Steven Pressfield is a Bestselling Author of Fiction and Non Fiction Books. He is also a Hollywood Screen Writer.

But life wasn’t always like this and he wrote for 17 years before he earned his first penny on a screenplay that was never produced and 27 years before his first novel The Legend of Bagger Vance was produced. Later this was made into a Film with Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron.

During that time he did a number of jobs including driving tractors, teaching, working offshore on oil rigs and picking fruit………but he continued to write.

His passion is to help people control their self motivation, self discipline, self validation and self reinforcement as he believes we can control how hard and smart we can work rather than relying on talent (describing this as bullshit).

“it’s not the writing that’s hard it’s the sitting down to write that’s hard“

– steven pressfield 

steven and I discussed the following in this episode:

• The way that Stevens book resonated with me as I began Guild of Dads and went through the process of resistance

• How Steven finds that for most of us there is an “inciting incident” which changes peoples lives, often like a death or accident. It really shakes us up and makes us think.

• The moment of “crossing the threshold” in storytelling when life will never be the same again. 

• The danger of going back to your old life and the part this can play when you commit to something and think better of it

• The Meaning Equation and how this applies on a micro and macro level 

• Richard Rohr – Writer and Franciscan Monk – Falling Upward 

• The idea of shadow activities or careers, Steven references media lawyers whose true calling is movie making. 

• How resistance is a force that is trying to stop you from doing something. 

• Procrastination, fear, the voice in your head that tells you you aren’t worthy

• How starting is often the biggest obstacle and often at the very end.

• The trick is being aware of the negative force and knowing its us self sabotaging.

• How the level of resistance is directly proportionate to the difficulty of the thing you are doing. 

• “The Fighter” Mark Wahlberg on the subject of saboteurs.

• Resistance giving meaning to life – if it was easy there would be nothing to it.

• Resistance is objective its not our voice and everybody has this voice. 

• The way in which products and a consumerism allow people to indulge in their own resistance and society feeds into our own insecurities.

• How the concept of society being unconscious comes into play when what we are really unconscious of is there dream.

• Tom Loughlin the actor and movie producer, also a Jungian therapist – He encouraged people to do the things they always dreamed of and cancers went into remission. 

• 1 hour a day is all Steven says you need in order to make a start but that is enough which is 6-7 hours a week. 

• How your vision and dreams don’t need to be set in stone and how the fear of success is the biggest fear of all.

To find out more about steven and how to get in touch with him:

Steven’s Facebook page where you can find The Warrior Archetype and Breaking through resistance series

Steven’s Website

Steven’s Book Page on Amazon

Steven on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter