See why Steven Pressfield’s book will help you stop procrastinating and follow your calling.

If you keep resolving to make some significant change in your life, like reinvent your career or develop a neglected talent, but can’t seem to stick with it, Steven Pressfield has written the book for you. In The War of Art, he challenges you to tackle the forces of Resistance. Anytime you set your mind to being a better steward of your gifts and opportunities, all your fears will conspire to block your progress. You’ll experience this Resistance as procrastination, rationalization, excuses, emergencies, or general craziness. Pressfield draws on his own experience writing novels to warn that, unless you’re prepared to meet Resistance head on, and unless you’ve got a plan for powering through, you can’t expect your entrepreneurial aspirations to bear fruit. We’re just too easily waylaid by psychological untidiness.

His advice: Change your mindset by “going pro.” That is, by committing yourself to your practice (writing three hours a day, for instance) with the same discipline required to hold down a job. You’ll still experience Resistance, but if you don’t allow it to keep you from your commitment, you’ll get your work done. In time, it will lose its power as you will see it for what it is.

Tags: Calling, Recommended Reading, Steven Tomlinson, Teachers

Posted in Books & Notes, Guest Writers, Life of Meaning