These past few days have been quite fucked up, definitely something out of the ordinary...

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Life Update

For the past past 3-4 days I have been sick (don't worry only fever), and during those days I have experienced a new, fascinating mental state where my body has felt horrible but my mental wellbeing has been simply incredible. So I've been lying in bed pretty much for 3 days but hustling a 100% with great joy and motivation. This while drinking tea and trading crypto, just amazing. 💯

My insomnia has haunted me pretty bad during this week, and what I've done is to pretty much surrender to my sleep demons, meaning I've stayed up til 02-03 A.M engaging on Steemit and reading books, eventually drifting away into sleep when my mind have felt ready.

Zero resistance, just great. 🙏🏼

I also made a sublime restructuring of my Evernote, which I use for my quite complex note-taking system. And needless to say there are quite many interesting notes in there, one example is my 40+ book reviews I've made in the past.

There are some real golden nuggets in there, so for today's article - or should I say tonight's article - I'd thought we'll dig into my archive and see what we find. 🙌🏼

Venturing into the archives of uncle William's bookshelf

My friends, you're all in for a treat.🙏🏼

Looking through my book notes I stumbled across the book The War of Art written by Steven Pressfield. I must have read this book in 2015 or so. And reading through my notes I must say wow, what an incredible piece of literary work. Truly a piece art.

Being an author on Steemit is needless to say not easy, and I'm certain everyone of you reading this at times experience resistance. As humans we don't simply wake up every day feeling inspired to write numerous posts and answer comments for hours.

But quite often we still do. In the face of adversity and Resistance. Regardless of our emotions. And that's what it takes to succeed in anything worthwhile in life.

It is what it takes to truly become a professional as Pressfield calls it.

Let's delve deeper into this topic; now entering my notes from Steven Pressfield's, The War of Art.

The War of Art

Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Any of these will elicit Resistance.
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

Note that Resistance isn't some external enemy. Resistance arises from within. It is both self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is truly the enemy within.

Resistance in its nature, will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will assume any form and try endless of tricks, if that's what it takes to deceive you.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize.

What's particularly insidious about the rationalizations that Resistance presents to us is that a lot of them are true. They're legitimate.

What Resistance leaves out, of course, is that all this means diddly. Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de France multiple times.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

A practical rule of thumb you can use: The more important a call or action is to our personal growth, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

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The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; and the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific project, the more certain we can be that that project is important to us and to the growth of our person. *That's why we feel so much Resistance. *

Master that fear and we conquer Resistance. Allowing our creative work to flow.

If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.

The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.

The more resistance you feel towards a certain project, the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it. And important to note is that this is different from short-term gratification, this is a way more true sense of happiness in its nature.

In other words, if you feel a lot of Resistance towards a certain task, that's most likely a sign that you should tackle it.

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come.

This is key to a successful journey on Steemit.

Read that again.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post just as much as I enjoyed writing this.

Now give me what you got Steemit 💯❤️🔥👊🏼

Previous 'Better You' articles

Better You #4 : The Difficult Art of Relaxation & The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck
Better You #3 : Investing $1000 in Steem. Inside suffering is the seed of change.
Better You #2 : Hacks to improve your sleep and practical tips & thoughts to enhance your life
Better You #1 : A new Steemit project to help us all become the best version of ourselves