Steven Pressfield – Talent is Bullsh*t (450)

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Episode transcript below:

00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. On today’s episode, I am talking with a major hero of mine, one of the most famous authors in my world, the one and only Steven Pressfield. We talk about so many topics like his concept of a shadow career, the finality of pulling the pin, resistance. We talk a lot about resistance. You’re going to like that, telling the voices in your head to go away, and why talent is bullshit and the work is everything.

00:51 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Humanism is a very powerful form of resistance. So you could say, well, it’s 80% of the way there, it’s good enough, let’s not grind these last 20. There’s a lot of good to that truth. To that I think. Like you say, put it out there and see what your response is. But then the other half of that is you certainly don’t want to put it out there and it’s no good. That has, I’m sure, defeated tens of millions of people in every possible form, not just writing, photography, acting, movie making you name it.

01:26 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
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02:33
Now here’s Steven Pressfield. Hello Steve, welcome to the how to Happen podcast.

02:46 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Mike, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

02:49 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, I’m very excited about this, and I’m also I do want to give a shout out to my friend both our mutual friend, nick Hutchinson, who introduced Steve and I. I’m very, very grateful to Nick for that, and if you want to learn more about Nick’s story episode 426, the episode is called 29 Years Young and when you listen to it, you’ll understand why this young man has the wisdom of someone much older, and these are just a really fun story. So I’m really grateful to Nick for connecting Steve and I. So let me tell you a little bit more about Steven Pressfield.

03:25
Steven is the author of the bestselling novels Gates of Fire and Tides of War, as well as the legend of Bagger Vance, which was you probably have heard of that because it’s made into a movie by the stars Will Smith, matt Damon and one of my favorites, charlize Theron. I like everything she’s in. Steven is also the author of the classics on creativity, the war of art, turning pro and do the work and also put your ass where your heart wants to be, which is one of my favorites of yours as well, steve. So here’s the thing Steve was 52 years old when his first book was published and, as of 2023, he has 2020 on the shelf and his newest is the Daily Pressfield, which is this book, right here, and you can see it behind me as well, because he has this really unique thing where he packages his book in a very lovely way and will sign it for you all. A special deal that I’m sure he’ll talk more about, that is has it been released? It says coming out Christmas 2023, but I think it’s available now.

04:34 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah, it’s available right now on Amazon or on my website, you know, in signed editions and stuff like that.

04:40 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, and take it from me. You want to get the signed edition because it comes with a lot of cool other stuff like illustrations. Like his illustrator, how do you say the last name of Victor, victor Juhaas Juhaas?

04:55 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
This guy A-U-H-A-S-Z.

04:58 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, he is phenomenal. How did you meet with him? How did you hook up with him?

05:02 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Actually through, partly through Ryan Holiday, I’m sure you know him, okay, yes sure, and also my business partner, sean Coyne, who both did books with Vic before and actually it was Sean who brought Vic in on the daily press field.

05:18 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay.

05:20 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
So that was how I was introduced to him.

05:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
You are going to have to connect me with him because I would love to learn more about his story and see if he could help me with some of my stuff as well.

05:28 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Okay, well, that’s where we do that, yeah.

05:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So here’s the thing Steve wrote for 17 years before he earned his first penny, which was a $3,500 option on a screenplay that was never produced, and he’s got a lot of those things that have never been produced.

05:40 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
So I want to talk to him about all of that stuff.

05:44 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And he wrote for 27 years before he got his first novel published, which was Legend of Bagger Vance. During that time, steve worked 21 different jobs in 11 states he taught school, drove tractor trailer, worked in advertising, worked as a screenwriter, worked on offshore oil rigs, picked fruit as a migrant worker and on and on and on. And almost all of that experience is he talks about, writes about in his book Government Cheese, which another fantastic book. I love that book so much. For one season he lived in a house with no power, no water, no doors, no windows. Rent was $15 a month and during all that time he was writing.

06:24
And because Steve is a master at focusing in on the work, that’s what success is about to him, and he realizes that, which is so cool. He realizes also that we have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self motivation, our self discipline, our self validation and our self reinforcement. We can control how hard and how smart we work. And he has two mantras for young writers and probably for anybody out there that wants to be a writer One number one, talent is bullshit, and number two, the work is everything. And you can learn all about Steve at his website, which is stevens S-T-E-V-E-N Pressfieldcom. Okay, steve.

07:12 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, mike, after that I don’t have to say anything. Am I stolen all the thunder? I’m so sorry.

07:18 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Steve, I started every podcast with this very simple question, and that is how did it happen for you?

07:24 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, sort of like what you just were telling everybody. It was a really long road for me, and I’m not sure if there was any particular moment. There were like many kind of steps along the way. I just couldn’t let go of this dream of wanting to be a writer and just kept plugging and plugging and plugging until finally, you know, 30 years later or whatever I actually woke up one morning and I was a writer.

07:55 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So that reminds me of well, I’m just going to go here right away. So what is the difference, steve, between being a writer and being an?

08:04 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
author.

08:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
If you draw a distinction. And the reason I ask is because when I wrote the only book I’ve written, I did it through Scribe Media and Tucker Max was sort of my coach and he had this very strong distinction between what an author was and what a writer was, so I’m curious if you have one as well, I don’t actually, but I’d be very curious to hear what Tucker Max.

08:28 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
what was his difference?

08:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So his difference was he wanted all of us to call ourselves authors and not writers, because we were engaged in the process of writing a book, which he felt was a totally different profession at least for us, because I got our first timers, you know, then being a writer. He thought that if you felt, if you thought too much about being a writer, you would never be an author, basically is what I took away from it, and I guess that maybe that was his way of just sort of laser focusing on us, like okay we got a book to do here, but I’m not sure, I don’t know if I would agree with him.

09:07 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I would say I would call the writer the higher appellation of the two, just in the sense that if you’re a singer, you sing, you know. If you’re a dancer, you dance. If you’re a filmmaker, you make films, and if you’re a writer, you’re right and you write, you know that’s your medium of expression and that’s you know, that’s the craft that you follow. I understand what Tucker’s trying to say, but I don’t see. I don’t put writer anywhere below author in any sense. It’s a very fine distinction. Point is really just to do the work.

09:42 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, do the work, and that’s kind of what your whole thing is about is doing the work. But I wonder, like for people who haven’t read government cheese, let’s say, because that’s that one really sort of outlines, and maybe some of your others do as well, but that one really outlines this journey. First of all, what was it that made you want to be a writer? And then, second, steve, how the hell did you keep wanting to be a writer after all the time that you spent writing, stopping writing, writing, stopping writing, doing this job, doing this career, all of these different things.

10:22 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I think let me answer the second half of that. Firstly, okay, you know I started out and I was no good at all. You know it took me. That’s one great thing about writing is you can get better at it. You know there are things you can learn. You can get better, you can work hard.

10:37
For me, in a way, I think the many years of having no success were actually good, because they forced to answer the question why am I doing this? You know, because my family thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy If I was doing it for money that wasn’t working, because I certainly wasn’t making any money and if I, or for recognition or anything like that. And so in the end I just had to answer the question that I was in it for the love of the game. I was in it for the, just for the process itself, you know, for the fun of doing it itself, and which I think is really the only way you can really be in any kind of creative endeavor. You know, obviously people think of it as a business and you can. You know it can make money and support yourself, blah, blah, blah. But you really have to be in it for the love of the game, I think. So that was kind of.

11:32
At some point I did have that realization that I didn’t you know whether I succeeded ever or not. I was gonna keep doing this no matter what, because anytime I tried to do something else, I would try to go straight from time to time, as it talks about in government cheese. You know, I’d try to get a real job or something like that, and I would always be so depressed at the end of the day that I just thought I just can’t keep doing this shit. Whatever it is. You know, the only thing that’s gonna keep me sane is to find a few hours in the day and try to write something.

12:06 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So you’ve obviously done that. But as I was reading, especially as I was reading government cheese, I kept thinking myself and you keep saying, you keep. You would call yourself a screwball, you would call yourself a. All of these negative, you would say all of these negative things to yourself, and it seemed like and you had trouble committing right, I mean, let’s, you had trouble committing to relationships and you had trouble committing to jobs. But it felt like every time you got a job that you talk about in the book, for example, like truck driving, for example it seemed like you wanted to be committed to that, even maybe more than you wanted to write. It’s like you wanted an excuse not to write, which I think you call resistance. Ultimately, that’s how you came up with it. But yeah, so do you feel like? Is that what it was? Was it a commitment problem, because? Or was it?

12:55 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
was it? I mean, for years in that era here I know this is kind of hard to follow, but I was really running away from writing. I had sort of tried it at the start of my career, started to write a novel, tried to write a novel and it blew up at the end. I blew it up, I couldn’t, I didn’t have the guts to finish it at the very end, you know. And so at that point I kind of said to myself I don’t want to mess with this writing business ever again. This is terrible, it’s gonna destroy me if I do it. And so I kind of ran away from it.

13:27
And that was when a lot of the jobs that you were citing, when I worked those jobs and particularly like the truck driving part of it I really did want, I really was committed to that, I really did want to succeed, because I thought I’m never gonna be a writer, I’m never gonna be anything else. Let me try to succeed at this. But there did come a point where I did finally sort of turn the corner and say, okay, I am gonna be committed to writing, do or die. And at that point I just started grinding and even if I had jobs that didn’t have anything to do with writing. I would write on the weekends, I would write at night, I would never stop.

14:04
And then at a certain point I went out to Hollywood and after like five or six years I did begin to have a career as a screenwriter. So I finally was actually working in the you know, getting money for being a writer, and at that point I really started to learn, you know, when you’re working. I worked with a partner who was an older, more established writer, who was kind of a mentor to me, and now I was sort of in the university, so to speak. And then it wasn’t that hard to keep going because I just thought I’m trying to get better. I’m trying to get better. You know, each one, each thing I do is gonna get better, and it did work out like that.

14:49 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
There’s a funny story you tell about that time when you were working with Steven Seagal and he came to your house, I guess, and if I recall you guys were working on something and he got on the phone and he was talking to someone and what did he say?

15:05 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
He said obviously whoever was on the phone line asked him where are you. He was in my house, right. And so he said you know some shit hole in East LA and I was. I certainly didn’t look at it that way. I was so happy to have a house of any kind.

15:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right, that was so funny.

15:24 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I never knew if he was kidding or not, but that was what he said.

15:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
The truck driving. I’m probably the only podcaster that you’ve to show you’ve been on, who actually is, has been and still has a CDL. I started truck driving when I was a young man and then I had a number of trucking companies and so the whole. I just wanna give you a credit here for, like, I know a lot of people don’t really maybe care that much about truck driving, but if you wanna know about truck driving, the way that you write about it from you, know the no clutch to drop in the trailer on its nose to you, know what it’s like being loaded, what it’s like being unloaded going through the mountains all of that stuff was just really, really captivating for me, like it was super, like you felt like you were in the truck driving it through your words, it was really well done.

16:23 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Thanks, mike, and I really appreciate that coming from somebody who knows what it’s all about.

16:27 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, it was really cool and the fact that you could remember what your paycheck your first paycheck- was. That blew me away. So, anyway, let’s talk about the Daily Press Field, which is a different kind of book for you, and you mentioned Ryan Holiday at the beginning, and Ryan influenced, encouraged you to write this book, as I understand it, and helped you.

16:51
The title and all. Of course, ryan has a lot of books and he has a book with the same type of structure called the Daily Stoic. I guess I look in and I say, okay, you’re talking to Ryan and he’s like well, I’ve done the Daily Stoic, steve, you should do this book. Were you like, well, that kind of book’s already been done. Or were you like, oh, I never thought about doing a book like that.

17:13 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Oh, okay, yeah, actually, as soon as Ryan said that to me you know it’s really like a devotional right, it’s a 365 day thing and what I immediately thought it was a great idea. Because I have, in recent days, for whatever reason, various people have kind of come to me over the last maybe a year or so and said to me I’ve got a book I want to write. How do I do it? I don’t know how to do it and although I’ve sort of addressed that topic in a number of books in the War of Art and Turning Probe but they’re all sort of scattered all over the, you know there’s this chapter and that chapter, and so I thought this 365 day format is a great way to kind of walk somebody through you know, a long-term project.

18:05
So, as you know from reading, Mike, it’s like the first day, day one of the Daily Press Field starts when you wake up in the morning of the first day when you’re gonna try to do some long-term project like write a book or screenplay or start a business or be a podcaster or something like that, and it kind of walks the reader through the whole process with a heavy emphasis on avoiding self-destruction and self-sabotage, In other words, dealing with capital R resistance. So, in other words, I just thought this is a great format. I thank Ryan for this, for guiding somebody through a long-term project that they wanna do.

18:52 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And how did you like tackle the actual project of writing it Like because I’m thinking myself you know, this is a really cool idea you’ve got. You haven’t broken into months and then in the days of course and there’s themes, but I always wonder to myself like I write something I’m like is that really good enough to be a standalone lesson for someone for a day. So I’m wondering how you figured out what stayed in, what left in the structure.

19:25 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, I sort of followed the process that someone would go through if they were working on a book.

19:31
Let’s say they were writing a book or any long-term project.

19:34
So the book first week is about sort of introducing the concept of resistance and the fact that this is going to be really hard and you got to gear yourself up for that voice in your head that’s going to try to sabotage you and tell you you’re not good enough, etc. Etc. And then it kind of moves on in the second and third week and goes to like the first outline that you will do of this project, whatever it is, which is what I call the fool’s cap method. And I have a whole method, that kind of you block out the book or the project from A to Z right at the beginning. And then I just sort of carried it on through there and like one of the things that I know you know, mike from from writing is there’s such a thing as second act horrors, right, Everybody that gets into the middle of any kind of project. That’s where the thing becomes a real grind and where you really want to give up you know, which is really the same in anything like a season as in the NFL.

20:35
The middle of the season, right At the beginning of the season, you’re excited because you know you got these early games and you’re going to really establish where the team is going. And at the end of the season you’re coming down to the playoffs and maybe you’re going to get to the Super Bowl. But in the middle it’s just a grind. It’s like you know. So I thought let’s make the middle of this book the daily press field about that and you know second act horrors and what that’s all about and how to deal with it. And then, at the end of the book, I thought what’s the most serious thing that we can talk about when we’re, when we’re working on on any kind of long term project, that creative project? And it’s and it’s the question of what happens if you fail.

21:17
What happens like, as I had done many, many times, does that mean you’re a loser? Does that mean this whole project, it was a waste of time? And I’ve absolutely believed. No, that’s not it, and I and it’s my idea of what a career as a writer or any creative person is is to think of it as a lifelong practice, that you’re doing a spiritual practice, just like meditation or martial arts or anything like that. So the book ends on that note. You know that, no matter what has happened so far, whether this work succeeds or not, you’ve done it for a year. Think of it as a practice and keep going. So that was how the sort of I just sort of followed what would happen to a person as they go from A to Z over the course of a year.

22:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, and this whole concept of failing, like as you’re moving toward a goal, is that like? So? I’ve heard people say okay, I don’t want to use the word failure because nothing you know. Again, getting back to like how you talk to yourself, nothing is really nothing is really a failure if it’s, if you’re learning from it. It’s pushing you forward, do you? Is that how you think, or do you think? Well, it’s okay to call Okay.

22:35 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah, definitely. I mean I don’t think it helps to sugarcoat it certain things and say, oh, this is not a failure. I mean a lot of times it is a failure. You know, you spend two years on a project, a screenplay or something like that, and it doesn’t get made and you don’t make any money and everybody thinks you’re an idiot, you know. But by the same token, you are learning, you know, and the person who does succeed is the person who puts each failure behind them and just keeps going and and takes the lessons from it. And I mean I definitely feel that was true. If I were to, if you were to look at the first stuff that I wrote and the middle stuff and hopefully you know you would see it’s getting better as it goes along.

23:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right, and you was there a particular time or a specific time, Steve, where you kind of grabbed hold of that in a positive way, Because it seemed like, for at least a portion of your life, as you were, you know, experimenting with all of these different things, you well, it seems like you might have given into failure, you know. And then you know I, you know I’m not successful at this, so I’m switching and I’m going to try this, as opposed to, you know, like this is all deliberate practice to what I ultimately want to become.

23:56 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, that’s a great question, right? There was a time and it was like when I first started out, my dream was to write novels. For whatever reason, I thought, you know, I want to be here in this timing way, I want to do that’s the coolest thing to do. And I did that for I don’t know, maybe 12 or 15 years or something. I never got anything published, never even came close, and I had a sort of a you know an all this loss moment where I decided, okay, I’m going to give up on this, I’m getting nowhere, I can’t take another three, four years working on something. So I said, let me try movies. I moved from New York to LA.

24:31
It was sort of a desperation thing and, like I said, after a little bit of stumbling and bumbling, I did start to have a career as a screenwriter. And it was because of teaming up with an older writer, where I was like the junior member of the team, and at that point I did really feel like, ah, now I finally got some traction. You know, the work, the thing I did last year, is not as good as what I’m doing this year, and the thing I’m going to do next year is going to be better than that and I really felt like like I was in a great apprenticeship where I really I was learning. So I really did feel like at that point I do have traction, I am getting better, I’m not just stumbling around bumping into walls.

25:15 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, and another theme of your life, at least for a portion of it, is moving, being on the move in in government cheese you talk about. You know, you’ve got this 65 Chevy van and you have ultimately end up putting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles on it, just sort of crisscrossing the country and going all over the place. And I’m wondering, like, did you get better when you stopped moving, or do you still move Like that’s just a really interesting theme.

25:49 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
That’s a good, that’s another great question. Like, definitely, for me all of that motion was about running away from writing. It was a. It was a false shadow activity, you know, because the thing about it, you know, as a truck driver you feel like you’re making progress because you’re moving down the road right. You started at Tuscaloosa this morning and you’re in Mobile tonight, you know. But in fact for me it was completely false and it wasn’t my calling. You know, what I really wanted to do was be going forward as a writer and this was, this was kind of this was a shadow career for me, which I’m a big believer that when we’re in shadow careers, to look for the metaphor of what that career, what that shadow career is about and that’ll kind of point us to what our real career is. So for me, driving was about going someplace, except I was just going in circles.

26:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Except you did meet some people while you were driving who? And while you were picking fruit and while you were doing all these other things, who had a big impact on you. They gave you confidence, they gave you well, they did both things. They gave you gifts and then they also sort of showed you why you didn’t want to maybe be doing that right.

27:11 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
It’s kind of? Yeah, it’s very cool and we do encounter mentors in the strangest places. You know, and for me, a lot of my mentors were not writing mentors, they were people in other fields.

27:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, let’s talk about some of those you mentioned. The one who helped you write was that Ernie, or was that? Yeah, okay, that was in the movie business, okay, all right, and then it was Stanley in the screenwriting business Stanley in the screenwriting business.

27:38 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
But I’ll tell you here’s another one. That was a real mentor to me was when I was picking fruit as a migrant laborer. It was apples. I was picking apples in Washington state and the way that thing works is, the season lasts about eight weeks and the people that run the orchard they want you to stay for the whole eight weeks. They don’t want you to quit halfway through right, and there may be 200 guys working on the orchard right Living in bunkhouses, and so the way they do that, you get paid by the bin. You pick a bin, and at that time it was like you got $4 for a bin and what they would do is they would hold back a dollar from that and put it on account for you, and if you stayed for the whole eight weeks then they would give you a bonus at the end, and it was very, very hard for people to stay. There was a phrase I’m probably telling you more than all. Right, he wants to know, but I’ll go for the long story Go for it.

28:37 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
yeah, this is cool.

28:39 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Most of the fruit tramps were like guys that rode the rails, traveled on my freight train and there’s a phrase among these guys called pulling the pin, and pulling the pin means to quit, and it comes from when two cars on a railroad train, a freight train, are uncoupled from one another. The trainman pulls a pin out from the coupling thing and then the cars go. So a lot of guys in the bunkhouse would pull the pin. They couldn’t take it anymore. It was too cold, the work was too blah, blah, blah, and as I was working there I was also in my real life finally trying to finish the first book I’d ever finished. So I’d always quit at the end, you know. So that was pulling the pin.

29:26
And I made friends with a guy I never even knew his last name, his name was John, he’s from Seattle, he was a former Marine and he was like the fastest picker in the whole orchard right. He could pick, I could pick maybe three a day, he could pick 12 a day. Anyway, he somehow saw through me. He knew my story, he got it from one and there were times when I would try to quit, I would try to leave, but he would not let me pull the pin. And so I consider, and I did stay all the way through and I got my bonus and I felt like that really changed my DNA in some way, and so I have him to thank forever. I went back and finished the book and ever since then I’ve never had any trouble finishing anything. So there was a guy I didn’t even know his last name, but he was like a great mentor to me. That changed my life.

30:24 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And, if I recall, he had been there multiple years, so this was something he kept coming back to.

30:30 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
He did it every year.

30:31 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And I think you said he was like an alcoholic the rest of the year right and then he would come and yeah, and again, that’s like I know you talk about Tony Tony Keppelman as being the first person you met that had self-discipline, but it seemed like John you might have met him, I don’t know the.

