Today on Acta Non Verba Steven Pressfield returns to share the role Adversity plays in his new book and our lives. Listen in as we discuss what historical figure Steven would like to sit down and talk with, and Steven even turns the tables and interviews me about my journey.
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:
00:30
In this episode of Acta Non Verba, we hear part two of my interview with the legendary Stephen Pressfield, author of The War of Art, Gates of Fire, and The Warrior Ethos. In part one.
00:57
We discuss some of the philosophy that Stephen has when it comes to the creative process, where he still sees resistance in creativity and his life, and how monumental resistance is often a good sign. You can hear part 1 on episode 41 of Acta Non Verba. In part 2 we talk about Stephen’s incredible new book, A Man at Arms. We also discuss the role adversity plays in this new book, what historical figure he would like to sit down and have a conversation with.
01:24
Steven even turns the table and interviews me about my journey and the gift of adversity. This was an incredible honor for me. Steven Pressfield is one of my all-time favorite authors and his writing has changed my life. Please enjoy part two of my interview with the legendary Steven Pressfield. Onto the incredible new book, the current book rather, this author that’s a bestseller that is blowing up all over the place, A Man at Arms. This is a very, in some way, kind of personal story, the way that you’ve written this character and
01:54
and how you’ve created and how he, what he represents. And I know that if you write any character, there’s gonna be parts of you or parts of your life in it, but how much of you would you feel is in this main character because he’s so multifaceted and there’s so many dimensions to him. He’s not just this knuckle-draggler that’s a warrior. I mean, he’s very much, he is truly a warrior, but there is so much more to him as the book and the story unfolds. Well, it’s funny, Marcus, I think a lot of times,
02:22
when you’re writing a character, particularly a hero of the story, it’s not necessarily you. You know, it’s not like you’re stealing parts of your personality, but it might be an aspirational version of yourself. It might be somebody you admire, or that, you know, this character would be. And that’s what the character’s name is Telemann. And he’s kind of like a Clint Eastwood gunslinger of the ancient world, only, you know, his weapons are the sword and the spear and that kind of thing.
02:51
And, you know, I believe that life is a battle. We were just talking about resistance. Yes. For me, it’s in here. It’s against enemies inside themselves. But a lot of times, a character or a hero that you will write will be kind of a metaphorical version of that. Like in Gates of Fire, my book about the Spartans in Thermopylae, there were a number of warriors that were sort of aspects of that hero that I would project myself to be in some aspirational way.
03:21
So what is alter ego to me about the character of Telemann is that what he’s dealing with is what the isolated individual deals with. In my other books, I’m sorry to get into the weeds again, but in like in Gates of Fire and in other books about the ancient world, it was usually a collective. Like for instance, in the Battle of Thermopylae, it was the 300 Spartans as a unit, you know?
03:47
And in other books that I’ve done about Alexander the Great and so on, it’s again a collective, it’s the army, it’s the group, it’s the, you know, the nation. But Telamon to me is the most modern character that I’ve written because she’s, you know, just like, just like you’re alone, you know, when you are in your shit, right? There was, I’m sure you had friends and family, but you know, you’re alone in that bed. And when everybody says, Hey, good luck, Marcus, you know, we’ll see you tomorrow. You’re there, right? And that’s who we all are. So that was one of the things I really,
04:17
I loved about this character that he’s like a solitary samurai, like one of the Ronin that you see in the movies. And so the question for me was, what does he evolve to? How does he, again, there’s this MacGuffin, there’s a thing that the villain wants and he’s against the villain and da-d That was why he’s an alter ego for me. He’s a projection of my own aspirations for myself.
04:42
Well, I think it’s a tremendous aspiration to write not only for yourself, but for all of us to learn from and to endeavor to be worthy of. And almost like you were saying, the negative forces are the resistance in a lot of ways. And that’s what forces us to, to drive through those things to get to that next place. I mean, if you think about just a butt in here for a second, we’re talking about adversity. If you think about any story, I don’t care what it is, any movie, any book that you see, it’s, it’s always about adversity. Aaron Sorkin.
