How to Accomplish Your Dreams In ONE HOUR A Day with Steven Pressfield

Marie Forleo:

All right, I got a question and be honest, are your dreams being defeated by things like procrastination and fear and self-doubt and perfectionism? If so, I've got the answer and it's in nine simple words. You're going to want to watch this interview, trust me.

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Steven Pressfield is the best-selling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The Knowledge, as well as the cult classics on creativity, The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do the Work. His most recent book is Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, and his Wednesday column on stevenpressfield.com is among the most popular writing blogs on the web.

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Come on, another amazing book. Now, before we dive in, I just have to say this, when you reached out, A, that you had another book, but then, B, I got to read the PDF version, I literally read it in one sitting, this is so good. So for everybody watching, we're going to be talking about putting your ass where your heart wants to be, so there's going to be a lot of ass in this conversation. So if you need to have headphones on because you have little ones or anything like that, please go do this now. But Steve, congratulations, this is a beautiful, beautiful book.

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Steven Pressfield:

Oh, thanks, Marie. Thanks for having me on here. It's great to see you again. It's always great to be working with you on anything.

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Marie Forleo:

Well, I want to start off with this baseline. You say that we can't control the level of talent we've been given, 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. So before we dive into all the details about what this book means and how we can embody it in our lives. Is the first step really to focus on what we can control and to let go of what we can't?

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Steven Pressfield:

I mean, I think that's so true of everything that we talk about today, that stoic philosophy of, "If you can't control it, don't let it drive you crazy." I mean, it was sort of a breakthrough for me in my life when I realized that I can't control anybody else. I can't make anybody like me. I can't make them respect me. I can’t make them help me. I can't make them love me or anything like that. But what I can do is I can control what I do, right? I can control how hard I'm going to work. I can control what I'm going to work, what time I'm going to work, that kind of thing. So that definitely is sort of the foundation of everything, I think, if we have a goal and we're trying to achieve it, that it all comes down to us, like Stevie Nicks used to say.

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Marie Forleo:

In this world, I don't think I can hear that reminder enough. Even before we're diving into this conversation now, I was peeling around my world and getting things into place. We live in this time where people's comments, their opinions, their reflections, so many people, especially those who feel like they are digital entrepreneurs or online entrepreneurs can spend so much time listening to the opinions of others or reaching for the opinions of others. I know in my own life how much time and energy I've let that eat away in me. I just love that baseline reminder, and it seems so simple and so obvious that I don't think that we can hear it enough.

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Steven Pressfield:

It’s definitely… my business partner, Shawn Coyne, has this phrase, and I know you've heard, third party validation, when you're looking for that other person, that review to come in. It's really a pernicious mindset, a very destructive mindset, I think. Hemingway used to say, "If you believe the critics when they tell you're good, then you have to believe them when they tell you're bad." 

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Marie Forleo:

Yes.

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Steven Pressfield:

So better not to even read them.

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Marie Forleo:

Yes. Our friend, Seth Godin, right?

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah.

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Marie Forleo:

He actually, that was a big thing that I learned from him when he talks about, "I just don't look at the comments. I don't look at the comments." I remember when Everything is Figureoutable came out, I made myself a promise. I was like, "I'm not looking at the Amazon comments."

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Marie Forleo:

"The book is done. I have poured my heart and soul into it, and now it is time for me to go create what's next." But I want to dive into what does this notion mean, put your ass where your heart wants to be? Tell me not only what does that phrase mean to you but why you felt called to expand this idea, which I've heard you say before, into a whole book on itself?

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Steven Pressfield:

Well, I first thought of this only on the superficial level, the first level of thinking. What it meant to me then when I say put your ass where your heart wants to be, was if you're a writer and you want to write, sit down in front of this thing. Put your physical body. You're a dancer, Marie. If you want to be a dancer, go into the studio. If you want to be a painter, move your body into the studio and get up in front of an easel. And as dumb as that sounds, and as obvious as that sounds, I know you know this, Marie, this is like your whole career based on this, is getting in there with both feet, not letting it just be only something in your mind.

