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93dc61f
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professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
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Steven Pressfield |
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f594724
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What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop?
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Steven Pressfield |
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d48d472
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The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it's human, the proper role for a mortal.
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Steven Pressfield |
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147843e
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I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem.
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Steven Pressfield |
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Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual--in his phrase, "someone who reads books"--the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant."
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Steven Pressfield |
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b113983
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Our team has zero; has he got Close Air Support, drones, anything?
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Steven Pressfield |
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358ea77
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This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
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Steven Pressfield |
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99075d7
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Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work.
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Steven Pressfield |
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55f53f3
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NO MYSTERY There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.
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Steven Pressfield |
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aa6c246
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He is on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.
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Steven Pressfield |
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e158b6e
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These are serious fears. But they're not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that's so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don't believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all ..
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Steven Pressfield |
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00b59d3
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Juro, companheiros, [os persas] eram tao numerosos que ao lancarem os projeteis a massa de flechas bloqueava o sol! Os olhos do boateiro estavam inflamados de prazer. Virou-se para o meu senhor, como se para saborear a chama de pavor que sua narrativa inflamara ate mesmo em um espartano. Para sua decepcao, Dienekes olhava-o com um desprendimento indiferente, quase entediado. -- Otimo -- disse ele. -- Combateremos a sombra.
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Steven Pressfield |
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2734e3b
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We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood--it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause ..
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Steven Pressfield |
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fd0377c
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The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it's his vocation.
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Steven Pressfield |
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192dbd7
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The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His fa..
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Steven Pressfield |
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f7997c8
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If Resistance couldn't be beaten, there would be no Fifth Symphony, no Romeo and Juliet, no Golden Gate Bridge. Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
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Steven Pressfield |
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c2ede60
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We're facing dragons too. Fire-breathing griffins of the soul, whom we must outfight and outwit to reach the treasure of our self-in-potential and to release the maiden who is God's plan and destiny for ourselves and the answer to why we were put on this planet.
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Steven Pressfield |
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808f2cc
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The Bhagavad-Gita changes this. It takes the Warrior Ethos and elevates it to a loftier and nobler plane--the plane of the individual's inner life, to his struggle to align himself with his own higher nature.
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Steven Pressfield |
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6ec5275
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When Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel (so I've read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He'd get up at six, then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his wife insane. Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel (the Kona Village, which ain't so bad) and worked around the clock till he'd finished the book. Michael ..
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Steven Pressfield |
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7dfb12f
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Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.
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Steven Pressfield |
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73ba7a3
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A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does n..
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Steven Pressfield |
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7d881bd
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Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence. Those
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Steven Pressfield |
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We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us.
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Steven Pressfield |
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7fd14b7
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Panic Is Good Creative panic is good. Here's why: Our greatest fear is fear of success. When we are succeeding--that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level--that's when panic strikes. It did for me when my book crashed, and it was the best thing that happened to me all year. When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold..
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Steven Pressfield |
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315e339
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that of dealing death, of loosing another man's soul and sending it down to hell. You want to savor it, to twist the blade deeper and pull the man's heart and guts out upon the iron point of your spear,
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Steven Pressfield |
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e599b6a
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Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
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Steven Pressfield |
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1232d84
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We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood--it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause ..
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Steven Pressfield |
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f15987c
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the Spartan right fall upon the defenders of Antirhion, not in frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel with the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt.
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Steven Pressfield |
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59cc2b8
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We slew three hundred of them," replied Artemisia, "and it took two million of us to do it." These"
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Steven Pressfield |
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Nikad nisam u bici,ni igdje drugdje ,ni ja ni itko od ljudi prisutnih ispod hrastova,vidio da Dijaneku popuste uzde samokontrole kojima je tako cvrsto i suzdrzano upravljao iz srca.Sada se moglo vidjeti kako priziva sve preostale djelice volje da se sabere i povrati strogocu Spartanca i casnika.Ispustivsi dah,koji u stvari nije bio uzdah nego nesto dublje,poput samrtnog zvizduka koji daimon cini kada bjezi kroz grlo,pustio je bezivotno Alek..
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Steven Pressfield |
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884b8fd
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Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race ..
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Steven Pressfield |
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023d3c6
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The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.
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Steven Pressfield |
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4c15ea8
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Certainly I wouldn't be writing this book, on this subject, if living with freedom were easy. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
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Steven Pressfield |
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f3814c2
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I thought of you when I read this quote from "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield, Shawn Coyne - "Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance."
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Steven Pressfield |
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4327ce3
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Sharon was a realist. He recognized, as did Ben-Gurion and Dayan, that the Arabs had as legitimate a claim to this land as we did, and that they possessed pride and courage and anger, against which no rejoinder existed except the sword.
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Steven Pressfield |
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b159125
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In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.
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Steven Pressfield |
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054be2b
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The enemy is in you, but it is not you.
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Steven Pressfield |
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94517ac
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The opposite of fear is love--love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
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Steven Pressfield |
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f5fde3e
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I asked what he was laughing at. "I was just wondering if it was possible to get any more miserable." He chuckled darkly. "I suppose if a river snake crawled up my ass and gave birth to quintuplets..."
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Steven Pressfield |
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f3d2b69
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When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens.
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Steven Pressfield |
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721e9af
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So if you're paralyzed with fear, it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.
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Steven Pressfield |
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b5735b3
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I have always found the spear to be a rather inelegant weapon
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Steven Pressfield |
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d179beb
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You have never tasted freedom friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.
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Steven Pressfield |
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6db213a
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If you think this is funny, wait 'till you get into combat. You'll think that's hysterical!
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Steven Pressfield |