30:50 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
He had a lot of self-discipline too. Ok, I was sure you met him. He could be kind of a wine drinking guy that lived in a single room occupancy hotel, but when the picking season came around he was able to just stop drinking Because he put in like three months and he could make enough money to go with his disability pension whatever he had Because he had been a Marine in.

31:17
Korea, at the Cho-Sin Reservoir. Another reason I really respected him and he could do that work three months and live the rest of the year and somehow he had the mental strength to just stop drinking and then when it was over, the season was over he’d go back to drinking.

31:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right, yeah, amazing. And you became a better picker too. That was good.

31:39 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
You learned Very poorly, very poorly. There’s no future for me in that.

31:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, you mentioned resistance and you mentioned capital R resistance and you write a lot about resistance. Let me break in just for one second. Oh yeah.

31:51 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Now that our audience is into this how does apple pick it? I’ll tell you how it works. Yeah, go ahead If you’re a really lame apple picker. You reach up and you grab one apple, pull it off the tree and put it in your little sack. But if you’re really good, you use one hand, two hands, one hand, and then, if you’re really good, you get one apple with the first two fingers, then you get a second apple with the next two fingers and then a third apple at the end. And you’re doing it with both hands, so that when you reach up, you come down with six apples, instead of me I would come down with one. So that’s how somebody is good and somebody’s bad at picking fruit.

32:33 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That reminds me of a story from a young part of my career. I worked for a trash company and I was a supervisor and our guys picking up residential routes. They got paid by the day and sort of like this you get paid by the bin, these guys got paid by the day. And there was this guy and I believe his name was John too, and John was just like your John. He was the person you wanted, like people, respond to incentives. So John, your John responded to incentives. This John responded to incentives when he started that route. This guy would run the entire day and he wouldn’t come back to the truck with two bags, he’d have eight bags or whatever. And then every day he was done at noon and everybody else was working till 3 o’clock. And that was good for him for two reasons One, he could go home if there wasn’t any work. But two, if there was still additional work, like he had to go help somebody else on their route, he got paid double time for that.

33:38 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
The kid was super smart.

33:39 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I don’t know on the safety side whether they loved him much, but man, that kid, could he just changed the whole paradigm? He’s like oh OK, you’re going to pay me by the day. Here’s how you maximize that.

33:51 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I got to say I love stories like that and I love guys like that. Yeah, me too. Where do they come from? Where do they get this thing? You know, it’s amazing. It’s amazing Resistance.

34:01 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, so you mentioned resistance, capital R resistance. You talk about resistance all the time. This whole book, your newest book, all about resistance, really about overcoming resistance on a project. What is resistance, Steve? Like? How do you define it? What?

34:16 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
is it? If you have ever bought a treadmill and brought it home and seen it gather dust in the attic, then you know what resistance is. Particularly it is for a writer. When you sit down in front of one of these things, you can feel or a blank page, you know, to typewriter, I can feel, and everybody else feels too a negative force, kind of radiating off that blank page trying to stop you from doing it. And the form that resistance takes is a voice in your head and the voice will say something like you’re not good enough to do this.

35:00
Who do you think you are trying to write? Whatever you record a record album or start a podcast or whatever. You’re too old, you’re too young, you’re too fat, you’re too thin, you don’t have enough education, you have too much education, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing that resistance will do is it will try to distract you and it will say today’s the day, you know, let’s not do it today, let’s not start our book today, let’s go to the beach today, we’ll start it tomorrow, you know. Or it’ll distract you with social media or the web or any of the other bullshit that there is.

35:41
So it’s like many times I’ve sort of tried to psych up a group of people would be writers or would be whatever to do there sit down and do it, and of course, nobody ever does it. It’s a really rare bird that can, and the reason they don’t do it is because their own resistance, their own self-sabotage, fear, complacency, tendency to procrastinate and proclivity for distraction defeats them. And so for me, the skill that’s far more important than talent. This is why I say talent is bullshit. Far more important than talent is just the ability to sit down every day, like the daily press field is trying to talk people through those 365 days, sit down and when it’s boring, when it’s tedious, when it’s hard, when it’s scary, and just keep going. That’s. If you can do that, you don’t need talent. You’ll develop it over time.

36:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And is resistance different than procrastination, or is it a is?

36:48 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
it procrastination plus Just one part of it, just one part of it, one part of it. It’s the most common part, but it’s just one part.

36:57 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, if you say resistance is always lying and always full of shit, like you have all these in a war of art, you have all of these different, really, really cool things about resistance. And when I read it and actually so when I read it I kept thinking myself okay, because I wasn’t calling it resistance at the time, steve, I was calling it like procrastination or I was calling it you know, I got something better to do, or I was calling it all of these things that I love the way that resistance just sort of lumps it’s the word onto which you can lump all of those things, and that’s what it is.

37:32 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah.

37:33 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
In fact, you mentioned too that that Hitler wanted to be an artist and it was easier for him to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank canvas. That was remarkable. It may be a bit of an overstatement, but there’s a lot of truth to it.

37:49
I think it’s. I think it’s, I think you hit it right on the head. I mean, I think even now in my life, like I’m trying to do these different things and I make I’m a good out of the gator, I make really good progress and I’m like this is, you know, 80% of the way there. And some people I think smart people say, well, 80% is pretty far, why don’t I just go for it? I’m 80% there, you know, let’s just put it out there and then I’ll learn whatever the rest of the 20% I need to learn. But I tend to be like, wow, that 20% is really bothering me.

