YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Pressfield

lines on the record: 107
first: 2021-02-26
most recent: 2021-02-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But I do agree with them that there's a famous quote that I quoted in the war of art, and now I'm blanking on who it was, a famous writer who they asked him, do you write on his schedule or only when inspiration strikes you? Oh, Somerset Mom. And he said, I write only when inspiration strikes me. He says, fortunately, it strikes me every morning at 9 30 sharp. He was a believer in routine, right? And another person, there's a wonderful book by Twila Tharp. I'm sure you're aware of this, Tim, called The Creative Habit.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing I would say is that it seems to me that every writer or artist has a unique way of doing it. And I don't think there's any kind of one-size-fits-all type of thing. Like there was an article in the LA Times a few years ago where they interviewed screenwriters and they were asking what was their routine. They interviewed like five writers and three of them wrote in their cars. And this is true. And one of them wrote in the car when it was moving. Now, I don't know how they did this, but it just goes to show you that whatever works works. Like Joyce Carroll Oates or John McFeed doing eight hours, that is beyond my comprehension. I can't imagine.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm now in the COVID thing where I'm doing it out on my deck. But for up until the COVID thing, I trained with a wonderful trainer named T.R. Goodman at a place called Pro Camp, Gold's Gym in Venice. And he has a whole thing that he does with us who train with him. He usually train in a group of two or three guys. And it's basically just really straight basic weight training, squats and curls and stuff like that. legs on one day just very basic stuff”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say a basketball player. Think about Kobe Bryan or Michael Jordan or anybody, Steph Curry or whatever, going to a game tonight. You know, they're at the at the stadium like three and a half hours early. And even before then, they've been at the gym or they've been getting a massage or mentally they're preparing themselves and they go through their, if you watch Steph Curry do his routine, it's like, I don't know what it's amazing what he does. rubber bands between his knees to strengthen his knees and then he does 100 shots from you know beyond the arc and he's trying to build up little successes so that when the game starts he's in the flow immediately and he's at the highest possible level that's the theory anyway”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I'm trying to build up little successes so that by the time I get to sit down at the page, I feel like I've got some momentum going. I've done this. I've done that. I took in out the garbage, fed the birds and I've got a little momentum going. And I think it's very important. I mean, even if you think about”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Randy is Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart and has directed a bunch of movies as well. And he's a good friend of mine out here. And he has a theory that he calls little successes. And it means that from the moment he gets out of bed, and I believe this too exactly, he's looking to build up to the moment when he actually sits down and has to write whatever time that may be for him, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, whatever. And he's trying to produce a series of little successes between now and then to generate momentum. And he counts like brushing his teeth as a little success. And I do too. And one of the reasons I like to go to the gym early or do something physical early.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way. And so almost overnight that manuscript just found a buyer, boom, boom, boom, it found a buyer, found a movie buyer, found everything right away. So I think it was just the law of averages finally evened out a little bit.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starts to work for you, right? And what happened was to try to get, you have to get a literary agent, right? Which I didn't have. I had a Hollywood agent. So I went to my lawyer. I had an entertainment lawyer named Larry Rose, and he sent me to an agent named Jodi Hutchis in New York who worked for Sterling Lord, who's a big literary agent, who is still my agent and just turned 100 years old.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it was like I joke that I was an overnight success after 30 years, and I think sometimes your bad luck builds up to such an extent that it turns into good luck, right? The law of average.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My story is that I fired him, but his story is that he fired me. But basically He was absolutely right because what he said to me was I've spent the last five years trying to get your career going and we're now just about to get going and you're telling me you're going to write some stupid golf novel that nobody's going to buy and nobody's going to read. It's going to take you a year to write it. And by that time, everybody will have forgotten who you are here in the business in Hollywood. And I'm back to square one. I've spent a lot of time working with you. So get out of here. But in any event, that was how an actual novel that I wrote actually got published. So it was sort of a smooth transition. And when you know the actual passage there, it didn't just come out of nowhere.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the agent said, Mike said to us, Let me team you guys up, and you'll be a team. So that, from my point of view, I now became like an apprentice. I was like the junior partner of this team. And when we'd go to meetings in Hollywood, nobody wanted me. They wanted Ron. He was the brand. And I was just, you know, I was the guy that actually sat at the keyboard. So in any event, for maybe 10 years or so, I did have a career as a screenwriter. So that was gaining credibility for me and also I was learning what a story is by the process that you go through. And then at one point, I just had this idea for the legend of Bagger Vance and I had it as a book, not as a movie. And so when I told that to my agent then at the time, he basically fired me. We basically said unceremonious”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you can't say just because maybe he didn't actually physically write it at the typewriter, that was his, you know, so it's a very creative thing to be a producer.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a row to get the financing For instance, the great scene in Alien Where the thing bursts out of John Hurt's chest. Know that is Ron's scene. That was his idea.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A writer writer is the guy that actually sits down at the page, the typewriter, and actually writes the scenes and so on and so forth. A producer writer is somebody who is great at coming up with the ideas, the big ideas, and also sort of shepherding a story through. From start to finish, and also is a producer in the sense of being able to get financing. Take the meetings and make a deal. So, whereas Ron was not the kind of writer that could actually sit down and write the screenplay. But he could say, you know, I would sit there and come up with like 30 ideas. What if we do this? What if we do that? What if we do that? And he would say 29 of them suck. Do this one.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had an agent, a wonderful agent named Mike Werner, who tragically died at a young age. And, you know, he had other clients, and Ron was one of his other clients. And Ron usually worked with a partner. And at that time, because he was more, Ron was more of a producer writer than a writer writer.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like I said, I wound up writing three novels, and That never got published. And when I finish the third one, that was sort of like another kind of an all-is-lost moment, a suicide moment for me because I couldn't get any, even my friends wouldn't read it. And I knew that I just didn't have the wherewithal to do this again, you know, to save up money, to work for two years. I just didn't have the wherewithal. And so I decided or sort of came to me as a flash that I would go to Hollywood. I thought, let me write a screenplay. Let me write, let me try Hollywood. If I failed as a novelist, let me go fail as a screenwriter. So I did go out to Los Angeles and after about four or five years, I got my eight, I did have an agent. I kept writing screenplays that also didn't sell. And finally, I got kind of teamed up with an established writer, a guy named Ron Chusette, who did the first alien, among other things, and who was like a really, a real.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I will say that as an encouragement to anybody that's listening that's struggling with the same stuff, once I was able to finish that thing, that novel, I've never had any trouble finishing anything ever again.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me just talk about a novel for a second. After the first one that I wrote that I couldn't finish and that I went on these various spiraling down the rat hole type of things, I finally got it together. I saved some money. I saved $2,700 working in advertising in New York. And I moved out to a little town in Northern California and determined to write a novel and finish it. And I rented this little house and I was just by myself. And through that whole time, again, I was aware every second of my tendency to sabotage myself. And so I just said to myself, I'm going to finish this son of a bitch, or I'm going to kill myself. And when I finally did, and I write about this in the War of Art, When I finally did finish it and I typed those words the end, I felt like my DNA changed.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's what I acted out as they would say in psychological terms. In other words, another form of self-destruction, you know, that was my demons forever.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When Odysseus is being summoned to go fight in the Trojan War, his first reaction is, no, no, no, I don't want to do it. And if you remember the myth, he pretends to be crazy and he goes out and he's sowing his fields with salt. And the messenger who was sent to summon him takes his baby, the young Telemachus, Odysseus' baby, and puts him in a furrow in the path of the plough. And when Odysseus comes to the baby, he veers around it, right? He's not going to run over his baby. And the messenger says, ah, you're faking. You're really not crazy. Get on the boat. We're going to the Trojan War. So that's the refusal of the call. And for me, it was the first novel that I tried to write, which I had no business doing. I got like two minutes from the end and I just blew it up and blew.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's the call, right? Suddenly he realized, uh oh, I've got to do something here. And then what follows immediately after that in Joseph Campbell paradigm is the refusal of the call. For Luke, he goes, no, I can't leave. I've got responsibilities to Aunt Veroo and Uncle O and blah, blah, blah. And that seems to be across the board. If you remember the first Rocky, the movie, when Rocky, when Apollo Creed or the promoter calls Rocky into his office and says, I'm going to give you a shot to fight the champ. And Rocky's first reaction is, no, I can't do it. You're crazy. This is a joke. I can't do it. Or if we want to go back to another one.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If there's a spot that's the farthest point away from the bright center of the universe, that's where I am. And so that's kind of the ordinary. And then the next day, this is very early in the hero's journey. And then the next stage is the call. And it's something happens that tends to pull you out of this ordinary world, like in the Wizard of Oz, it's Dorothy gets swept up in the tornado. In Star Wars, that Luke Skybarker finds R2, D2. unplugs the little hologram that says Princess Leia, help me Obi-Wan, Kenobi, you're my only hope, right?”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And I think it does in everybody. And the hero's journey usually starts in what Joseph Campbell would call the ordinary world. And it's just, you know, you're living your regular life, but something is wrong. Like in the case of Luke Skywalker, he's on Uncle Owen and Aunt Veroo's evaporator farm on Tatoen, I guess is the planet, right? You got it. And he's just, right? And this is his ordinary life, right? He's stuck. He's nowhere. In fact, I think there's somebody asks him at some point, where are you? And he says.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a profession. What am I going to do with this? Am I just going to be another crappy person that's continuing the societal garbage that we have? Or am I going to try to find my gift that's unique to me and bring it forth to the world and try to help in one way or another? So that to me is the hero's journey comes first. And when the hero's journey is over, our artist journey begins. And I would define art as the broadest possible terms, anything that is a gift to the wider world.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you've ever heard of Richard Rohr, who wrote Falling Upward, I think it is. He's a Franciscan monk and a very deep thinker. And he kind of divides life into two halves. First half and second half. And the first half of your life, he says, is when you're sort of finding your identity and kind of establishing your presence on the planet, you know, like maybe you're a mom and you say, oh, okay, I'm that, or I'm a lawyer. I bought a house. I have a wife. I have children. You're sort of, in his words, or at your roar's words, R-O-H-R. If you want to look it up, I highly recommend anything by him. You're creating the vessel that is your life. And then in the second half of your life, you're filling that vessel. So you sort of ask yourself, okay, now I can do it. I've got a house. I've, whatever.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“New stage of our life takes over. Like, I'll say for me it was when I finally got a novel published, Legend of Bag of Vance. So that took me like 28 years of quote unquote heroes journey. And in my view, this is me thinking about this later. I had no concept at the time. At that point, I said to myself, I'm a writer. I'm a real writer. I can do it. I've paid my dues. And then the next question became, okay, now what am I going to write about? What is my gift? If I'm here to bring kind of a gift to the people as the hero's journey template says, my question to myself is, what is that gift? And so for the rest of my life, I feel at that point I got on my artist's journey. And now I'm a writer. I'm going to write one thing. I'm going to write another. I'm going to write another. And the question I'm asking myself is, what is book one? What is book two? What is book three? What is my gift?”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I definitely feel this time that you and I are talking about now when I was driving trucks and doing things like that and being sort of lost and in the wilderness as my quote unquote heroes journey. I mean, I think we all have many heroes journeys, but we probably have one sort of overarching one. And to me, the hero's journey of our lives believing that we are what our parents told us we are or what society told us we are or what we imbied from the culture shedding that and finally finding out who we really are and that's sort of the moment the hero's journey always ends in Joseph Campbell terms with the hero coming home right like Odysseus coming back to Ithaca and at that point the we've we've hopefully we've kind of found who we are and what our call Is. And for me, you know, it was a long journey. But at that point,”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find that you can say maybe in 25 words what you had said in 250 words before. So you're right, Tim. You're right on target that there was a lot of lessons that came out of that experience of writing ads.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That makes them say, I've got to go in there, you know. And that's where the work comes in, and that's where the creativity comes in. And another sidebar to that, Tim, of what you learn in advertising is a 30-second commercial cannot have more than 60 words in it, two words per second because an announcer or people speaking, actors speaking, can't deliver to become so fast that you can't hear it. There's pressure on you every time you write a piece of copy. Like I would bring a piece of copy into my boss, whoever he was or she was, and they would say, get out of here. This is way too long. Go back to your cubicle and cut it down. And I'd spend like hours cutting it down and bring it back. And then they'd say, cut it down again. And so that was a wonderful skill to learn.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Expect that they're obligated to read it or watch it because they won't watch it, you know? So that was a great lesson for me that applied in writing novels or movies or anything at all that you're going to do, a restaurant, if you're going to open a restaurant.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the lesson for that as a writer, knowing that you're facing that with so much resistance from the reader, is that whatever you're going to put on that page or on the TV screen, it's got to be so good and so compelling and so interesting that people will have no choice but to watch it. And so it makes you work really, really hard and also makes you really project yourself into the mind of the viewer or the reader in an empathetic way, in a really good way, and try to say, what would be interesting to them? What would catch their interest? And what would hold their interest? And you realize, too, that writing and reading is a transaction that the reader or the viewer is giving you a very valuable commodity, which is their time and their attention. And you've got to give them something. You can't just put some crap out there and...”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is to me like the number one lesson that any writer or artist should know before they know anything else. And you learn this in advertising because as you're trying to write an ad or a TV commercial, one thing you have to always keep in mind is that nobody wants to see it. In fact, they hate it. Sight unseen, they hate it. If it's a TV commercial, they've got their remote in their hand. They're going to click right through it as fast as I can, you know. Or if it's an ad that's in a newspaper or magazine, they're going to turn the page as fast as they can because they hate it. They don't want you to sell them preparation H or anything like that, right?”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was one of the places, yeah, yeah. And I do think in many ways I learned a tremendous amount in advertising. I mean, I hate advertising. I hate it when it's on the screen. I hate watching TV commercials. I hate the whole concept of it. But I met a lot of great people there and I learned a lot. And one of the things, you know, one of the books that I've written about writing, as you know, is called Nobody Wants to Read Your Ship.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that sort of at least started this kind of dream for me, you know. And then once I had failed at it, it really badly, I thought I was even more motivated to do it, right? I've got to like somehow I've got to, you know, write my way out of this thing one way or another. So that was how it initially started, Tim, in terms of just the intention to do it, to finally make it work”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. It's why does anybody write, or why does anybody paint or anything? It sort of originally started for me. It was not a dream I had as a kid. I didn't, you know, like Jack Carr, the thriller writer and former Navy SEAL. He always wanted to be a thriller writer from the time he was like six years old. But not me, it never occurred to me. My first job was in advertising in New York, and I had a boss named Hannibal who wrote a novel quit, wrote a novel, and it was a huge success overnight. And I sort of thought, well, shit, why don't I do that too? Seems”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll accept it. Thank you for saying that, Jim. I accept that at face value the whole time that You know, I wasn't only doing blue collar jobs. I worked in advertising like in New York three or four times. And I also had about a 10-year career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, where I am now. And so through that time, you're trying to learn what a writer is or what writing is and also, of course, I was writing novels through that time. You know, I wrote three of them that never got published. So, and each one took about two years, full time.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that was a great thing for me, you know, to, you know, it was like a slap in the face because in my mind, I definitely was kind of on this Odyssey. I was living on an inner world. I don't know what it was. And he was absolutely right. This is a business. You know, this is for real. I have a real job. People are depending on me. And that really helped me to sort of think of myself as much as I could as a professional and not somebody on some crazy adventure.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Issues are. I don't know what you're trying to solve in your own inner mind, but this company is a business. We're in business to make money. You are a driver. You represent this company. When I give you a load to take somewhere, you better fucking deliver that load.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so on my way out of town in the dead of winter, worst possible rainy North Carolina start, I stopped at this one trucking company that I had already flied to a couple times and they rejected me. And Hugh Reeves was the dispatcher. And he was a former Marine, and he knew that I had been a Marine. And I just stopped just for the hell of it. I thought, this is nothing's going to happen any hired me. So that kind of saved my life right there. But throughout the whole My struggles to learn the business and stuff like that, I'll tell you, there was one moment where he kind of sat me down. And I had kept screwing up like I said. And he sat me down alone in his office and he said, you know, son, and I was like, I don't know what, 25 years younger than him. He said, I don't know what's going on in your head, son. I don't know what journey you're playing out here. I don't know what you're.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After I got fired for stealing that can of pineapple juice, I was in a state of utter shame. I didn't even tell my wife or her mother. I just, and I had already applied for, I had gone to a truck driving school and I had applied to like 50 different companies throughout North Carolina and couldn't get on anywhere. And I was just leaving town in my 65 Chevy van heading for the oil fields in Louisiana where I'd worked once before and where I knew I could at least get a job. All you needed was a pulse and then take you on.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And getting back to your Hugh Reeves, who was a dispatcher, who was my mentor. This thing After I got fired, I was really, I don't know. I guess this is interesting. I don't know. I find it interesting.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you need to, like, if you're an airline pilot and you're doing your checklist, you know, you have to before you take off, you got to hit check the flaps in the engine and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. There was something in me that would make me forget to check the one most important thing that I had to do. And as soon as it went wrong, I knew it. You know, it wasn't like, oh, what a surprise. It was like, oh, I've done it again, you know.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I really feel like me doing that was an act of self-destruction that I had, and I absolutely am certain of it. I just sort of knew, you know, why do you do something like that? So that was kind of the sort of thing that I would do kind of over and over. And, you know, and driving trucks, I could tell a bunch of stories, but one of them was where I dropped a trailer one time delivering it, meaning I pulled the tractor out from under the trailer in this warehouse parking lot right in front of about 500 people and just dropped this entire trailer, nose down onto the thing, and was just a complete fiasco. So that was the kind of thing that I would do where I would just be careless.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give you a specific. When I was driving the little trucks and delivering institutional food to these little restaurants like Toddle houses and stuff like that, the way I got fired was it was early in the morning I just finished delivering to a restaurant. I hadn't had breakfast and I was coming back out through the sort of the warehouse section at the back of the restaurant and they had a whole bunch of rows of little cans of fruit juice, you know, pineapple juice and stuff like that. And so I just reached out and I grabbed one for myself. And the boss caught me and, you know, bump it bump it bump. I'm fired.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to do, which was just to survive. So, first of all, the help from the people that I worked with, from the other drivers, from the dispatcher who was kind of a mentor to me, a guy named Hugh Reeves, who really saved my life in a lot of ways, and also just the need to deliver, to really actually deliver the goods and the self-imposed pressure of that, that really helped me. And there were a bunch of instances when I found myself really up against it and having to get it together completely on my own. And when I thought I never could. And each time that I was able to do that, it reinforced that. And kind of like the cat that came out of the woods, I sort of felt like I was being a little bit of my own role model and that there was hope that I could get it together one way or another.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Driving tractor trailers was probably the most formative thing for me in that sense, in the sense that once you're out on the road delivering a load, you're completely on your own. And if anything goes wrong, I mean, obviously you can call for help if you're really desperate, but pretty much you've got to get it together one way or another. And other people are depending on you, whatever that load is, you've got to deliver it. The shipper wants it, the people that's being shipped to want it, and there's really sort of no mercy. You know, you have to be a professional and you have to do it. And at the time that I was doing this job, I was really dealing with my own tendency to sabotage myself. I mean, I was like a self-destruction machine, you know, where I would just screw up constantly and I had to be constantly, you know, monitoring myself that I wouldn't act out in some crazy way and destroy everything that I was.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because of that, they couldn't function in the world. They couldn't hold a job, you know, because they just couldn't take the bullshit, you know. And that was how they kind of wound up in institutions because the greater society thought, well, these people are absolute rejects. They can't fit in. But in fact, to my mind, they were actually the people that really saw through everything. So in a way, I felt kind of bad when I had to leave this house because I liked the people so much.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I've been in a bunch of other kind of situations like that, and you think you would think that people were really struggling mentally, but in fact the people in this halfway house, and we used to hang out in the kitchen and talk all night long, were among the smartest people that I ever met. And the funniest and the most interesting. And what I concluded from hanging out with them and from others in a similar situation was that they weren't crazy at all. That they were actually the smart people who had sort of seen through the bullshit.”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great shame. I was just like totally ashamed in front of my wife, in front of her mother. And I just sort of just couldn't stay there anymore. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't stay with them. So I kind of, I moved into town trying to find a job desperately. And the only place I could find was this sort of boarding house that this is in Durham, North Carolina. That was also a halfway house for, you know, where the state government would pay for people who had been released from mental institutions and were on their way back into the real world. And so I found a room in the basement there. And that was how I came to that halfway house. And I have a theory about halfway houses and about the people who are in there. Do you want to hear this, Jim?”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm going to skip the play a bit if that's okay. Well, I was in North Carolina at the time. I had married a galf in North Carolina. We'd been, you know, married for like five or six years at that time. And we were at the state where we were desperately trying to, you know, we were coming apart at the seams and we were desperately trying to hang on together. And we had come back from North Carolina and we were living with her mother out in the woods in a farmhouse that also rented for about 20 bucks a month. And I had this job delivering industrial food. I drove a little truck and I would deliver things like Salisbury steaks and frozen crinkle cut french fries to little restaurants and stuff like that. And without going into a long story, I got fired from that job. And in a state of...”
2021-02-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #501: Steven Pressfield — How to Overcome Self-Sabotage and Resistance, Routines for Little Successes, and The Hero’s Journey vs. The Artist’s Journey · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT