The title of Steven Pressfield’s great book on why it’s hard to produce and contribute the art you really want to.

If you only had time to read one short, insightful book  to help see the resistance then this might be it.

As I’m twenty percent through this book on my kindle, I’m really recommending the book-so-far.*  I left Pressfield this morning listing the many traits of Resistance which sidetrack from what we really want to do, including: procrastination, getting into trouble, sex, self-dramatisation, self-medication, and victimhood – because they’re easier than producing our art.

I see integrity and wholeness (which lead to perseverance) as the powerhouse or engine-room of living creative, enjoyable, and generous lives.  Resistance will do all it can to stop us getting there.  The steps towards this powerful centre involve humility (knowing who we really are – good and bad) and gratitude (the ability to see what we really have) lived out in daily habits and practices of our making (faithfulness).  All of these require some time to reflect before acting – a scarcity in today’s world, but not impossible.

(*I also ought to say, I always read several books together – which tends to have a multiplying or magnifying effect; away from home for a couple of night’s, I’m reading this in parallel with Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.)