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There are two lives inside you: the one you live, and the one you have not yet lived. Between them stands something that Steven Pressfield calls resistance — and this lecture from Academy of Ideas is a field guide to it. Resistance dresses up in excuses, laziness, fear, and blame, and its aim is simple: to keep you from doing the one thing you are here to do. Sun Tzu’s counsel applies to this inner war: know the enemy, and know yourself. The decisive shift is from amateur to professional — facing the same demons every day, without yielding.
Full Video Transcript
Most of us have two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us.
Between the two stands resistance.
At certain times we experience a calling from our higher self, urging us to move in the direction of a more noble life.
This calling often presents itself in our darker moments, and we are struck with the realization that we have but two choices before us.
To live in a superior manner or to continue down a dead-end path that will only lead to more frustration and misery.
While this apparition of our higher self may supply us with temporary inspiration, we rarely obey its orders for long.
Instead, we sink back into our habitual ways and live in obedience to our base desires, apathy, and cynicism.
Many people do not heed the call from their higher self because deep down they know just how difficult answering such a call would be.
In the words of Nietzsche,
of success, confidence, and courage which accompany self-evolution, but they are unwilling
to undergo the discipline and pain needed to attain these fruits. What such individuals
lack in this situation is ambition. Without kindling what the poet Hölderlin called the
sacred fire within, few would be willing to undergo the Herculean task of effecting positive
self-change. Ambition, wrote Steven Pressfield, 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. A lack of ambition, however, is not the only thing holding
us back. Sick of wasting our life drowning in our sorrows and bad habits, times arise when we deeply
desire nothing other than the opportunity to put in the hard work and discipline needed to live in
superior manner. Yet for some reason, we just can’t make any progress. We feel a
strong pull from our higher self, but we feel a stronger pull in the opposite
direction, opposing our every attempt to take a step forward. Steven Pressfield
called this inner opposition resistance, and warned that it is the greatest
enemy we will ever face. Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet, he
wrote. To yield to resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less
than we are and were born to be. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the
forces of resistance arrayed against it. Resistance is the set of psychobehavioral patterns and habits
which inhibit us from heeding the call of our higher self. Excuses, rationalizations, fears,
laziness, depression, anxiety, procrastination, and the tendency to self-medicate are all
manifestations of resistance. As resistance is that which opposes any
movement from a lower state of being to a higher, unless we learn to overcome it,
a life of mediocrity will be our destiny. Resistance’s goal is not to wound or
disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being, our
genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and
and that no one else has but us.
When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.”
Around 2,300 years ago in what is now Northern China,
a lineage of military leaders
put their collective wisdom into written form,
shaping what is now known as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
While the primary intention of the text
was to provide military leaders
with insight on how to subdue their enemies,
its profundity lies in the fact
that it offers timeless wisdom
on how to deal with any form of conflict
and any type of enemy.
Thus, for advice on how to overcome resistance,
the enemy within,
we can turn to the art of war for insight.
If you know the enemy and know yourself,
in 100 battles, no danger.
If you know yourself but not the enemy,
one victory for one loss.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
in every battle, certain defeat.
As this ancient wisdom advises,
to overcome resistance and our tendency to self-sabotage,
We must not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist, but study the typical traits it displays to better fortify ourselves against it.
The defining characteristic of resistance is its universality.
Whenever we use excuses to justify our slavish way of life or allow apathy to define our days,
we are engaging in tendencies which are universal and shared by all, even the most successful among us.
It is not possible to eradicate resistance from our life once and for all.
Instead, we must see it as a part of human nature and learn to move forward in spite of its presence.
The reason resistance is so hard to combat and the tendency to self-sabotage so pervasive is due to its protean nature.
Resistance assumes many forms and changes so often that most of the time, we are unaware of the ways it is opposing us.
A particularly pernicious form that resistance takes is the projecting of our internal resistance onto people and situations.
We then play the victim role and blame those close to us, our job, society, the state of the world, or even fate for our mediocrity and misery.
Projection is so damaging because it not only prevents us from taking the needed responsibility for our life, but it also harms our relationships with those close to us.
To combat this tendency, Pressfield recommends we adopt the following mantra.
Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated.
Resistance is the enemy within.
While projection is certainly a dangerous form of resistance,
the most powerful manifestation comes in the form of fear.
Fear in response to something potentially harmful is a natural and healthy response.
But we do not only fear that which poses a threat to us,
but also that which is our highest good.
Abraham Maslow observed this feature of human nature, writing,
We fear our highest possibilities.
We are generally afraid to become that which we glimpse in our most perfect moments, under
the most perfect conditions, under the conditions of greatest courage.
This highest good we fear Steven Pressfield called our true calling.
To live in the service of such a calling is to center our life around a form of productive
work that we find challenging and intriguing.
The more scared we are of a work or a calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do
it.
We can utilize our fear and let it guide us in the direction of our highest possibilities
What you fear is an indication of what you seek wrote the American writer Thomas Merton
But once we have pinpointed the form of productive work most suitable to us
There is only one thing to do start taking action every single day for the sake of centering our life around our true calling
Yet as we do we can be sure resistance will be there every step of the way and like the sirens of Odysseus
it will try to lure us away from our life mission in seductive and enchanting ways.
But just as Odysseus was able to overcome the sirens by having his sailors stick bee wax in
their ears, and by tying himself to the mast of his ship, it is possible for us to resist
the temptations of resistance. The importance of doing so, thought Pressfield, cannot be overstated.
For the ability to master resistance day in and day out is what differentiates those who have
turned pro in their respective fields, from those who are forever doomed to remain nothing but
amateurs. Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It’s a decision. A decision
to which we must recommit every day. Each day, the professional understands. He will wake up
facing the same demons, the same resistance, the same self-sabotage. The difference is that now he
will not yield to those temptations. He will have mastered them, and will continue to master them.
Thank you.
Source: Academy of Ideas