Today on Acta Non Verba Steven Pressfield reveals how he overcame his own form of Adversity and how he continues to stay inspired and creative. During our discussion we’ll cover where he sees resistance in creativity and in life, where inspiration comes from, and how ADVERSITY forces us to level up.
Steven Pressfield is the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Last of the Amazons, Virtues of War, The Afghan Campaign, Killing Rommel, The Profession, The Lion’s Gate, The War of Art, Turning Pro, Do the Work, The Warrior Ethos, The Authentic Swing, An American Jew, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, The Knowledge, and The Artist’s Journey.
You can learn more about Steven here: https://stevenpressfield.com/books/the-war-of-art/
Episode Transcript:
00:46
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions and not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Steven Pressfield is a former Marine and graduate of Duke University who became an overnight success after 30 years of abject failure according to him, identifying the omnipresence of resistance, the interior force of self-sabotage that he describes.
01:15
in the legendary war of art. This work of art has actually influenced so many people from here on out that have struggled to find their own creative calling, including myself. His novels of the ancient world, including the nonfiction, The Warrior’s Ethos, are required readings at West Point, Annapolis, and in the Marine Corps. He lives in Los Angeles. His new book, A Man at Arms, which is amazing, is an epic saga about a reluctant hero, the Roman Empire, and the rise of a new faith.
01:43
It’s available everywhere that you buy books. It’s available on Audible. Go check it out, get multiple copies for friends. This is one that you do not wanna miss. Without further ado, Stephen Pressfield, thank you so much for being here. It’s an honor to have you. Hey, thanks for having me, Marcus. It’s a pleasure to be here. Great to meet you. Man, it’s great. Absolutely. It’s truly incredible to meet you. Having you on after Tim Ferriss has had you on is a blessing and a curse because I’ve got to interview some of Tim’s previous guests before.
02:14
And while it gives me information to kind of look towards that are this fertile ground, unfortunately, see, sometimes Tim beat you to the punch because he asked you all the great questions. So there was one prompt that you had for him though, that you guys didn’t get to uncover. And it was something about whenever you were a truck driver and you were told at some point, don’t miss that right turn. And you kind of left us on the edge of our seats with that because we never got to have that come to any sort of fruition.
02:42
Would you care to kind of give us a little bit more about what that was and why that was so impactful? Well, this is, I don’t know how impactful it was, Mark, because it’s kind of a crazy story. But there was a place that I was driving out of Durham, North Carolina, and there was a place we used to deliver to in Bermuda Hundred, Virginia. And it was a big giant warehouse. And you pulled in behind it. And there were a bunch of loading docks to the right. And everybody always told me, whatever you do, don’t miss the last…
03:12
right turn. And of course, I missed it one night. And I’m driving down this one lane road, which quickly became as narrow as a driveway with drop offs on both sides. And the sun was going down. So there was no way I could back up because I couldn’t see, you know, and if the tires wound. So I just had to go forward. The short version of it is I wound up in a cul-de-sac, a residential cul-de-sac, and there was no way to turn around in the dark.
03:41
So I started to get out of the truck, you know, trucks are up pretty high. I opened the door and there’s like six gigantic dogs barking and trying to get up at me. And I could see why everybody said, don’t ever miss the turn. I just had to stay in the truck all night, you know, and you pee out the door, you know. And then finally in the morning, when the sun came up, I was able to like very, very slowly and carefully back out about a half a mile. So anyway, it’s not like a real.
04:10
life-changing experience, but it was just one of those things where you don’t want to miss that last right turn. Well, it was life-changing in that moment, wasn’t it? Oh, yeah. When I had to pee. They say that pain and discomfort are the best teachers sometimes, so I guess that gets us on the right track. It’s a little, minor bit of adversity. No, the way that you embrace resistance and adversity, I think, is tremendous.
04:40
There are so many people that you’ve researched and you’ve had such an incredible eclectic life. Is there a philosophy that you sort of feel kind of embodies who you are? Is there one that you sort of subscribe to? Or are you, because I consider myself to be sort of the philosophical atheist where I just kind of pull from whatever makes the most sense to me. Is there one that really resonates with you? Yeah, I kind of pull from a lot of different things too. But mainly my philosophy, and I actually do have such a thing,
05:09
comes from my experience as a writer, as somebody trying to fill the blank page, somebody trying to go from one book to the next. And I’m definitely a believer that there’s more than one dimension of reality and that everything that we bring forth here on this material dimension, I believe comes from a higher dimension. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about
05:36
you know, inspiration coming from another source, and that’s really not you. And she tells stories about, I guess it was Tom Waits or somebody, but that’s a classic story of of a songwriter driving along the freeway. And all of a sudden, a song completely, you know, in every detail comes into the person’s head just like that and having to like pull over and, you know, write it all down or whatever. But I’m certainly a believer in that. So I believe that we live in more than one dimension simultaneously.
06:05
Or another way that I look at it to myself is that inside each of us, there’s an underground river flowing, whether you call it the unconscious or the muse or whatever, and that most of us are completely oblivious of it or don’t believe in it or think it’s phony baloney or nobody ever even told us about it or we never experienced it. But in my opinion, I sort of live my life by that underground river. I’m trying to keep in touch with it at all times.
06:34
and to follow its course in my above ground life. And that is the gap between that and that existence is resistance, is that correct? That’s the gap between it, yeah. You mentioned the famous quote that I love so much, in the War of Art, where you say, there are two lives that we live, the life that we live and the unlived life within us, within that is resistance. So you constantly want to have yourself sort of tethered to that source and understand that resistance is the thing that’s continually sort of…
07:03
pressing us down to keep us from getting to that other area. There’s a beautiful part where Tim Ferriss asked you, he says, why is this in existence then if it’s not there to help us in some capacity? And you had a beautiful answer. Could you tell our audience what you said to that? Following on what you’re saying here, Marcus, that my belief is that there’s a higher level of reality and we’re on this lower level, the material plane. And in between is this force of resistance that’s trying to stop us, trying to stop us from reaching the higher plane, trying to stop the higher plane.
07:33
from reaching down to us. And this is just my theory. I mean, we’re really getting in the weeds fast here. I love it now. Thank you. Because it’s a good question. Why would there be such a thing? I mean, if God created the world or some cosmic, why would they put this here? Why not this force of resistance? Why not just make it easy for us to go back and forth? And my theory on this is that there are basically two identities that we each have. One is the ego.
08:01
And the other is what Jung would call the self, the self with a capital S. And the ego is kind of the conscious mind, the irrational mind, the I that we think of as ourselves normally, the I that has a driver’s license and pays insurance and gets married and has a name. And a lot of us believe that that’s the only I that is. That’s our identity, right? But there’s a deeper identity. When I was saying that there’s another level.
08:29
that level or what’s adjacent to that level is what Jung would call the self, the capital S self. And that self contains our dreams, it contains the unconscious. When we have a dream, when we have an intuition, when we get any kind of a like a sixth sense if we feel danger or something like that, that’s coming from the self. And according to Jung, the self butts up against what they call the divine ground, which is
08:59
whatever you want to call it, God, something beyond, right? So my feeling about resistance is that when we start to shift our identity from the ego to the self, for instance, if we’re that songwriter driving along on the freeway and the songs are coming to us and we are in our lives trying to connect to that dimension, we’re moving from the ego to the self. And when that happens, I think the ego…
09:28
starts to panic because if we seat ourselves, ground ourselves in the capital S self, we don’t need the ego anymore. And really, I think when people get into really deep meditation or they’re really trying to really evolve on a spiritual level or seek enlightenment or whatever you want to call it, that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to move the seat of their identity from the ego to the self, to a higher plane, right? So the ego doesn’t like that when we start to do that. And it throws up every, it starts firing all its guns.
09:58
and what it does is it produces, in my opinion, resistance and to try to stop us, to try to convince us that the only reality is the ego. The only reality is the kind of rational world, the world that we’re in when we’re in the flesh, you know? And our job, I think, as writers or just as evolving human beings, is to get beyond that and to get to that deeper level, even if we can only do it every once in a while.
10:26
I think that’s really, that’s the underground river that I’m talking about that we’re trying to get to. It’s so beautiful. You know, let’s have a long explanation there, Marcus, but that’s what I think. I may be wrong. No, that’s what we want to hear. Just to be able to hear the way that you pontificate about it and hear how, because you’ve been counter-resistance in many capacities, most of your entire life, you talked about it between all of these different jobs that you’ve had. And even as a soldier, we encounter resistance because that’s part of it. That’s…
10:54
we have to do every day to build that resolve and that resilience. But even then, there’s always an additional level. And as I mentioned to you before we hit record, your book changed my life because that helped me understand how important it was. Even when I was recovered and I started writing my own book, I didn’t want to write a book. It’s too hard. There’s too much. There’s too much bullshit. There’s too much stuff that I have to acknowledge in myself to write it down. And then if I want to write it down to try to help somebody else.
11:22
It makes me process it more. So it’s a brutal self reflection, but there is so much to it. Once we can get through there. Can I ask you, Marcus, what form did resistance take for you when you were trying to come out of, you know, your paralysis or try the book or whatever? What form did it take? Wow. Um, the form for me was the, the more aggressive adversarial form of resistance, which I call adversity. And it was that part of me that felt like I was a victim because I turned 40 years old in a bed. I was broke.
11:52
divorced, bedridden, and paralyzed, trying to figure out, what do I do with my life? And I had done all these things correctly, I thought, and I’m a good person, why is this happening to me? Why is the universe for God doing this? And my resistance was the fact that I wouldn’t accept what the reality was. I didn’t see it for what it was. And I actually said, okay, if this is what I have, what can I do with this? What can I do to make this life something worthwhile?
12:19
And I took myself out of the equation like they do in Zen. And I said, did anybody benefit from my injury? And I didn’t benefit from it, but if we’d have been in Afghanistan and I had a team of guys and I was injured there, they would have all been put in harm’s way. The Chinook that would have had to come get me in a hot zone would have been put in harm’s way. And when I had true gratitude, that’s when I was like, wow, I’m lucky. And that was the first time in my life that I had that genuine 360 gratitude. And that allowed me to just allow that resistance to fade away.
12:49
So, is Stoicism a pillar of your life? Wow, it was given the name Marcus Aurelius by my grandfather, but at 11 years old trying to read meditations, it just goes over your head. It’s impossible. It’s impossible to get it. But it led me to Taoism, which was my gateway philosophy to understand Zen and then eventually Stoicism and how important it was. And that reflected everything from the martial arts. So, it kept me very…
13:17
All those things kind of dovetail beautifully. And then when I started understanding who Marcus Aurelius was, and that he was one of the few emperors that was not spoiled by his power, that forced me to want to be worth that name. And after my injury, and after I kind of had a second chance, I vowed that I would never regret, never hold back and attack my life on my own terms. And had I not done that, then I wouldn’t be having this conversation that I am with you. So I’m glad I did.
13:45
Yeah, it’s so strange. I’m sure you’ve thought about this many times. The name that you were given could hardly have been more appropriate to, you know, what your challenge was, you know, and how you and how you faced it exactly like the Emperor would have done. And much like him, I went to a place where I didn’t want to face it, much like resistance where I was angry, I was bargaining, I was in denial. I wanted somebody to come and save me. But once I realized that no one was coming to save me, that’s when I…
14:14
save myself. You know, Jim Mattis, General Jim Mattis is a big, you know, reader and fan of Marcus of meditation, you know, I think it’s, you know, his favorite book is number one book out of millions that he has. So it’s incredible. And then I don’t know if you know that they’re having that stoic con in a couple of months with Ryan Holiday, Donald Robertson, and I get to share the virtual stage with those people because they’re all going to be military veterans. So there’s going to be an incredible group on that.
14:43
If people are into stoicism, that would be something they could check into. And I apologize. It made me go off on a tangent there, but no, I put you there. I’m sorry. So where else do you feel resistance besides the creative process? Because I know you’re a physical person. I know that you enjoy working out. Are there other areas in life where you feel resistance? It, because it sort of is omnipresent as you would point out. I mean, it’s, it is omnipresent. It’s everywhere. I mean, anytime you try to evolve to a higher level.
15:11
or to take a moral or ethical stand or anything like that. You know, in a relationship, it’s always there. In politics, you know, if you think about the partisanship and all of the stuff that’s going on today, resistance would make anybody, if we listen to it, pick an enemy, an external enemy, right or left, and then project all of their bullshit out onto that enemy and then attack that enemy or turn that enemy into the devil.
