In preparation for my interview with Steven Pressfield, I picked up all his books so I can brush up on some I’ve already consumed and indulge in the ones I haven’t. In ordering my books, I was surprised to find Pressfield wrote a self-help book called “The War of Art.” Preliminarily, I must admit that “self-help” books rarely do anything for me. Often times there’s an air of self-righteousness on behalf of the author, and in doing that I immediately feel ostracized from feeling the empowerment the book intends. But Pressfield acknowledges his role as the sagacious professional and in fact instructs us on how best to embrace that within ourselves.

Essentially, the thrust of this book is that we all face Resistance in any creative endeavor we pursue. This term, Resistance, is used as an umbrella, serving to represent procrastination, fear of negative criticism, and all of life’s other distractions, dissentions, and banes of any creative person’s existence. Most any roadblock a writer, actor, or entrepreneur faces in pursuit of their goal is Resistance, and Pressfield eloquently explains that the tragedy of Resistance is that it’s rarely an entity outside us. In fact, Resistance lies in wait within our minds, awaiting the perfect time to “bully” us and beat us down.

To conquer Resistance is not impossible. Pressfield notes that people have been doing it since the origin of our species. However, Resistance is also programmed into our genetic code, and therefore is a universal opponent to us all. It’s no mistake that we tend more often than not to dream up grand schemes only to never fulfill them. To paraphrase Pressfield, you’ll always hear people say, “I’ll write my first big novel, I’ll just start tomorrow.” Never do we hear people say, “I’m never going to write my novel.” We allow Resistance to mold our intentions and confuse us into complacency. In this sense, if we continually succumb to Resistance, we become embittered towards success in others, try to breed Resistance within successful people, and continually allow our creative selves to be raped by it.

Still, Pressfield, the consummate professional he is, gives the key ingredients to overcoming Resistance, and provides useful tips to becoming successful at winning the “war of art.” Since this is such a quick read, I’ll leave it to you to discover just what those successful strategies entail – just know that they are feasible and simple to adopt.

However, two things irked me while reading this book – nothing a second reading won’t smooth over, but irksome nonetheless. The first was his use of the term Angels, or more generally his affinity with the spiritual realm in general. He equates Angel’s as an otherworldly creature synonymous with the Greek Muses, and argues that they are screaming for us to perform for them, as they themselves cannot partake in the arts as we do. Pressfield imagines that the Muses were in touch with hundreds of people who had the chance to hear the Ninth Symphony, but only Beethoven actually tapped into the realm beyond us to achieve such a monumental musical composition. It was within him the whole time, and the Muses helped him bring it out for humanity’s sake. As a person who does not believe in an afterlife, celestial beings, or God/gods, there were moments where I felt at odds with Pressfield’s engagement with this spiritual world. Perhaps that is just an inherent hang-up I have. And he never pushes this term on us. Rather allows us to call it what we want, be it Angel, Muse, or some evolutionary byproduct the agnostic can call “Talent.” It never changes the fact that there is something happening to us when we finally just sit down to write, and that I do believe.

The other thing, and maybe this speaks more on the self-help industry as a whole, was that the argument still just boils down to “either you do it or you don’t, so just do it.” I can relate to perpetuating a positive, empowered mindset necessary to achieve one’s goals, but I guess I’m too cynical sometimes to want to listen to these “simplified” answers to questions that are really much more complex. The solutions to life’s problems always seem to boil down to a platitude, which never solves anything. Yet I’m still unable to say that Pressfield falls entirely into this trap. He is acutely aware of what he’s doing, even admitting to the reader that in writing the book, he too faced Resistance, as he doubted his place in non-fictional works. I find that to be respectable, even commendable. Eschewing the “either you do it or you don’t” framework, Pressfield understands exactly why it is that thrusting oneself to the fore of the fight is so imperative. He says, “…the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying…when we…keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set in motion…unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.” I can deal with that, but I’ll call “serendipity” and the “unseen forces” by their real names – Strategic Thinking and Inspiration.

I will surely be reading “The War of Art” again on the plane trip out to Los Angeles to gain further introspection into the writing style of Pressfield, but do encourage anyone with writer’s block or apprehension in pursuing lifelong goals and aspirations to read this manual. At the very least, upon closing the book, you’ll have five minutes of clarity, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be near some sheets of paper to cast your thoughts into the lexical fray.