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But as I started to think about this more, I thought, "There are a lot of deeper levels to this." In fact, I hope we get time to do this. I think that this phrase, even though it sounds kind of glib and superficial and it has the word ass in it, put your ass where your heart wants to be, it's really the same thing that all the great religions say. By the time we get to that point, if we do in this conversation, it's really true. It's meaning taking your ass, your material concept of the world and moving it to the soul level, to where your heart wants to be. That's the deepest level of it. In any event, I just found that this phrase, it seems sort of glib, really has many, many levels once you get into it. So that was why I wanted to write a book about it.

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Marie Forleo:

Yeah, it's super deep. I love that you also talk about in the beginning obviously there's the physical aspect of it, of showing up in front of the easel, of getting in front of the keyboard, of putting yourself in the recording room if you are a musician, of getting out and running if you want to be a marathoner, but there's also that metaphoric level, your emotional and psychological commitment to put your ass where your heart wants to be when you talk about in the book this notion of moving to the Paris or the London or the New York in your mind. I feel like something that's helped me so much, and I feel like you articulate it so well, we can do that even if, for whatever reason at this moment, we can't physically be in Paris or New York or London. Can you play that music? Can you put on that outfit? Can you light that candle? Can you set yourself up to embody that emotional, mental, spiritual place? Is that what you mean by that level, the metaphor? Yeah.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah. For me, I ask myself as I'm thinking about this, what does ass mean beyond the physical? And what it means, I think, is commitment in the sense of your ass is on the line. Or if she screws this up, it'll be her ass type of thing. So if you think about somebody like Steven King, who's working away in his office up in Maine somewhere, he doesn't need to go to Paris like Hemingway went to Paris or anything like that because he's so committed that any room that he's in is like the center of the universe as far as he's concerned, right? It's like he's got his personal hotspot. And it's the same with you, Marie, wherever you are, you're bringing that energy and that commitment to it. So put your ass where your heart wants to be also means commit. Heart and soul, burn the boats, that whole concept, have no plan B, is a very important thing. As we get into this more, what happens when you do commit is a certain magic happens in the universe. I'll leave it at that for the moment, but we'll get to that I hope.

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Marie Forleo:

Yeah, I want to go all the different places, and I'm really good on time. I mean, this could not be a more important conversation. One of the things that I've seen in my life so often... We're talking now on Zoom and it's virtual, and I'm excited to be able to see you and hug you again in person when that time comes because I know there's going to be more projects, but after we gave up our old studio, which you've been to before, during the pandemic and I could feel in my body, I'm like, "Oh, it's time for our next space." That's the thing, I'm like, "Well, I don't know any commercial real estate brokers." I start picking up the phone and conspiring to bring all of the forces into play. And just yesterday, Steve, I got the keys to my new place, which we are going to be building out.

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Steven Pressfield:

Wow.

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Marie Forleo:

It's just that notion. I was like, "Okay, put your ass where your heart wants to be." It's pick up the phone, go do the things, walking the streets of New York, feeling like, "Okay, where is this next creative space for us?" I also want to just point out, too, I love how you broaden this notion of all the different levels of what that could look like. You also mentioned in the book, and I think this is important, for some of us, we have to trust that feeling in our body that says it is time to move physically. If you do want to be a part of a particular creative community, I mean, I think the internet's awesome, it's great that it has allowed so many people to connect virtually, and I think we're all recognizing, too, how important sometimes it is to go live in the city that you want to live in or to go put yourself in proximity to the communities that you want to be a part of.

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I know in my career and from all the beautiful stories that you tell, it feels like this has been somewhat true for you too, is when you have that calling in your soul, if you got to pack up and move the kids, the dog, the family, yourself, if you got to pair down, you got to do whatever you need to do to go put yourself at the epicenter of the thing that you want to do, it's like that's a part of putting your ass where your heart wants to be too.

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Steven Pressfield:

Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things that I talk about in the book. That's the second level of the physical part of this. It's not just getting in front of the keyboard in your house, but it's going to the place where your dreams can come true. If you want to be in fashion, you can stay in Bogalusa or wherever you are. But if you can go to New York, if you can go to Paris, if you can go to Milan, then suddenly you're at the epicenter of your dream. If you want to be in the movies, you got to come to LA. If you want to be in country music, people will say, "Well, gee, can't I just do it at home? Can I send in my demo? But you really have to be in Nashville or something like that.

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One of the reasons is the people that you meet. A story that I tell is I made up my mind at some point years ago that I wanted to write for the movies. I was living in New York at the time, so I packed up my cat, my van, and I moved to LA. It took me quite a while, but I was there for five years. I had a wonderful agent and I was getting nowhere. My agent took me out one day to lunch, and he said, "What if I paired you up with an older writer and you became a part of a writing team, an established writer? You'd have to work your butt off, but you'll be working." So in any event, the short version is he did team me up with a guy named Ron Shusett who did the original Alien, and we worked together for about five years. The short version of that is that I learned so much from him as a mentor, and not only writing stuff, but the people that we met, the things that we were exposed to, the movie sets we were on that when I finally went out on my own after that, I really felt like I had a PhD in movie-making just from that experience.

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The bottom line is I would never have had that experience if I hadn't packed up and moved to what was for me the epicenter. That's where you meet people. Let me go back for a second to what you're talking about, about moving to and finding your new studio, finding your new space. Because if we get into that a little deeper, what really happened in your soul, on the soul level, on the vibration level, was you made a commitment, whether you realized it or not. You said, "It's time to move. Things have changed. I've got to go beyond." And what happens in some crazy way, those vibes go out into the universe and things start to happen. You start to attract things to you, and also people will help you, right? I'm sure the story you probably met various people you never had met before, and they said, "Hey, I know a place, or whatever." Again, if we define putting your ass as commitment, there's a magical element to that that brings things in once you do that. And somehow in some crazy way, the universe knows if you've really committed or not. If you're faking, it's not going to bring in the things that you need. But as soon as you do really commit, the good stuff starts to happen.

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Marie Forleo:

I could not agree more. I don't think it's crazy, I think it's the way that the world works. We've just never really been taught it, most of us as kids. It certainly wasn't necessarily the language that we used in my household, but I've seen it again and again. And any time in my own career, in my own life that I'm a little wishy washy internally, even if I verbally say, "This is the thing I want," if it's not ringing true inside, if my commitment is not there 100%, it's like I started to get wishy washy results or it's kind of flimflam. But the moment I stick my flag in the sand and say, "Come hell or high water, I'm going to make this happen, I'm going to figure it out." You're a hundred percent right.

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The other thing, I don't know how unique this is to me, but I'm curious if you have this too, I think we're all built in very unique ways, but for me, I get emotional clarity through my body. And even if things look good on paper, and with this looking for a new studio, I probably saw, I don't know, dozens and dozens of places, so I even had the thought in my mind that I'm working these brokers too hard. They're like, "No, no, no, it's okay. It's a big commitment." And I was like, "It's not right until it's not right." But the moment I stepped into the place that we said yes to, it was like, "This is it."

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And so, I think that there is some magic there as well, that when you commit... It may not happen overnight, and that's okay. It's like showing up for the muse, which you talk about. Gods and goddesses and the other beings on the spiritual plane who are helping us usher our souls calling into this material plane, they're checking it out. And they're seen, are you going to show up for the long haul?

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Steven Pressfield:

I think it's absolutely true. Even though, like you say, Marie, they don't teach you that. You don't learn that in school, or when you do learn it, you learn it in an airy fairy way that you don't really believe it. Let me tell you one story that I told on video that is an absolute concrete example of that for me. When I first wrote the manuscript of Gates of Fire, which was a million-seller for me, it was 800 pages long. My agent, Sterling Lord at the time, said to me, "Steve, I can't sell this. It's a monster, it's too big. You got to cut 300 pages out of this book." At the time, this was my second book. I was paralyzed, I thought, "How am I going to cut half out of this book and make it work?"

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I was really ready to just utterly give up. I got a card in the mail, which I have around here somewhere, from a guy named Tom Ginsburg, who at the time was the head of Viking Press, which was a very prestigious thing, and it was a handwritten card that he had sent me that said he had read the book through Sterling being a friend, my agent. He said, "There's a really good novel in here, and I know you're going to bring it out." I took that card, I pinned it up on my computer, and it was what kept me going through the whole long thing.

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This is the universe coming to your aid. In the real world, people respond to you. I'm sure people, when you were looking for a place, Marie, they met you and they said, "This woman is the real deal. She needs something. Let me give a call to Charlie, my uncle, see if he knows something." People will come to your aid. It's not just the gods and goddesses, they do too, but the real people will come to your aid. People will lend you money or something like that once they see that you are really in it with both feet.

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Marie Forleo:

Yes. Let's talk for a moment about practicalities. I loved this, and my team, when we read this part, we were all cheering up and down. You write, and it's a great question, "Can we put our ass where our heart wants to be if we've got a family or a job or a mortgage? And the answer is yes." You write, "The muse does not count hours, she counts commitment. It is possible to be 100% committed 10% of the time, the goddess understands." So I'm going to go a little bit further and then we can unpack this because the math here y'all really is important. One hour a day is seven hours a week, 30 hours a month, 365 hours a year. 360 hours is nine 40-hour weeks. Nine 40-hour weeks is a novel, it's two screenplays, maybe three. In 10 years, that's 10 novels or 20 movie scripts. You can be a full-time writer one hour a day."

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That was a mic drop moment, Steve. One of the things we've done in Everything is Figureoutable, what I try to do is always help people do the simple math, because simple math can change our lives. But most of us don't do a lot of simple math because it's just not what we do. Talk to me about this notion, I know you've met so many creatives and writers over the years, of just being able to carve out that little amount of time every day in the power of compounding creative interest that can happen.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah, the power of compounding, it's true. There's a famous story about James Patterson, the novelist, who has now sold three billion books or something like that. He used to be the head of an ad agency, J. Walter Thompson. What he would do was he would come in at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, go into his office, lock the door, and for an hour and a half, he'd work on his fiction. And then when the working day started, he opened the door and he became an ad man. That's how he did it.

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Here's another really interesting thing on this, Marie. Right now I am a full-time writer. This is a true revelation, right? So you would think, "Oh, this guy's got 24 hours a day." This is probably true for you too, Marie. But if I actually boil it down to how much time I actually have in the day to really work on the blank page, it's maybe two hours. It's no more than three hours. I'm really at the same place I was when I was working a 40-hour-a-week job, because of other commitments and things like that you have to do.

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So we may look at somebody like Stephen King and think, "Oh, this guy's got the world by the string," but he only has a couple of hours a day to work, so that compounding interest, like I say, one hour day equals this equals this. If you look this up on YouTube, look up Steven Soderbergh, the great director, when he won the Best Director Oscar for Traffic in 2000, he held up the thing, the Oscar, and he said, "This is for everybody who spends part of their day doing something creative, whether it's a book, a play, a movie." And he says, "I couldn't live in a world without art. So God bless everybody that's out there doing that." He's absolutely right, you can be a full-time anything on an hour or two hours a day. Think about the gym. People who go to the gym as super body builders or whatever, they're not there eight hours a day, they're there an hour or hour and a half at the most. And that's enough.

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Marie Forleo:

Hey, real quick. If you love this kind of conversation, then I know you're going to go bananas for my free audio coaching program called How To Get Anything You Want. It's going to help you turn any dream into reality. All you need to do is go to marieforleo.com/subscribe and download it now. That's marieforleo.com/subscribe. I'll see you there.

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Do you know something? We created this program called Time Genius because time has been something that I've been obsessed with for most of my career, trying to understand the science and also my own control issues and my own neurosis and obsession and trying to figure all that out. There's at least one study that shows that working beyond four hours a day in terms of that intense focus work where everything else doesn't exist and you are just pouring forth or creating or solving, it's like our brains aren't necessarily, at least mine isn't, it's not built to go further than that. Like I'm toast. I need to do other kinds of activities, handle other responsibilities, give my subconscious an opportunity to do some of the work on its own. I just love this conversation because you're right. The truth of the matter is, for me, it’s an hour or two, if I get in two hours a day of the really good stuff, man, I'm running around like a winner, running around like a winner because the rest of the life needs handling and taking care of and the meetings or whatever. But I love the realization of that because it puts it in a zone of being achievable for the everyday person, and they don't necessarily…

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Steven Pressfield:

It's figureoutable, as you say.

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Marie Forleo:

That's right. You don't necessarily have to not have your full-time job or your part-time job or all of your family commitments or your kids or your wife or your husband or all the things that we have as beautiful, complex, messy humans, and you can still carve this out.

