a passage a- about Rosanne Cash, the singer, and the dream that she had. Can I tell that story here for your, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, please.
- SPSteven Pressfield
This to me was like the, kinda the ultimate Turning Pro moment. Rosanne Cash is Johnny Cash's daughter, and she had a career, at the start of her career, that was quite successful, kind of as a, you know, she had a bunch of hits and, um, as a singer, but she always had, she always wanted to be a songwriter and a singer. She wanted to do concept albums that really came from her heart rather than, um...... you know, picking songs that other people had written. So she had a dream, and it's really important that- that this is a dream because it shows it's coming from a part of her, right? And in the dream, uh, she... one of the people that she idolized was Linda Ronstadt, the singer. So in the dream, she was at a party and she was sitting at a bench, and it wa- Linda Ronstadt was on one side, she was on the other. In between them was an older man that she somehow knew. His name was Art, capital A-R-T. And Art was in intense conversation with Linda Ronstadt in the dream. And Rosanne was kinda trying to get into their conversation, you know? And suddenly, this guy turned to her, Art, and looked her up and down with utter contempt and said, "We don't have anything to do with dilettantes." And Rosanne, as she describes this in- in her book, Composed, she said, "I woke up from this dream shaken to the core," because she felt like she had really been called out. This was really the truth. And she says, "From that moment on, I changed my life. I changed everything about my life. I changed the way I wrote... I- I attacked music. I started studying painting. I started getting in shape physically. I started, you know, getting working out. I started studying voice," and this and this. And she started attacking certain habits that she had. Like she... one of the things she said was she had a habit of daydreaming, of just kinda getting off into a fog. And she said she would, like, teach herself to snap back out of that. And she also had a habit of, like, not working as hard as she could on some... settling for something like that. And also o- of writing a song or- or preparing a song that was good enough, you know? But it wasn't... it didn't have the element of madness to it that she was looking for. So that's kind of a case where she herself decided. She just knew. She knew, "I've gotta change. I've gotta... I can't keep going the way I'm going." So she sort of invented what- what the changes were that she was gonna make. She was gonna study this and study that, and get up earlier, and eat better, and all that sort of thing. So in other words, I think that once we kinda make that commitment, we'll know. We'll know what we're s- what we're supposed to do. We'll know where we've been sloughing off, eating sugar or whatever it is, like, you know, that kind of thing.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a beautiful story. I really, really love that. And then you yourself, was it the- the first time that you turned pro you locked yourself in a- a- a hut in the woods for, like, um, $15 a week-
- SPSteven Pressfield
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... or something like that and- and you just... (laughs)
- SPSteven Pressfield
Wow, that is great. That's great 'cause the way people see it... You know what? But I'm really thinking back over it, 'cause I have been thinking back, I probably have had maybe 15 turning pro moments, you know? There wasn't just one, you know? Um, but what I did then was I- I saved enough money and moved to a small affordable house, a little house before I got a bigger house.
- CWChris Williamson
A cabin in the woods, Steven. It was a cabin in the woods, so call it small or whatever. (laughs)
- SPSteven Pressfield
It was... it was in the woods, sort of. But- but yeah, so I really just sort of locked myself in this underwater thing where I couldn't leave, because I knew that my resistance was so strong that I would quit otherwise. So anyway... but we do have a bunch of these turning pro moments, not just one.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that something symbolic like that is, uh, a potential tool that people can use to-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes, definitely.
- 1:00:00 – 1:03:13
They say that true…
- SPSteven Pressfield
of state, you know. And, and I think, um, that we, on this level, we sort of remember that level. We have, you know... We can't put our finger on it, but we know that, you know. And I also think that when we see some... When we're on the material plane and we see somebody act according to the rules of the higher plane, it moves us tremendously. You know, somebody that, uh, runs into a burning building to save a child that they don't even know that, you know, that kind of thing. Um, so yeah, I definitely think that we are, uh, we're spiritual be- I don't know why we're in bodies. You know, God must have some plan, you know, there must be some concept we're doing penance or we're trying to learn something or I don't know what, but, um-... but definitely, um, I always define my... People say, "Well, what is your- what is your job?" And I just say, "I'm a servant of the muse." And what I mean by that is I'm, I'm serving this level, I'm trying to communicate to that level and, and play according to the rules of that level as much as I can.
- CWChris Williamson
They say that true hell is when the person that you are meets the person you could have been. And I suppose-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that that gap between the-
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yeah. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... the physical and the astral or the, the, the literal and the, the spiritual, I suppose that's the gap we're all trying to close.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes, I think so.
- CWChris Williamson
All the gaps-
- SPSteven Pressfield
That's where all the pain, anxiety-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SPSteven Pressfield
... all that comes, where addiction comes from is that gap.
- CWChris Williamson
All the fun stuff.
- SPSteven Pressfield
That's it. Yeah, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And I suppose that's also the gap between amateur and professional. So it all maps on.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Yes, I think so. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Steven, today's been wonderful. When can we expect you back on to talk about this new book? Is it gonna be 2021? Is it gonna be 2022?
- SPSteven Pressfield
I'd love to do it. Uh, uh, the book comes out in March, um, and, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
It better be- you better get a shuffle on then.
- SPSteven Pressfield
There it is. It's called A Man in Arms, and it's a novel.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, wow.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Um, and, uh, so let's put it on the, uh, put it on the, on the s- on the schedule somewhere, like come-
- CWChris Williamson
We'll put in the calendar, we'll get you back.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Whenever you want. Sometime in the new year. That'll be great, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
Wonderful. Um, anything else that people should check out online? Obviously, link to The War Of Art and Turning Pro will be in the show notes below. Is there anywhere else you wanna send people?
- SPSteven Pressfield
Well, actually, I do have a little, uh... Talk about amateur. I do (laughs) have a kind of a no-frills video series going on right now on Instagram and stuff, it's called The Warrior Archetype. And I'm sure if you kind of search for it, it's like on two days a week, like just me on camera filmed by my girlfriend, Diana, and, uh, edited by my friends Jeff and Matt. And, um, it's, uh, it's two times a week, and it's gonna go for, I don't know, into the new year somehow. I'm just kinda talking about that, the thing that you access when you're playing cricket and when you're doing that other thing, The Warrior Archetype.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Steven, thank you so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure.
- SPSteven Pressfield
Hey, great... A pleasure to meet you and let's do this again. And, uh, thanks for having me, Chris. And my best to all of your viewers and listeners. (uplifting music)
Episode duration: 1:03:13
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