05:10
His whole concept of what a drama is, is the hero has an intention, and there was just obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle that the hero has to overcome. And if it works, if the story works, each obstacle that presents itself gets bigger and bigger and more interesting and deeper. And when the hero overcomes one, a greater one appears until there’s a crisis moment and then goes into the climax from there.
05:40
But every story is about adversity. And obviously the reason we need stories is because we’re all fighting adversity. And we want to hear, you know, Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker or whoever, overcome that, or at least if they fail, you know, teach us something along the way. I absolutely agree. And it’s very hard to see the gift in our adversity when we’re in the heat of it.
06:07
when we are actually in the fray, it’s almost impossible. And we can try to project ourselves to afterwards, but again, lots of times, especially when you’re under the pressure, you don’t have that luxury. You don’t have the luxury of being philosophical. You just have to stay resolute. And that’s why it’s so important to make that decision and see resistance for what it is, as opposed to allowing it to make us a coward, so to speak. Yeah. One of my principles, one of my writing principles that I tell myself in doing anything is,
06:37
make your hero suffer. And I sort of keep that all the way through anything I’m doing. And I always say the suffering cannot be just piling agony on, you know, it has to have a theme. It has to be whatever the hero is up against. And the hero has to constantly fight it and hopefully overcome it. Or if not, sometimes they don’t overcome it. But the hero should never be given a free pass.
07:06
If the story is going to be great, the more adversity in the story, the more exciting it is, and the more the reader will be involved in it. It’s so true and you talk about that in the warrior’s ethos, where you say the wars change, but warriors do not. Even that idea of the creative artists, their journey is very much the hero’s journey. Yeah. It is very formulaic in a way because for me, there was that place where I was suicidal, but I couldn’t even act on it. So I felt.
07:36
completely disempowered and I had to sit there and just finally, I was pushing against adversity and there was no way I could win. So finally, I just capitulated. I just gave in and said, okay, I’m going to just completely surrender to whatever this is and I’m going to blend into this. So almost like Hannibal, whenever he was able to envelop the Romans by leaning into it, it pushed me in this direction to where I had to say,
08:05
Okay, no bullshit. Unpack everything that you’ve done from your own divorce to the divorce of my parents. And it made me see that the common theme was hubris, lack of genuine gratitude, and a little bit of arrogance. And I said that was because I was trying to survive, but carrying that armor into this new part of my life was not going to serve me. And that was my big breakthrough for me, at least. Tell me a little bit about gratitude. How did you get to that place? And how did you express
08:35
that gratitude. It was entirely in your in your mind in your heart? Or was it something that you actually acted upon? For me, what it was is I realized now that in today’s society, everybody has like little gratitude journals, and they say, Oh, I’m grateful for this. But that’s bullshit gratitude, frankly, they’re, they’re cherry picking the things they like in their life, and then saying, I’m grateful for this. But for everything that you write about, and everything that we’re talking about, that’s not where gratitude is gratitude needs to be in
09:05
everything 360 both the good and the bad because even if happier life is beautiful there’s going to be half of it where there’s resistance and adversity and if you’re not able to see the gift and the opportunity within that then you will constantly just be in this place as a victim as a coward afraid to act living that one life instead of the unlived life that is our potential that you talk about so for me saying what am i missing and it’s like i have nothing to be grateful for
09:33
And that was the beginning for me. I took myself out of the equation. And that’s when I was starting to look at had other people been injured in the, if I’d have been deployed, other people would have been injured. And that was when I said, wow, I’m lucky. That’s when I became grateful for the bed that I may never get out of. That’s when I became grateful for the room that I may never leave because no matter what it is, I’m still alive. I still have the opportunity. And that was the beginning for me. And that’s when, and-
10:01
Again, you can’t bullshit it. You have to truly believe it. And that’s why when you talk about these different areas, I believe that because there’s no other explanation for why nobody else can tell me why that would have changed my body like that until I truly believed it. And as I told you before, when I got arrogant, when I was like, see, I knew I could do it. If I can overcome that, I can overcome this paralysis thing. But when I did that, that’s when I slid right back to where I was. And I went through the same stages of anger, denial, resistance.