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Another thing, I want to talk about some of the practical laws and tools. You wrote, "One of the first is to commit to a time and place. The goddess doesn't just want to know where we are, she wants to know what time we start and at what hour we finish. How can she come to our aid if she doesn't know where and when to find us?" So I want to hear about for you because I always think that this is interesting. I'll say this upfront, I remember earlier on, I was so interested in hearing about people's processes, frankly, because I was so desperate to find something that worked in the thought that it would take away my own terror and insecurity, and that wasn't true.

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Steven Pressfield:

No, yes.

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Marie Forleo:

I still think it's fascinating to hear about how other people work because I think it just fires up the imagination and gives us frames for like... When you've talked about your process, I actually see you in my mind's eye, and it makes me smile. So can you tell us about what your time and place looks like and how that unfolds for you?

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Steven Pressfield:

I'm definitely a believer in time and space. I think of writing or any form of art as a practice, like a yoga practice. If you have a yoga practice, you say, "Okay, one hour a day, two hours a day, I'm going to go into the dojo and I'm going to do my yoga thing," or if it's martial arts or whatever it is. And of course that's the best thing in the world, meditation, whatever it is. But for some crazy reason, again, we're talking about the gods and the goddesses, they like it, I think, if we do it at the same place and the same time, just so they know that we're always there. But also I think just for our own soul and our own self, it's good to know, "I'm going into that room," of which for me is this room right here, "and I'm going in at this particular time."

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And also, as you said, Marie, I can't go longer than three or four hours. I'm toast after that too, and I think that anybody is. If you were training for the triathlon, you can't run for four hours every day. You can't swim for four hours every day. So all I want to do in my practice, I say that when I sit down to work each day, I don't have any expectations for myself for quality or for quantity. I don't say to myself, "I'm going to write 500 words or a thousand words." And at the end of the day, I don't look it over, and I don't say, "Well, gee, is this good, is this bad, is this terrible?" All I say is that I put my ass in front of this screen for two-plus hours and try as hard as I can. If I do that, I'm fine with it, I'm fine with my day, just like you. My day is golden after that. The office is closed and I go onto the rest of my life. But I think that's all any of us can ask, is just to get down there, sit down, shut up, and do it.

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Marie Forleo:

Can I tell you, I just want to reveal... Josh, my partner, we've been together 20 years. Thank God, he's like a source of sanity and support for me because he knows just how tricky this thing can be and how much I can torture myself. There were years where I was like, "But I have to hit a certain word count. I have to do this." He's like, "Will you stop this?" He's like, "Marie, stop it, you're torturing yourself." He's like, "Just be." I was like, "I can't." It's like it wants to control so much though. I appreciate you sharing that, that it's just about, "Hey, If I can be in the chair for at least two hours."

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The other thing that you talked about, and this was important, especially in this day and age, is no distractions, right? It's like…

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Steven Pressfield:

Absolutely.

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Marie Forleo:

...it has to be that sacred place. Just like going into a yoga studio or going into a meditation studio, it's like, you're not bringing your laptop, you're not bringing your cell phone, so don't bring it into the creative sacred space either.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah, there's a story that I tell in the book that my mentor, David , who was my first boss at Grey Advertising a million years ago, he used to be a ballet dancer. He managed the Joffrey Ballet for a while, but he trained at the Met. His teacher was Miss Kresky, who had danced with Pavlova or something, I don't even know who it was. But she used to say at the start of each class, "Leave your problems outside." And that's so true for everything. You can't be in ballet class and be thinking about anything else, right? You have to focus on the music, on your body, on the other dancers. And it's the same thing with any form of art. It's actually a blessing that you have to leave things outside. When you enter the dojo, a martial arts dojo, right, you put your hands together and you bow to the place because it's a sacred space. You bow to the sensei, the teacher, because you're going to commit yourself entirely to what he or she tells you while you're in there. So that's another part of it. Again, the gods and the goddesses, they see that and they like it.

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Marie Forleo:

I want to talk about this now, about how feeling vulnerable or like a fraud or lacking self-confidence never really goes away. You write, "I'm starting a new book now and resistance is beating the hell out of me. The book is non-fiction autobiographical. Here's the form resistance is taking: it's telling me in the voice in my head, ‘What? Are you crazy, Steve? Can you imagine anybody's going to be interested in these lame-ass stories from your life? They are so ordinary. You are so ordinary. Readers are going to laugh you off the page. Whatever credibility you've built up over the years is going to go straight into the toilet. Stop right now before you totally humiliate yourself.’" Can I tell you, Steve, that your inner voice is so similar to mine? It's got a very similar kind of tenor.

