I pulled up an old Super Soul Sunday episode recently. It was Oprah interviewing Steven Pressfield. A prolific writer, he was exactly who I was needing to hear from as I work at getting myself in my studio to write on a more regular basis.
Steven talked about what keeps us from doing whatever it is we are meant to do – whether you are a writer, an artist, or an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter. When there is something that you know that you know you were put on this earth to do, why don’t you do it? Why are there so many miserable people out there, working in jobs that they know they don’t belong in? Steven calls it Resistance. I call it the enemy. The closer we get to being in the zone of where God put us here to be, the harder the enemy works to keep us from it.
Do some people find it easier to be in the zone than others? I don’t think so. It may appear that way to those of us looking in from the outside. But we don’t really know their story, do we? We don’t know what they went through to get where they are today. And we don’t know what disciplined routines they have put in place to keep them in the zone, or what struggles they endure to stay there. JK Rowling certainly wasn’t living on easy street when, as a single mother on state benefits, she sat in the chairs of cafés every day and hand wrote Harry Potter.
Here is what we do know. There is only one way to defeat the enemy, or resistance, as Steven calls it. To quote a famous tag line, just do it. Or as Steven says, “Put your ass in the chair.” Whatever that chair is for you, whether it is your writing desk, your piano bench, the floor in front of your easel or the page with the start of your business plan, you have to put your ass in that chair and just do it. Don’t worry about whether or not it is good. Don’t worry about how successful it will be. (Harry Potter was rejected 12 times!) Don’t worry about what the end results will be. What a wonderful world it would be if we would all just do it! I’m game, are you?
To watch the episode: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Steven-Pressfield-Put-Your-A-Where-Your-Heart-Wants-to-Be-Video