38:24
You know like I should get that done, and then, because that’s very hard to get that 20% done, I lose steam Like, which I guess is resistance, because that’s the part where I’m I’m afraid. I guess at that point like I’m afraid that it won’t be good enough.

38:44 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I can relate to that completely, mike. So there’s actually two forms of resistance going on in that kind of thing. It’s a million times myself. One is perfectionism is a very powerful form of resistance, right? And so you could say, well, it’s 80% of the way there, it’s good enough, you know, let’s, let’s not grind these last 20. And there’s a lot of good to that truth, to that, I think. You know. Sometimes, like you say, put it out there and see what your response is. But then the other half of that is, you’d certainly don’t want to put it out there and it’s no good, right? So maybe it’s a great idea to grind that last 20% out, you know. But that’s just one form that has, I’m sure, defeated tens of millions of people in every possible form, not just writing, you know photography, acting, moviemaking, you name it.

39:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And when you, when you’re thinking, when you’re in that spot or you’re thinking about that, whose voice matters the most? Like if you show it to your wife or your spouse or your friend and they’re like Steve, this is awesome, you should go for it and your story story like, well, I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s good enough. Yet Is it whose voice is more important in your experience?

40:04 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
when you come to that my own voice. You know, I sort of learned to to after sort of giving away that power many times over the years, listening to people and then thinking why did I ever listen to that, son of a bitch? You know they were steering me wrong. You know I figure in the end it’s all up to us anyway, right, you or me, whoever. So it’s our baby and we’ve got to be the one that makes the decision. So I always try to, but I, my voice in that case is a pretty hardcore voice and I will definitely not let myself off the hook.

40:42
And that’s developed over time, right, I mean I developed over time, coming from letting myself off the hook so many times and and feeling how bad that feels. You know right.

40:54 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
How do you think about let’s take the opposite side of resistance. If we could like the number of books, say, that are published daily, weekly, monthly, annually now, compared to, say, when you had to find a publisher and you had to find an agent, you had to find all of those things. Has that so in one? In one sense, the resistance of other people has sort of gone away or been greatly diminished because you can take control of yourself and you can publish on Amazon or your own blog or whatever your website. Has that helped people become less resistant and better writers to you, steve, or has it hurt?

41:38 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
It’s a good. Another great question I think it’s it’s not that hard to finish and publish, self publish one book, but what’s the second and the third and the fourth? That’s when kind of the rubber meets the road. You know, I certainly commend everybody that that takes on that challenge or any kind of parallel challenge starting a company, starting a podcast, whatever, and does it every. Every success is great in terms of building your confidence and self belief. So I commend everybody that’s done it. But it’s easier to do the first one than it is the second and the third one. And that’s when you know when it’s sort of the two colors really come out.

42:25 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And do you think that’s because most people have their own story, that they know how to tell, and so telling that story is kind of easy. And then if you go for the second one, it’s like, oh, I need, I need to either get more nuanced about that story or I need to really dig deep into me for another story, or what’s it? What do you think happens?

42:48 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
It all depends on you know, when you were talking about all the people who publish books a lot of them I think are like Amazon, self publishing type of thing, are not like stories.

42:59
I think a lot of them are kind of self-help books, you know oh personal development, which are like the easiest kind of thing to write, I think, and they sort of do do one and then they don’t know what else to do after that. It really is a question of are you a writer or do you want to write a book? This is a question that people might ask themselves. You know, and if you’re a writer you want to keep going. You know you have really no choice except to keep going.

43:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
But there are a lot of people that want to.

43:32 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
You know, like somebody that is, let’s say, teaches a course and something it might be computer coding or something like that and they want to write a book because it will give them certain credibility when they advertise their next online course or whatever. That’s one thing. That’s somebody that wants to write a book, great, you know. But that’s not a writer. That’s not somebody that, you know, wants to go from one to two to three to 12, you know. So maybe that’s great, that everybody, everyone that does it, my hat’s off to them, you know, okay.

44:06 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, that’s how I feel too, but I think what you said there maybe gets back to what Tucker Max’s point was. Maybe I messed up his point. It was kind of like hey, you’re here because you want to be an author, so we’re going to get you a book and you’re going to be able to put it on your website and you’re going to be able to say, you know, when you’re speaking bio, like, I’m a published author.

44:24
And maybe that’s what the point is as opposed to like hey, if you want to be a writer, that’s a whole different ballgame.

44:31 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
There is a certain addictive quality to writing. In a sense, you know you write one and you think, well shit, maybe I’ll write another. You know.

44:40 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
How much do you write, steve, that never sees the light of day these days. I know you A lot, okay.

44:48 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I remodeled this room. You can’t really see it right over there. There used to be a closet and it was just full of screenplays that I’d written and like practically none of them got made, you know.

45:01 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot and do you think we talked about like whose opinion matters most, but like for people who are listening and they’re like okay, so I’ve been writing, I write regularly. I just the problem I have is connecting all of my writing because maybe there’s not, like I don’t have an organized theme, like I’m going to start here and this is the book I’m going to write.

45:23
instead, it’s like I’m writing about this today because it’s on my mind and this is what gets me up, but because I know I think a lot of people might be in the same boat that I find myself in. Sometimes I’m writing about stuff that interests me and you know I think there’s something there and it’s pretty good and it. But you know, but it’s only like a chapter, let’s say, and it’s not, it’s not a book. And then I write about something else that interests me and all of a sudden you’ve got all these different files of stuff that’s interesting, but it’s like you don’t know how to put it all together. I guess, how do you do?

45:58 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
that I would say that that sort of scattered thing is a form of resistance. Resistance is faking you out, you know, or faking somebody out, you know, so that you can kind of tell yourself well, I wrote all year long, you know, I wrote like a grand total of 730 pages, you know Right, but the bottom line is there was nothing that you could actually, and so resist, put together and call a book. So resistance, one’s own self-sabotage, has defeated them, you know. So for me, if I’m going to start on something, I always want to think of it as a book, you know, and I ask myself is there enough here for an actual book that can be sold, that people will be interested in? Because I’m not interested in just doing a chapter here or a chapter there, yeah, so if the idea is big enough to support a book and I like it and I think it’s, you know, going somewhere, then I’ll go.

46:57
Okay, now I’m going to focus on this thing. I’m not going to write any other. You know stuff that comes into my mind. I’m focused on this one project, just like if you were starting a business, right, if you were opening a restaurant, let’s say, you know, you’re not going to, you know, do a Chinese restaurant one day in a Thai fusion restaurant the next day. You got to focus on whatever, whatever, that one thing that you’re going to do.

47:21 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I like how you said it’s a form of resistance, because you can fool yourself into thinking that it’s really a form of your creativity. That’s what it really is right, but it’s not.

47:33 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah, that’s why resistance is so diabolical, and you know, and so subtle, you know, because it presents you with a way to exonerate yourself. You say I’m creative, I’m doing, you know. But then at the end of it, you know, resistance looks down on you and says where’s the book? You know what have you got?

47:52 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I read this, this, this quote that you wrote, and I just want to read it to you and get your reaction to it. And it said you said if you’re a writer, sometimes you feel like a ghost. It’s not you really producing the work. You understand that you’re a vehicle, like a truck is a vehicle. You deliver a load. When you’re done, the trailer is empty, you seal it up and you drive away. And I read that and I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read it, because there’s a lot. There is like, when you’re a writer, you’re a ghost, you produce something and when it’s done, you, I guess you just like, hey, you move on, it’s like to the next thing. I don’t know if I’m interpreting that right, so I just wanted to okay, okay, I mean.

48:39 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I think every artist or creative person, musician, you know, dancer, whatever, knows that the you know, like Bob Dylan supposedly said one time that he can’t remember writing the songs that he wrote, right, and so for him it’s really sort of clear and I agree completely that the songs are coming from somewhere else. You know, and we certainly have read stories of, like Tom Waits, or somebody who’s driving along the freeway and all of a sudden a song comes to him and he, like in a panicky like, pulls off the freeway parks and writes it down, you know, dictates it into his phone, into his phone, you know. And so how do you explain that? You know, it’s the idea, is kind of coming from somewhere else. And I think that, like the idea of a, if we’re driving a truck, we’re delivering a load, the load is the song, the load is the book, whatever it is.

49:38 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah.

49:38 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
But we didn’t invent that load, we’re just, we’re just driving the truck right and when we deliver it to the reader or the you know concert go or whatever, we hope it’s something that’ll make him happy, you know, or that’ll give them something right. But that’s the best we can do is hope for that, you know. And then we deliver it to them, and then the trailer is empty, yeah, and it’s time to move on to the next load, and that’s kind of what we, that’s what we do, and I think it’s a very, it’s a dangerous kind of trap to get your ego involved in something like that and think, oh, I wrote this thing, you know this is coming from me, because it really isn’t, you know, it’s coming from some other mysterious place. You know, that’s how I feel about it.

50:25 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, and it kind of, when you say that, it kind of reminds me of some of the stories you hear about writers who have, you know, this tremendous out of the gate hit and then they can’t do, they can’t accomplish something else. It’s like they’re always working on something but they can’t accomplish something else and that’s and maybe that’s it right there, they haven’t sealed that, they haven’t sealed the, the, the doors of the tailgate or whatever, and moved on like put that away.

50:55 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Yeah, or maybe you know there’s. There was a great Ted talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. You know she is of eat, pray, love and magic, you know yeah.

51:06
And she talks about. After the huge success of eat, pray, love, she kind of had this sort of sophomore panic of what am I going to? How am I ever going to top this? You know, and her friends would say this to her and aren’t you scared that you’re never going to be able to top this? You know, everything is going to be downhill from and she’s sort of, I guess, had a real crisis over this and she kind of finally came out of and she just sort of said to herself I’m a writer, I’m going to keep writing, you know, and God bless me for keeping. I’m going to keep grinding it out, and maybe there’ll be another big hit and maybe they won’t, but I’m here to to serve the goddess, you know, and to and to keep doing it. And you know, and I think that’s absolutely the the smart way of looking at it and the true, true way of looking at it. You know, God bless her for just saying that.

51:58 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, and there’s also nothing wrong with never having as big of a hit as you had before, because life ain’t like that you know, and life is like well. You’ll never have that if you don’t keep moving, but if you never get there again. It’s not like like you said, it’s not like you failed.

52:17
You’ve continued to work and yeah, so we’re talking on a Wednesday and you have an email that you send out every Wednesday called writing Wednesday, today’s, having a practice, and I love getting these and reading these every week. I’m wondering why you do it, and and then we’ll just focus on today’s, which is practice, which is seems like the antidote for resistance is practice, but I don’t know. Yeah, why do you do it?

52:46 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, it actually was. I had a publicist years ago named Callie Atenger here, and she was her idea. She said you know, you need to get a presence on the web. This was I don’t know a long time ago, and so the concept was that each Wednesday, I would do like the equivalent of another chapter from the War of Art.