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I had been at this event, it was probably a few weeks or months ago, and we were just talking about revealing some of our innermost limiting thoughts. I had shared that one of mine was that I am just the most boring person. Why wouldn’t anybody… And it's still a thing that comes up for me. I feel like this is important to talk about because, my goodness, you have been creating consistently for decades. As you know, I'm one of your biggest fans ever. When I read this, I'm like, "This is proof. I have to stop wishing or hoping that this thing is going to go away." So I don't know if you have anything else that you want to reflect on about that.

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Steven Pressfield:

Definitely, I do have something, and maybe this will help, Marie, because I have to repeat this to myself over and over again. I can tell you from getting thousands of emails from people who've read The War of Art, and they will tell me... In fact, I've got a couple in my inbox right now that I have to answer. They will say, "I'm thinking these thoughts." And they're exactly what you just spelled out to me and exactly what I spelled out for myself. But here's the trick, when we hear this voice in our head, we think it's us. We think it's our voice. We think it's our rational assessment of a situation saying, "I'm Marie Forleo, I'm really a boring person." But it's not. It's the voice of resistance.

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I can tell you from all those thousands of emails, everybody has the exact same voice. It may be slightly different. If you're skinny, maybe the voice says, "You're too skinny." And if you're fat, maybe the voice says, "You're too fat." But basically, it says the same thing. The trick is to just identify it right away and realize, "This is not me talking, this is resistance." Can I make one more point here?

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Marie Forleo:

Of course.

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Steven Pressfield:

Again, I have to tell myself this all the time, because even after 45 years of doing this, it's still... When we're starting a new project or in the middle of a new project and we're overwhelmed by our own resistance, our own self-doubt, our own tendency to procrastinate, to be distracted, to get into bad habits, that's a good sign. It's a good sign because the more important... this is the first law of resistance. The more important a project is, a book, or you moving or anything you're doing, is to the evolution of our soul, the more resistance we'll feel to it. If we'd have some little dinky dream, we'll have a little dinky resistance. But if we have a big dream and we have monsters. So in other words, if you're feeling massive resistance, it's a good sign because it shows you that the project you're working on is really important to you and you really have to do it. So that's what I'm telling myself with this new book that I'm working on, "Don't listen to that voice. It's a voice of resistance. It's not you. And again, put your ass in the chair and do the freaking work."

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Marie Forleo:

Yes. Oh my gosh, I love it. This is another one. One of the things that I've been doing with my team, which is great and has been... I just work with such beautiful humans who are similarly creative, and thank goodness they don't live in my head. Right now we're updating something and we're looking at work that I created years ago and refining it and making it tighter and better. I remember looking back and going like, "God, this is shit. Is this even any good?" The resistance with the capital R it's going, "Marie, burn it down. It's not good." And my team's like, "No, it's actually amazing. You need to leave for an hour, go take a walk, come back." And I'm like, "Oh, it is actually pretty good."

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But it's that thing, that voice. I love that you just reminded me that it is resistance with a capital R, that it's resistance with a capital R, and that the more important that project is, the louder that roar is going to come and be more fierce that voice inside will pop up.

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Let's move into the spiritual plane of putting our ass where our heart wants to be. I love near the end of the book that you talk a bit about the difference between ego and self, and specifically that if we try to create from ego, that's often when we can fall on our faces. So anything that you have to say about the distinction between ego and self when it comes to creation?

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Steven Pressfield:

Well, when you're like me, a writer and you've been doing it for years and years, for years and years, I really struggled. I could never find my voice. The stuff was coming out as shit. Nobody wanted it, et cetera, et cetera. I was always trying to say to myself, "Where is that space where the good stuff is? Why can’t I get to that… What is that space? Where do the ideas come from?” What I finally came to conclude was, when you're writing or you're trying to do any sort of creation from the ego... Now let's say, what is the ego? The ego is selfish. The ego is, wants, has a zero-sum mentality. It's like, "If I'm going to succeed, you've got to fail," that type of thing.

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The ego worries about what other people think about it. Again, that third-party validation that we were talking about earlier. And so, I thought, "How do I find my real voice?" And I think it's a process of subtraction rather than addition. It's a process in my mind of surrender. You finally try so many phony voices, "Let me write like Hemingway. Let me write like Fitzgerald." And finally, you just give up and you say, "Okay, I'm just going to write whatever crap comes into my head." And you put it down, you go, "Wow, this is good." So you. So the process that an artist goes through, I think, to try to find their voice is a process of surrendering the ego, detaching from the selfish, "I want a best seller. I want to be famous. I want to... " whatever, and to the Self, the capital S Self, like the union Self or the soul, which is really like, "I can't do anything else. Let me just do what's coming really from my heart."

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Again, it's a process of surrender, a process of trusting the thing. So when we say put your ass where your heart wants to be, that's exactly what that means on that spiritual level, your ass being your ego, your ass being the being that you have in this material plane that wants a car, wants a house, wants success, whatever, put that part of yourself where your heart wants to be, in other words, in your soul, whatever. It's like I know for you, Marie, you started out and you had all sorts of ambitions. And then you felt, "What can I do to help other people? How can I be a role model for other people? And not just embody that in my own self," this is you talking, "but teach people what I've learned." And so that for you, if I may be putting words in your mouth, but was a switch from putting your... That was putting your ass where your heart wants to be; moving from the ego to the self or to the soul. I really think that basically all the great religions, not to get too deep, but we got to get deep here…

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Marie Forleo:

No, please let's go as deep as you want.

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Steven Pressfield:

That's what they're saying. When they say, when Thomas Aquinas says, "Imitation of Christ. Live like Christ," that's what he's saying, right? Don't hang onto those ego things, live in the realm of the soul and the realm of giving and love and so on and so forth. I think all the great religions do that. Buddhism when you meditate and you get into that state, that's a movement of your ass, the narrow thinking selfish self, to the greater all of the things that exist in the cosmos.

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Marie Forleo:

It is, it takes a leap of faith, and…

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Steven Pressfield:

Very much so. Absolutely.

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Marie Forleo:

...and a willingness to feel. I know that's been a big, big, big journey for me, it continues to be. It continues to be a practice. I think that anyone who wants to create things, we're shown so many shiny things in the exterior world, and it's so natural and common to want that house or that success or the money or the accolades, it's like a very natural part of us. And when we create from there, at least, I know whenever I have, man, it's hollow. It rings hollow. It falls flat…

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Steven Pressfield:

That's the word flat, yeah, yeah.

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Marie Forleo:

...and there's nothing satisfying. I know all of my angst, my frustration, the insecurity can get even greater. I have also felt, too, when there's been this tiny little voice inside about some direction to move in or some project to bring to life or some risk to take that on paper doesn't necessarily seem like it's leading to all the shiny things on the outside, but it ironically has always led me to my greatest work.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah. That's the weird thing, isn't it?

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Marie Forleo:

Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is. And I think it’s such a beautiful. That's why I love this conversation because when it comes to art, at least when I'm thinking about what I want to do next, it never really comes from here, it always comes from here. I think about it almost like a little seedling, like it's a seed that's been planted and it starts to rise and I've got to water it and nourish it, and it's never an epiphany, like, "Oh, this is the best idea, let me go do it.” No, it's a slower, more emotional, more spiritual process. I love that you talk about that. I know when we wrap this in a moment or two, I want to have you read from the end of the book, but there's so much richness in here. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you want to make sure to share?

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Steven Pressfield:

Well, there's a lot, but one thing I would say, a lot of times I can imagine my younger self listening to this podcast and me being lost and et cetera, et cetera, and a lot of times at that state, you think, "Oh, I want something instant. If I could only do that, won't things change immediately?" But I can tell you from my own life, when you have even a big breakthrough, it's another 20 years before it actually comes to fruition. It's not an instant thing, including this thing of putting your ass where your heart wants to be. I can certainly say that from the moment when I actually really committed to being a writer and I just said, "Fuck it, I can't do anything else," it was another 20 years or more before I had any success at all.

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But the good news was my heart changed. And even that struggle, those 20 years, it was fun and it was satisfying. I felt like, "I'm on the right track. I'm not there yet, but I'm on the right track. So the one thing I would say is it's a process, it takes a long time. Patience is a virtue. But once you are on the right track, things feed you, your work feeds you. I know you feel that way, Marie. It's not like you're going to run out of gas. You're being fed along the way.

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Marie Forleo:

That's right. And I think one of the best things I always try and share with people, especially if we're talking about any sort of entrepreneurial endeavor, which I think includes a lot of art and certainly artistic careers…

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Steven Pressfield:

Definitely.

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Marie Forleo:

..is, it's not easy, but it's worth it.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yes.

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Marie Forleo:

It's not easy, but it's so worth it. When you start to feel those signs and see those bits of affirmation from another soul who comes in to give you that encouragement or from that weird synchronicity that lets you know you're on the right path, keep going, life, for me at, starts to take on a level of magic and of mystery that feels so incredibly satisfying, more so than some of the external accolades that I feel grateful to have, and those are wonderful, but the real magic is in sitting down and doing the work.

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Steven Pressfield:

Yeah. I will say one other thing before we get into this passage, which I hope I can pull up. I know I've got it on my computer or something. I'm glad you really asked me to do that, Marie, because I thought of saying that to you, "Would it be okay if I read this last passage?," but again, the voice of resistance, I thought, "This'll be boring for Marie. She won't want to…” But what I want to say before that is when you make this shift from the ego to the self, you realize, at least as an artist, that you are not alone in this work, that there are forces out there. When you were just saying, "What's the next stage? What's the next project?" I mean, I definitely feel I'm asking that question and the answer's coming from the muse, coming from heaven.

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And so, I feel like my world is much larger than it was when I was just in my ego. I realize that there are mysterious forces out there, there really are, way more powerful than we are. They have some kind of an agenda, and we don't know what it is, even for ourselves. Leap of faith, as you say, have to trust it. So when you're in that wider world, your world changes, your day-to-day world changes, the car you drive, the place you live, what time you get up in the morning. Those things change because of this wider world that you're now part of.

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Marie Forleo:

I love it. It brought tears to my eyes when I read it for the first time. And when I was getting ready for our conversation today, it hit me again.

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Steven Pressfield:

If I can find it here.

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Marie Forleo:

Cool.

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Steven Pressfield:

This is actually the very end of the book. It just talks about how we are different once we've decided to make this shift, to put our ass where our heart wants to be, the shift from the ego to the self. It's three paragraphs, and here it is.

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"Our priorities change when we make the shift from the ego to the self. Our field of consciousness broadens. We see ourselves no longer as an isolated element in a random or meaningless universe. Instead, our passage through this material dimension acquires significance, even if we can't articulate what that significance is. We sense ourselves as part of a greater cosmos, extending without limit into the past and projecting infinitely into the future.

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We become conscious of our own gift. We no longer doubt this or dismiss it or despise it. Instead, we resolve to serve it. We may still fear personal extinction. We may still worry about our children's futures and the health of our community and nation and planet. But we come at these concerns from a different place and with a different sense of what kind of difference we can make and how and why, or even if we wish to attempt to make a difference at all.

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We have become artists, not in the precious sense of differentiating ourselves from others in some imagined, superior way, but in the sense of being servants of an intention that comes from somewhere else. Even though we cannot grasp what that intention is or what its source may be, we trust this intention somehow, even though we can't say why. It is no small thing to put your ass where your heart wants to be. Can you do it? Do you want to? Are you willing to pay the price?”

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Marie Forleo:

That was awesome. Steve, thank you so much. Thanks just for continuing to put your ass where your heart wants to be. Thank you for continuing to create all of this beautiful work in the world. I consider you a mentor and a friend, and I just have so much love and appreciation for who you are, and thanks for taking the time to be on the show again.

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Steven Pressfield:

Thanks for having me, Marie, and thanks for doing what you do. I mean, what you're doing is going out to so many people and changing so many people's lives. I consider you a mentor too. You say I'm a mentor to you, I consider you a mentor and a friend. God bless you. Keep doing what you're doing. You're holding up a candle, lighting a candle for a lot of people, including me, so thanks very much for that.

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Marie Forleo:

Thank you so much for listening and for watching. And as always, the best conversations happen over at marieforleo.com, so head on over there and leave a comment now. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you soon.

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Did you enjoy this conversation with Steve? If so, you've got to watch this next conversation. It is a game changer. It's going to help you be more consistent so you can get your work out into the world.

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Most of us struggle with being more consistent in some part of our lives, and it's really worth working on because the rewards of being consistent are huge.

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