15:41
So I’m sort of constantly trying in my own mind not to do that. And to remember that my brothers and sisters that would seem to be on the other side, quote, unquote, are my brothers and sisters and trying to hang on to that and not to… It’s like gratitude, just like what you’re saying, Marcus, you know, to focus on that if I can. But it’s everywhere. But primarily for me, of course, it’s in any creative…
16:09
endeavor, it never goes away and it’s always a force that you have to fight first thing in the morning. You know, I’m sure you feel exactly the same way you wake up and it’s right there, you know, boom, it’s right there in your face. It’s funny, it’s not there at night. It’s not there in the dream world. But as soon as we regain consciousness, as soon as the rational mind returns, the ego, boom, there it is. And that’s what’s so interesting because I feel, I believe this is true for you.
16:38
and I may be putting words in your mouth, but you use resistance almost as a compass, as an indicator that you’re on the right track though, correct? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that’s- Yeah, I mean, I write about this in the War of Art and I use it in my real life. One of the principles of resistance that I have identified in my own life is that the more important a project or a book, a movie, whatever it is that you’re gonna do, is to your evolution.
17:07
as a soul, the more resistance you’ll feel to it. If it’s some little bitty, shitty thing that you have as you want it, you won’t feel any resistance to that at all. But if it’s Moby Dick, you know, if it’s war and peace, then you’ll feel monumental resistance. And so for me, and I tell this to anybody that’s in this position too, when you’re feeling monumental resistance to something, when you’re distracting yourself, when the voice in your head tells you you’re a loser, you’re a bum, you can’t do this, that’s a good sign.
17:37
because it shows that the strength of the resistance is equal to the strength of the dream, to the importance of the dream that you have. So if you’re feeling monumental resistance, it shows you that you do have a great big dream there. And if you can just channel your energy in that direction, then you’re on the right track. No, I couldn’t agree more. Like I said, adversity to me has that same feel. And that’s the thing that kind of pushes us. Like I say, it tells us we should have more. Let me ask you, I’m gonna ask you a question.
18:07
Why do you think, you know, you were asking me why the Tim Ferris question, why is resistance? Why do you think God or whoever made adversity in the first place? And why did they do that as kind of the pathway? You know, as like Ryan Holiday says, the obstacle is the way. And as you say, you know, adversity is the path, it’s the way. Why do you think that is? It seems like a crazy way to make a world.
18:33
I think adversity is a gift because adversity is a natural law like gravity. And like the law of gravity doesn’t give a shit about your opinion, right? It shows up unannounced without apology. It couldn’t care less about what you want. It doesn’t give a damn about your feelings. And it doesn’t take no for an answer. Adversity hates us, but it hates only one part of us. The weak part. Adversity forces us to level up and play at a higher level. It never lets us coast or do just enough to get by. It knows our true potential.
19:03
even if we do not, which is why it kicks our ass if we don’t give everything that we have in that present moment. And adversity gets us no other choice. And when there’s no other choice, the choice is simple, right? Yeah, that’s the way I think of it. I mean, do you think it goes back to the simple reality like I live out in the country and I see hawks flying overhead every day and there’s a lot of wildlife. And if we had a hawk here and we were in asking him whether you’re her, what he thought they would say.
19:32
shit, every morning I wake up and I’m hungry, my little chicks are hungry. And I got to, you know, that’s adversity is the law of nature. Right? I mean, it’s, it’s the most basic law of nature, which then is sort of makes me ask, well, why did God make the world this way? You know, why? But that’s an unanswerable question, I suppose. It just is. I agree. I think in the end, the short answer I should have sort of said was that I think that it forces the strong to stay stronger.
20:00
And it forces us, like you were saying, almost like with resistance, like anything. We as human beings don’t respect what we don’t pay for in some capacity. So if I don’t earn my body or if I don’t work hard on a book or whatever the project is, I’m not going to give my best effort. And like you said, resistance will show up over and over again to ask you, is this what you have? Is this the most? Isn’t there more you can give? And I believe that that’s why, like you said, it makes us procrastinate.
20:29
it makes us put it off because it’s so daunting, it’s so overwhelming. Yeah. And it’s… The other thing of course is that we live in this kind of artificially prosperous and adversity free world. And we think that that’s the way it should be, right? We’re the civilized world. You go down to In-N-Out, you get a burger, you know, it’s no problem, right? But it’s an artificial world. It certainly was not the case, you know, a few hundred years ago or…
20:55
Absolutely. I recently ran the David Goggins 4x4x48 challenge where you run four miles every four hours for 48 hours straight. I worked out and I pushed myself, but again, that was resistance, that was adversity really making me question myself, can you do this? I caught myself doing the same things that you were talking about where I wanted to give up or I wanted to make excuses.