10:30
and that I went back to know I’m going to lean into this. And that’s what I did. That was a genuine part. And once I started being able to move my fingers just a little bit, I was grateful for that. And I realized that if that’s all that I had, that was still better than where I was. And I’ve just never looked back since. So once you felt that you truly felt gratitude, you’re a little later, you were able to move your fingers. Yes. So in other words.
10:56
It wasn’t like you said, okay, now I’m going to put myself on a program. It just sort of happened. Now, let me ask you this, Marcus. What do you interpret that to mean? What’s the underlying metaphysical or spiritual principle? Was there some force that allowed you to suddenly move your fingers? What’s your interpretation of that?
11:19
It’s a deep question, Louise, but I love where we’re going. For me, I think it’s that force, that innate intelligence, God, the universe, whatever it was. And I think that that was that blockage, that lesson that I wasn’t having. So it’s easy to be pissed off at the guy that catch you off in traffic and gives you the finger. But if I can have that pragmatic empathy and have gratitude and say, maybe he’s going through something, maybe he lost his job, maybe his wife is injured, whatever it is.
11:48
because as I learned the lesson from adversity, my empathy increased exponentially. My presence increased exponentially. My ability to have genuine priorities increased exponentially. And what I find is so many people are worried about creating these little life hacks to be efficient, but they have nothing worthy of that sort of true energy. And that’s what it was. So for me, once I had this driving thing, now embellishing and using.
12:15
what we learned from the military using this idea of the 80-20 principle, using this idea of I’m going to attack this with everything that I have because it’s in my mind, it’s all that I had. It was the only fight that I could really go for. So going from being preparing for the battlefield to a war within my own mind, that’s what forced me to get to that place. And then once I was able to feel those things and experience it and get out, that’s when I started really doing even more of the work as you talk about in your books.
12:45
Yeah, that’s amazingly deep, I gotta say. I mean, what I’m about to say may seem kind of superficial, and it’s only as an analogy here, but it’s almost like I could imagine Yoda. If we had a scene in a movie, Yoda would be saying to you, trust the force and change your mind, right? And then there’d be a scene where suddenly your hand would move, right? And everybody would go, holy shit.
13:15
But you would go, can this really be true or is this just some bullshit movie? You know, but you’re living evidence that that sort of thing is true. There’s some other dimension or some other force out there. And like you say, when you started to have hubris again, immediately you backslid. It was crazy. And again, I desperately wanted to recover, but I could see in the process, like in resistance that, but there was all this shit right here in front of me.
13:42
that I was not trying to look at. I wanted to be over here, but I had to unpack all of this stuff. And that was the very first step. And once I started really doing that and I truly committed to it, that’s when all of a sudden these little things started happening. So for me, it wasn’t about, oh, I’m going to try to walk again or write a book and do all these things. It’s like, no, it’s more about if this is what I have, what can I do to make the best of it? Because I don’t want to play a victim. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be an asshole to every best person.
14:11
Because we see people that are bitter, people that like to try to run up you with their adversity. It’s like, oh, you had a bad day. Well, listen to my day. And then they want to just vomit on you all their emotion. And frankly, those are the people that are still stuck there. Those are the people that are not willing to embrace resistance. Those are the people that when people hit adversity and resistance, they stay stuck at that level. They never level up unless they have the capacity to be.
14:38
very honest themselves and to try to be brave, to have some courage. And that’s whenever the muse kind of reaches across and says, let me ask you this, Marcus, once you had sort of turned the corner, did you then feel I wanna do something for other people? I did. I went back to teaching martial arts, it was my first love. And then I had other people that were less, that were students, then once they heard the story, they were like, you need to tell other people about this, you should write a book. And I’m like,
15:08
I’m not trying to do any of that. I’m just trying to live my life, trying to recover. But then I started getting coaching clients from that. I didn’t even know what a coach was. Somebody said that their business coach was not teaching them as much as I was in class. And I was a smart ass. And I was like, well, just write me a check. He did. He referred me to other people. They had a speaking event and the guy says, just come up and tell your story for half an hour. Okay. They did half an hour of Q and A. I didn’t know the speakers got paid.
15:36
He gave me a check. I was like, I can’t take this. He’s like, you’re the keynote speaker, idiot. Take the money. And on that first speaking event, there was a woman at the back of the room, an older woman who was pacing and she came up and she says, I want to buy your book. Ma’am, I don’t have a book. And she kind of wagged her finger and she says, how can you not have a book? What it was, she had a granddaughter who was going through adversity. And she says, this story is what she needs to hear. If you have a book, I can give it to her.
16:05
And she made me feel almost guilty that I hadn’t done the work. Again, it was like the muse is sort of tapping me and saying, because why would all that happen to me if I’m not going to use it to help other people? It’s almost like I have this responsibility in my mind. And that’s what pushed me to do these things. And what happens? We trust in the muse. We don’t know exactly what the path is, but we know it’s this general direction and we go forward. And then we just keep kind of blazing that trail.
16:33
And all of a sudden we come to that place, whether it be a crossroads or whether it be a new experience. And that’s whenever we say, oh, I can dovetail all these things. So just like you with all of your experiences in your life, it makes you so uniquely qualified to write about what you write about that there is no other way you could have gotten there had you not gone through all those paths of resistance and adversity. Yeah. And I would say of you, Marcus, that you were sort of evolving from the warrior archetype
17:03
to the mentor archetypes, to the teacher archetype, to the role model archetype, and moving from something that’s essentially ego-based where you’re pursuing your own whatever it was, as a soldier or whatever, to something that is other, helping other people on their, in their strides. Yeah, that true sense of- What you’re doing now with this podcast.
17:29
That’s it. And it’s that altruistic mentality that really helps us, again, stay tapped into what we should be doing. And it’s easy to sometimes fall prey to, I’ve noticed that resistance will sometimes give us consolation prizes to see if we’ll take it and not be resolute. Do you feel that to be true? Yes, it does. Yes, all the time. I’m trying to think of somebody was just talking about that the other day. I’m blanking on it right now. But yeah, you do get those consolation prizes. It’s like you can…
17:58
step off the ladder at a certain place, you know, you don’t have to go another rung or another rung. And it’s very tempting to step off that, that ladder. Oh, I know what it was. We were talking about why do, why do like rock stars and people that really get fame, why do they get involved with drugs or things like that, or with, with women or with sex or whatever it is. And that’s like a consolation prize, right? You’re, you started off living for the music.
18:25
right? And to create the music, you know, yeah, maybe you want to be a star and all that, blah, blah, blah. But it was for the music. And then suddenly, you got people all around you are saying, here, try this, try that, try, you know, and you take that consolation prize, and then you’re in trouble. It doesn’t even feel like we’re doing that. It just feels like, oh, okay, that’s, that’s okay for now. Yeah. But we don’t realize the commitment or how much gravity that that we put into those things just by making that one simple decision to compromise. And yeah, it’s
18:55
And it can take so many different forms, as you say, because that is resistance, because that means that we’re getting close to this better point, this precipice. Yeah. Which really, your namesake, the Emperor Marcus, really, that was what he sort of fought against his whole life, right? With his meditations, his journal, it was all about that. Don’t let me do that and stop off, you know. And he was the guy who had all the temptations in the world, being the Emperor of Rome. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, people don’t understand that.
19:21
again, that he was a rock star, he was a living God at that point. Yeah. And it was not uncommon to just say, throw another Christian on the fire or, you know, do this to entertain me. And he was very much against that. He was very much about this idea of, if it’s endurable, endure it, you know, even modern anxiety where he’s like, I escaped anxiety, you know, I realized that it was within myself, and I just released it. So that’s what I love about what you write about because in my mind, philosophy is simply
19:49
the name of a truth that people have seen at that moment in time. So Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Stoicism, logic, all those things overlap into these ideas where I want to absorb truth irrespective of source and not judge what it is. If it’s something that goes to my bullshit meter, that makes sense to me. And that’s why I love how you write. I have another question for you, Marcus, while I’m interviewing you here.
20:18
Interview by Stephen Pressman. In the world of podcasts, and there’s a shitload of them out there now, and many, many of them are kind of like yours, our conversations like we’re having here. And if I flash back to like my parents’ generation, there was nothing like that on any level. And clearly people who are listening to podcasts like this are evolving in their own way. They’re trying to ask themselves, you know,
20:47
What’s right? What’s noble? What’s honorable? What’s a good life? Here’s my question to you. And this is like, it’s not really being reported on, this phenomenon, but I would bet that there are maybe a hundred million people listening to podcasts, or there’s a shitload of people doing it. Do you see this as any kind of a…
21:10
a movement or a, is this a positive development in our society, our civilization? So the good thing about podcasts is that anybody can do it. The bad thing about podcasts is that anybody can do it. So it’s almost like when the internet came out and we all thought that if we, if the answer to humanity was that we didn’t have enough information, but then we realized that having a shitload of information that doesn’t really service is not the answer.
21:37
I believe that this is a movement. I believe that this will help a lot of people. But I believe that it’s very important, just like with reading, to be incredibly selective about what you allow in your ears, in your mind, in your soul. Because if you don’t do that, you will easily get awash by anybody else that has a larger platform or more money to advertise or frankly, something else they want to whack you over the head with to convince you to buy their product or belief in whatever they’re trying to sell you at that time.
22:06
That’s my good answer. Yeah, I guess I’ve sort of only been exposed to what I would say were positive or good podcasts. But I’m sure there’s a lot out there that are not so good. You know, a lot of people that have agendas that, you know, are demented, you know, at the least. That’s it. And many people, they want to use this as a vehicle to make money, but they’re doing it in the wrong way. In my opinion, being able to have a conversation with you is this reward. Being able to ask you questions and have a deep conversation with you.
22:36
shows you my respect that I have for you, but it also allows the listeners to learn even more about you. And it’s always a shame to me if I’ve been interviewed and somebody just does the same questions over and over again, you know, how’s adversity a gift, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s fine. We’ll talk about that. But to have you on this conversation and not ask you something that is truly valuable to me is a waste. And in a lot of ways, it’s a disrespect to you if I don’t do it correctly. So that’s why I try to make this the best
23:05
conversation that I possibly can. I know that you have to go out and know that we’re on a timeline, so I’ll do a few quick ones here and let you get to your next part. You have researched so many people in history, so many warriors, so many legends. Is there a person that has passed, that’s no longer with us? Who is a person throughout history that you would love to have dinner with, have drinks until the wee morning, sit on a deck and have a scotch and just have a conversation with? If there was one person that came to mind.
23:35
Well, there’s so many. I mean, I would love to be obvious sort of noble examples like Socrates or Leonidas or something like that. But there’s one character that I wrote a book about called Tides of War called Alcibiades of Athens. And he was a real dark character, but a really fascinating man of contradictions. And I would love to pick his brain and see what it was all about. He was
24:05
He was condemned to death leading this expedition out of Athens, condemned to death by his own people. He flipped sides and went over to the Spartan side and became from like a real peacock in Athens, dressed to the nines. He became like more Spartan than the Spartans and he won them all over and seduced the queen. And then when they turned on him and wanted to…
24:32
to kill him, he flipped over and went to the Persians, where he became even more Persian than the Persians and won them over again. And it sort of went on and on like that. And in the end, when the Spartans were trying to defeat the Athenians in this 27-year civil war, the Peloponnesian War, the last man they feared was him. He was the only guy that they thought could bring Athens back. And so they hunted him down and killed him.
25:01
with a team of assassins, but he was a really, really colorful character. And I would pick him. And I love the way that you write those characters because there is that yun yin almost darkness. Very few times are things black and white and we as humans always think that we’re doing the right thing, whether it be cognitive bias or justification. Even a serial killer justifies their actions. So I like how you bring that, the fact that it’s not always as simple as we would like to believe that it is.
25:30
when it comes to doing the right thing or the moral thing or the difficult thing, especially when we’re in the face of resistance. And the amazing thing when you write about history is that these characters are true. It’s not like you’re inventing some crazy Hannibal Lecter character or something. It’s like, this is what they did. They really lived, they really did this, they really did this. And, you know, it’s amazing sometimes that people do. I absolutely agree. The last question I have for you is…
25:57
When I went through my darkness, my hardship, my adversity, there was a big gift on the other side. And you’ve talked about this a lot while you’re writing and a lot of your podcasts, but is there an adversity that you went through that at the time seemed like you would never get to the other side, but when you did, there was a tremendous gift for you? Can you, what comes to mind? It could be something recent, it could be something in the distant past. I feel like there were so many passages for me. I could just go one after the other.
26:27
And each one was a great gift that took me to, you know, a different level. But always I felt like I’ve got so far to go and I’m still so screwed up. I still don’t have any way of making a living. I’m still, you know, it took me like, from the time I started writing until I had published my first novels, like 30 years, and I went through many almost successes and then that fell back into. So I do think it’s.
26:57
To me, I think sometimes when you’re young and you’re struggling with stuff, you think, oh, there’s just my one big break. You know, I’ll just have that one moment, like Marcus Aurelius winning, you know, bum, bum, bum. But in my experience, one just takes you to the next one and the next one and the next one. And the ultimate one is death. You know, the ultimate one is facing, you know, releasing the body and moving on to whatever comes next. So yeah, there’ve been.
27:26
It always follows that pattern, Marcus, you know, for me, but there have been many, many of them. So it’s almost like this collective attrition that continues to reinforce the truth of resistance, that that is your compass, that that is your ethos by which you conduct yourself. And I can’t argue with it because one, I agree with it, and it’s very much my path. But two, your results very much speak for themselves. There are literally millions of people whose lives have been changed by your writing, by your words. Even if they don’t know that you’re the one that wrote it, it is.
27:55
very much out there. It’s omnipresent in a positive way, not like resistance. And I think that more people need to be listening to what you have to say. Where can we find more about you? Where can I direct my listeners to purchase your materials, to get your books, to learn more about the writing craft itself? Just to my website, which is just my name, stev And also I’m on Instagram. You can find me there. Same name, Steven with a V.
28:24
And that’s probably enough right there. Yeah. I think it’s funny. Everyone go out and buy The War of Art, do the work, becoming pro, obviously do buy A Man at Arms. You are going to love all this stuff. If you listen to me and you’re listening to our voice. It’s just to get a little visual here. Yes. This is the new book it’s called A Man at Arms. It’s amazing. It’s good. It’s so incredible. I love it. And I cannot wait to read more of your works.
28:50
and learn more from you and all that you’re doing. So, Steven Pressfield, thank you so much, my friend. It’s been an honor. Thanks, Marcus. And we can do this again. I think we hardly scratched the surface here, you know? So, you know, give me a shout anytime and we’ll do it again. Well, I would be honored to do it. And don’t threaten me with a good time because I will, I will. I’ll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks a lot, Marcus. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