53:08
Okay, you know, and it would be about writing or about resistance or whatever it was. So, and you know I’ve been doing that forever, you know, because as a any kind of an individual writer, artist, entrepreneur, these days, obviously you have to have a presence on social media or on the web so that when, when a book comes out, you can at least let people know, otherwise nobody’s ever going to know. But coming back to what we just were talking about, about Elizabeth Gilbert and that she said you know she was going to be that’s the title of the today’s, wednesday’s post on my website is having a practice, and it’s exactly that subject. It’s about thinking of your, your writing career or your any kind of artistic career, as a life long practice that you’re going to do until they carry out feet first, you know, and just like a meditation practice or a yoga practice or whatever. And that’s what Elizabeth Gilbert kind of said to herself I’m going to keep writing as a practice, and if I never have another hit, so be it, you know.

54:16
And so that’s and it’s also the last week of the daily press field is about having a practice and again it’s sort of wrapping up the whole concept of okay, we worked a year. We wrote a book. What if it never succeeds? Well, the answer, I think, is that we’re in this for life and this is our practice, this is what we do and we’re going to keep going. So that’s so at all that, in a way, it’s kind of interesting, mike, the way this thing sort of wrapped itself up. This, our conversation, wrapped itself up on that point, which is the most deep point of all, I think, of just continuing to do the work.

54:58 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I wanted to kind of end here with I think today is day 347. If I did my math right I’m not sure, but I’m just going to read a day 347 out of the book and let you sort of give your thoughts about it. It says I’m thinking of successful writers. I know Two were cops, both homicide detectives. A third was a lawyer. One female writer was a stand-up comic. Another left a corner office at a big New York ad agency. Every reason Ernie Pintoff, who was your mentor, cited for laboring in the writing field applies to working in a real-world profession. Be a cook, be a cowboy, work in a bookstore, work in a steel mill. You learn, you acquire experience, you make money, you make friends, you’re a professional. I have a bunch of writer friends, female and male, who served in combat. This is attributed to Black Iris, jav, number 23,. Keep working. Then you say how can you write about life if you haven’t lived it?

55:57 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I guess the point of that chapter was that if you’re a beginning writer or a beginning artist of any kind and you’re trying to get some traction to move forward, my mentor, ernie Pintoff the device, who was a movie director, he gave me this advice as a young screenwriter. He said keep working. He said take any job in this field, work for free, work on porn movies, work on the dumbest, because you’re working in your field and you’re getting better and you’re meeting people and it’s all positive to keep working. Don’t sit home doing nothing. I’m trying to say in this chapter day two, three, 47 or whatever that all work is that Work in a bookstore, drive a truck, be a supervisor in a trash company, you meet people, you learn things and you create habits, good habits that you can use when you really finally settle down to your writing or whatever creative enterprise you have. It was a great piece of advice that he gave me Keep working.

57:10 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Keep working. I love that too, because when we’re so hung up on, do what you’re passionate about, find your passion and do it. I always think well, the right of your passion is to say yes and to start doing things, because it’s not going to just come and deliver itself on your doorstep.

57:28 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
And you find passion in the strangest places like you got eight bags of garbage. That’s priceless.

57:36 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
But I learned how to drive a trash truck, change my whole life.

57:40 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I never. It’s not something I dreamed about when.

57:42 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I was in high school, but I can relate to life.

57:48
So, steve, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you for writing the daily press field and all of your other books. Please, if you’re listening and you want something special, go to Steve’s website, buy the book that he’ll sign and put all this other stuff and package it up super nice. It’s like the greatest gift you could give yourself and the greatest gift you could give someone else. In my opinion, it’s very well done. Thank you for doing that, and because it’s like so special, it’s like so special.

58:21
And you can find out more about him. As I mentioned Steve in Pressfieldcom. Before we go, is there anything I haven’t asked or should have asked, steve, that you want to mention or leave us with? Your floor is yours.

58:37 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Well, first of all, Mike, I want to thank you for having me and thanks for the great questions. Thanks for the thoughtful questions. I know they’re good, because there are certain ones that really made me think. What do I really think about that? If I can say one thing, can I say one thing about the daily press field?

58:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Oh yeah, go for it.

58:51 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
I just want to say for anybody that’s, if you do go to my website, there are like two ways you can buy this book. One is just a simple signed copy and that has kind of a lowest price. And the other thing is what we call a special edition gift box and that has a higher price and that one comes with not just the book but with a companion journal and a bunch of note cards and a bunch of goodies and it is really a hell of a package. I got to say it would make a great gift for anybody that, like somebody you know that wants to be a writer or is a little stuck or whatever. So I just say that. So there’s two ways you can do it. Okay, thank you for that.

59:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And you also do get Vic’s illustrations too, which is a few, yeah, vic’s illustrations Vic Juhas, the great illustrator.

59:38 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
You get his illustrations too, yeah, so I don’t know if there’s anything that we left out there, mike, other than how to drive a truck without the clutch.

59:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Perfect, yes, Okay, well, let’s everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today and remember I really want you to maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today. There’s so much there, so strike down the resistance and keep moving forward.

01:00:08 – Steven Pressfield (Guest)
Thanks, mike, and we’ll do this again. If you want to, you know, let’s stay in touch. Oh, appreciate it.

01:00:13 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Thank you Absolutely. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential. Order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy. And if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them.

01:01:12
You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name mikemalatestacom. You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.