21:22
But I also knew that again, that was the indicator that I was on the right track and that to not make it bigger than what it needs to be, like you talk about, just that one step, keep moving, do that one task right here. Don’t think about all this other stuff that is overwhelming because that’s the stuff that’s trying to distract you from what’s really important from the muse to earn the muses honor in that way.
21:43
How did you feel after you completed that? Hungry. I fasted for the two days that I did it, but I felt amazing. And then we, I was also able to raise over $5,000 to stop child sex trafficking and, and human trafficking for a charity that I work with. For you. So, but what that did is that kept me locked into what I should be doing. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it was incredible. Good for you. I take my hat off to you.
22:08
I would have been with you at a golf cart driving alongside. That’s fine. I would love that because again, thinking about what you were saying is what it can be throwing on. You run 12 different four mile tasks. And for me, I would actually take a quote or an inspirational idea and then meditate on it when I would run and then see what came out of it. And again, much of what you were talking about with resistance at two o’clock in the morning, when I’m trying to get up to go run and I don’t want to. I’m thinking of that. So.
22:35
It felt like you were there kind of giving me the pat on the shoulder, but kicking me in the ass to get up and make it fucking happen too. So, no, is this event, do you do it just on your own or in your own? So you’re not with any group of people like the Spartan racer. No. Oh, wow. That makes it even harder. I ran it 10, two and six. So 10 PM, 10, two AM, six AM and you do that around the clock for, for two days. But again, it was one of those things that
23:01
forced me to really see what I was, and just like you said, when you’re done, just like when you’re finished with the book, you’re like, wow, if I could be that single focused on this, why am I not doing it in other parts of my life? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it kicked me, it kicked me in the ass and it made me really realize that I should be doing more to help other people with my work. So that to me was big. There was something that I got some inside information on for when it comes to writing. Can you tell us about the McGuffin? The McGuffin. Yes, I’m sorry, the McGuffin. Okay.
23:31
Well, this is just sort of in the weeds writing stuff, you know? Yes. The MacGuffin is that item that the villain wants. And this comes from Alfred Hitchcock. He was the one who kind of gave that, like, for instance, in Casablanca, it’s the letters of transit, if you remember that, that will let anybody get out of Casablanca. Or in Pulp Fiction.
23:56
it’s the suitcase that they’re after. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s the Ark of the Covenant. And it’s not in every book or every movie, but in my book, A Man at Arms, the MacGuffin was really important. The MacGuffin, not to give too much away, but the MacGuffin was the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that became that book in the Bible, 1 Corinthians.
24:22
and the story is set in the first century AD right after the crucifixion, and this letter is being sent to Corinth in Greece, and the Romans realized that this letter is like the atomic bomb of the era, because it will be circulated throughout the empire and help the rise of this new faith that the only thing the emperor is afraid of is something like that, not afraid of armies. So that was the item that the villain wants.
24:50
And when you have something that the villain wants, you got a story already because it almost becomes like a chase story, right? Who’s after the and who’s going to try to protect that MacGuffin? So anyway, that’s what the MacGuffin is. But just speaking as a writer and as knowing your craft, it’s like being a mechanic and fixing an engine on a Ferrari. If you know what an injector is, then you know how what it is. And as a writer to know that
25:19
a certain item in your story is the MacGuffin, that really helps. You know, it gives you a whole structure and a whole way of thinking about it. That’s getting into the weeds in storytelling. But it’s so important, like you say, because it helps give you sort of almost like the systematic idea to look at it. And if you want to know more about Steven Pressfield, when he does these kind of things about in the weeds writing, he has a writer Wednesday email that comes out. That’s amazing. I’ve read it all the time and I love what you talk about with that.
25:47
And we can learn more about that later on near the end. We can ask more questions about that. That was part one of my interview with the legendary Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, Gates of Fire, and The Warrior Ethos. You can hear part two of the interview on the next episode of Acta Non Verba, where we talk about Steven’s incredible new book, A Man at Arms. We also discussed the role adversity plays in his new book, what historical figure that he would like to sit down and have a conversation with.
