The Rich Roll Podcast - Steven Pressfield: Battle Resistance, Master Your Craft, & Pursue Your Calling

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Here to wax poetic on all things creativity, battling resistance, and answering your calling is wise master of the creative process Steven Pressfield, returning for his second appearance on the show (his first being episode #584). Steven is a prolific writer and thinker known for his profound insights into the creative process and the psychology of success. He has over 20 books to his name, and his works The War of Art, Do The Work, and Turning Pro have inspired and motivated millions of readers worldwide to embrace their creative compulsions and pursue their dreams with conviction and determination. Packed with actionable advice to inform your creative process, I have no doubt that Steven’s words will serve you no matter where you are on your creative journey. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. You can start out as a bum, where you really can't do it, you know? And over time, you can actually learn. You can get better. There is hope. It does happen. Hey, learn. You can get better. There is hope. It does happen. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast.

All is right in the world because my friend, Steven Pressfield, is back in the studio, returning for his second appearance on the show. And it is all glorious. The person that's toiling in obscurity, trying to learn a craft or to bring forth whatever it is inside of them. I really do believe that God's watch over that person. For those who are unfamiliar, Stephen is a prolific writer and prolific thinker, known best for his deep insights into the creative process and the psychology of success. to the creative process and the psychology of success.

His books, The War of Art, Do the Work, and Turning Pro have inspired and motivated millions of readers around the world to embrace their creative compulsions and pursue their dreams with conviction and determination. And the impact those books have had on my life on a personal level is just absolutely incalculable. Success, quote unquote, doesn't manifest immediately. It might be another 20 years before that thing comes to fruition. I got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible.

the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care,

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Okay, today we sit down, we discuss Stephen's brand new memoir. It's called Government Cheese. Really enjoyed that book. In it, he shares the improbable story of his life as he goes from this sort of lost and broken truck driver to ultimately fulfilling his dream of becoming a writer. And of course, within that, we explore the processes required to birth a creative work and share it with the world, as well as plenty of solid life advice for any and all. I know from experience that that self-doubt is a good sign, that it's, you know, the bigger the resistance,

the bigger the dream. Again, I really enjoyed the book, Government Cheese. More importantly, I always love spending time with Steve. It's a joy. He's just a wonderful, humble, wise human. And I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. So pull up a chair and let's get lost together. So nice to see you.

I've been looking forward to this for such a long time. Congrats on the new book. Thank you. Just churning them out. It's unbelievable. You are a product of your own advice and philosophy, walking the talk. You know, part of this really is COVID.

You know, it's like that whole period of time where you couldn't really do anything in terms of getting anything out there. So, I just worked. Yeah, but a lot of people let COVID break them. A lot of people descended into black holes of darkness and paralysis. Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, for the writer's life, it's not that different from the COVID life. This is perfect. You're home in a room. My phone rings a little bit less. Yeah. But you always say, it never gets easier. Like the resistance is always there,

no matter how many books you write, no matter how many times you've gone to battle with resistance. And I think, obviously this is a universal thing. We all experienced some version of what you speak about, but during COVID, I think, a lot of us let resistance get the best of us. So maybe there is something to the number of times

you've gone to battle that you were able to muster the resilience to continue that battle when it broke all the amateurs out there. Maybe, what about you with your training and stuff? I mean, I know that I was reading about David Goggins the other day that maybe even said this on with you, that some mornings he would stare at his running shoes for 20 minutes before he could actually make himself

put them on. I mean, speaking of resistance, I mean, do you have to fight it every day, right? It's interesting. I think that story came up when you did Rogan's podcast. I think he was sharing that David had shared that with Joe. And I listened to that and I thought, yeah, that's the case. There's certainly days you don't wanna lace up

and get out there. I think the difference for me is that I don't experience a lot of resistance with training. Like I like it. Like if I have nothing to do, like it is my joy to go out and push my body. So, I mean, of course there's, it's raining and cold out. You don't wanna do it, et cetera.

And the resistance will certainly creep up in those moments. But by and large, it's like the highlight of my day. It's like, it almost feels indulgent or selfish. Like, ooh, I get to go do this thing. So the resistance in my experience shows up in other areas, like, you know, writing. Something you know a little bit about. Like, you know, I think I shared in the first podcast

that we did together that this, you can make a solid argument that this entire podcast, this decade of podcasting is one colossal, you know, example of, you know, this sort of monument to resistance that I've built to make me feel better about not writing another book, you know? And that's changed a little bit. We can get into that, but I guess, you know,

the point being that resistance varies and it's different for every single person. And I think people do look at me as like this athlete, but my relationship with fitness is not where I, it's like, I think David is somebody who would say, I hate, he always said, I hate running. I hate, you know, he does it because it is a practice of him having to confront resistance and that's empowering and has allowed him

to create this whole life. And my relationship to that world is a little bit different because I kind of find joy in it in a way. And that doesn't mean it's not hard. It's just resistance manifests in other places. Yeah, I mean, I have found sort of during COVID and post COVID that as much resistance as I have to writing, it's a joy for me too.

And it's like when I can get some of the other stuff that we were just talking earlier about starting a company and that kind of stuff like that, a publishing company, that's the stuff I really hate. So I say, oh, thank God I can have a couple hours and I can just get in there and just face the blank page or whatever it is. So I can relate to what you're saying, Rich.

But you've been staring at blank pages for a long time and you know well enough how to get, you have enough experience of getting to the other side of that, that you know if you just keep your ass in the chair, it's gonna work out okay at some point. And there will be some discomfort, but you have enough of those blissful moments

where the channel is wide open and the muse is dancing with you. And I'm sure you live for those moments. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't always come when you summon them though. Right? No, it's the same thing of grinding it out

and making yourself, making it happen through action. Well, it was really great reading Government Cheese. I loved it. And I learned so much about your life. I mean, I've heard you speak about your journeyman days and all these, I don't know, 20 some odd jobs that you've had over the years. And I did this and I did that, but this book, like,

holy shit, like, I'm like, wow, you really did live the journeyman life. Like, I think it was, I mean, we're halfway into the book and you know, that typewriter still hasn't emerged from the back of the van. I was like, when does the writing part start? You know, like this was a hard fought, you know, multi-decade thing, you know, that really, I mean, for me, it's beautifully raw, but it really gave me an appreciation

of just how severe the resistance operated in your own life and everything you kind of endured and experienced to become this person who has the authority to talk about like these issues because you lived it as much as anybody I'm sure ever has. Well, I don't know about that, but it certainly was a long, hard slog before, you know, I took the typewriter out and actually sat down

and tried to, you know, and found that I could do it and it wouldn't drive me crazy. Whereas my first experience of it, you know, first trying to write the first book when I was 23 or whenever it was, was a complete disaster and a whole thing where I thought, Steve, you're an absolute idiot for having tried to do this. You know, don't ever think about doing it again. To the moment, you know, a few years later when I actually could sit down

and even churning out just garbage, just the, it didn't matter, you know, just the fact of being able to punch the keys and take a few pages out of the typewriter at the end was, you know, battery charging to me instead of battery depleting. Right, so early in the book, we were made aware of this typewriter

that's hiding underneath your mattress in the van. And then it really doesn't appear for quite some time. And I don't know how many 150 pages into this book. And I'm like, this book should be called Zen and the Art of Big Rig Trucking. The amount of detail in the world of, you have these experiences in these various subcultures and your depiction of your life at that time

is done with so much tenderness, like so much appreciation for these characters that you encountered who were very colorful at times. And in many ways, like mentors, it is a book about mentorship. Yeah. It's like, you know, as you know, Rich, it's divided into seven books and each book is named after a person. And each person was a mentor to me. They were all men for whatever reason. And very few of them had anything to do with writing. You know, they were, you know, my boss at this trucking company that I worked at and a guy that I picked fruit with in Washington

and I never even knew his last name that were real role models to me along the way, even though at the time I wasn't thinking about that at all. Right, yeah, real, like most of them pretty salt of the earth guys. So the trucking guy was Hugh, what was his name? Hugh Reeves. Hugh, right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

what a character. He was a total salt of the earth guy, that's for sure. Right, and you were, how old were you at that time? I think I was 27 or 28. Oh, you were older than I thought, yeah. I mean, the way that the book unfolds, it's hard to get a sense of the timeline because you jump around a lot.

I was like, wait, what part of your life and you had so many jobs? I'm like, wait, what part of your life? And you had so many jobs. I'm like, I don't know where I am in this narrative. But you really get, you know, this sense of all these adventures that you want. And that obviously like you can't be a writer unless you've lived your life, right? Like you're out in the world, you know,

having all these experiences, these rich experiences that I'm sure. I mean, I sort of wonder how people that, these kind of boy wonders or girl wonders that kind of come out of YouTube or something like that these days and produce stuff that's really good too. I wonder how they do it, having, like coming out of college and then basically

going straight into whatever it is they're writing about and doing a good job. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how Bob Dylan comes to Greenwich Village and immediately starts writing great stuff. Well, that's an interesting person to explore because you're the first to say kind of talent is bullshit. It's really about process and work and showing up

and meeting the resistance and all of that. But then you have the Bob Dylans and you have these people who do seem touched. And I think that makes the rest of us kind of look at creative pursuits as something inaccessible or like not, we're not privileged to be able to kind of dance with the muse in the way that those people can. So we should just go get normal jobs.

What, I mean, I'd be interested to know what you think about that, Rich. I mean, you think about somebody like Neil Young or Bob Dylan or any of those guys that, or Joni Mitchell, that by the time they were 20 years old, they already had like a body of work and they were obviously writing from absolute strength. Right, they were right in their groove and they kept going.

Some of them are still going, right? I don't know. How does that happen? What do you think? I mean, did you watch Get Back, the Beatles documentary? I've been wanting to. I don't know. What is it on Amazon? Something I can't access.

I think it's on, no, it wasn't on Apple Disney. I can't remember. I think we actually went to try to watch it the other day and we couldn't find it. I don't know if it's still up. But anyway, my point being, like you get this front row seat to this unedited kind of bird's eye view

of the greatest rock band to ever do it while they're just cracking songs in real time. Like you're bearing witness to an unadulterated view of the creative process in real time. And it's really beautiful and magical. Like when they're just working out these songs and you're just like, oh my God, like this is where it happened.

And then you realize how young they were. Yeah. And you're like, cause you don't think of them being like really young people who, you know, and the band ended when they were still quite young. And you're like, how did they know how to do all of that stuff at such a young age? And maybe music is different.

I don't know, maybe. I do think there are some people who are touched, right? But I think most people who are working in the creative pursuits are not, you know, anointed geniuses. There are people who work really hard at their craft. It certainly, that certainly was my experience. If there's any sort of lesson,

because I've been looking back thinking on this, right? I've been doing some podcasts and people have asked me questions. I had to think about it. And if there's any sort of lesson that comes out of this for me, it's that you can get better. You can start out as a bum where you really can't do it. As hard as you try, you just can't do it. And over time,

you can actually learn and get better, at least in writing. It's not like necessarily being an athlete where there's a certain sell-by, where when you're 75 years old, you're not gonna be whatever, but you can get better. There is hope, it does happen. Yeah, I mean, not everybody can be LeBron James or Prince or somebody like that, but your book is in the memoir really tells the story of just how long the journey was.

And what's remarkable, like if you have a true God-given talent, it's your ability to kind of stay in it. Most people would have just spun out and ended up in some other job or career, but you kept at it and writing novels, like a year, two years to write these novels that nobody would publish and to continue to do it.

I'm like, oh my God, this guy's like a glutton for punishment at some point. And I can't imagine the voice in your mind, that the war that was going on between like, really you're gonna write another novel when the last one nobody wanted to touch with like, that's just resistance. You gotta keep going.

Are you a writer or are you not? wanted to touch with like, that's just resistance. You gotta keep going. Are you a writer or are you not? Well, you know, it's really, when I think about it too, I sort of wonder how I did it too. But each time I would sort of try to go straight, you know, get a real job. Like I had several jobs at ad agencies throughout this thing because that's a job, if you're a writer,

you can get that job, right? But each time, each day, at the end of the day, I would be so depressed, you know, that I just had to go home and try to write a chapter, half a chapter or something like that. You know, I wasn't living any kind of life like, you know, chasing women or anything like that. It was all in this one groove

of just trying not to be so depressed and so ready to kill myself, you know, because of what I, you know, trying to go straight during the day. So I just knew I couldn't do that. It wasn't an option for me. Right, this is who you are. This has to be birthed into the world.

Like your life depends on it. Yeah, true. Right. No plan B sort of type. You may wanna have a plan B, but they just don't work. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, and you, there's the characters when you're picking apples who these guys are like,

I mean, they're riding the rail cars, right? Like these are like hardcore, like hobo lifestyle train car dudes. And even one of them, I can't remember his name is like, you know, I tried to, you know, I had a girlfriend and I had a solid job and I did it and he lasted like 90 days. And he's like, I got it.

What is this idea that we've been sold about what it means to live a happy, fulfilling life in many ways is a lie. And you've had the experience of being with lots of different people who have rejected that and are considered lunatics or, you know, kind of outcasts or outliers as a result of that. But there's also like a lot of wisdom to be mined

from somebody who has the courage to step outside of that and say, I'm gonna live differently. And I don't care what society thinks about that. Although I'm not sure how much of a choice it is for people like that. Maybe, yeah, of course, right, yeah. You know, there was one little bit in the book about when I was living in a halfway house,

for people coming out of state institutions and stuff like that. And how my sort of conclusion about who they were, cause they were really interesting people. I mean, we would sit in the kitchen at night and talk about all this kind of crazy stuff, you know, men and women. And they were certainly as smart as anybody I knew and as interesting as anybody I knew. And I sort of, my conclusion was that they were people who saw conventional life, the life of having a job, of settling down, of having a,

they saw completely through that. They just couldn't do it, you know, which meant that they were crazy as far as the world was concerned. The world locked them up in institutions, but they sort of, and there was no place for them to go. It wasn't like there was a job that they would fit into or anything like that. So, but they were, you know, almost like if they could have joined an Indian tribe, like dances with wolves, they would have done it. Right. And these fruit tramps were the same kind of guys.

I mean, they were all alcoholics, flat out, wino, you know, drink till you pass out, you know, get up the next morning with no intention of changing that. There was no thought of going to AA or this was whatever they were, but they also felt like they couldn't work a straight job. There just was no way to do that. So they had found this kind of crack in society,

picking fruit and riding the rails and for whatever. And no one's gonna give them a hard time and tell them they need to change. Like they're in kind of an enabling environment for that kind of life and behavior. But it's a really sad environment and scary to be in as like, you know, a more or less regular person like I was.

Cause it's like, guys don't have teeth. Yeah. Eyes are screwed up. Well that's like guys don't have teeth. Yeah. Eyes are screwed up. Well that guy like had the big medical, you're hauling this dude off and then he dies. And then you actually found a body in the orchard. Yeah, I mean, but that's real. That's apparently pretty common, you know?

So you could really see these guys as wonderful as they were and as pure as they were in a certain way that they had a limited lifespan. You knew, you know, if you came back three years from now, you might not see them again. And they knew it too. And they just, you know, there was no plan B. And so what do you mine from that for your, like, what can be learned from that?

I feel like I'm that way. I feel like artists are that way, you know, that you can't live the normal conventional life as much as you may want to. You have a sliver of a skill that you can do that maybe is marketable if you can make it marketable, but there's no choice, right? There's no alternative.

You're either in that little lane and make it work or you're going down, you know? So, and I don't see anything wrong with that. You know, I feel a kinship to those guys. And, you know, who says that this, like that this world that we believe in of having money in the stock market and trying to get your kids into Harvard, who says that's such a great thing? What's so great about that? You know, to get here today, you know, you've got to drive past these companies, you know, these, I don't know what they are, you know, but they're like white-collar jobs around here.

It's a prosperous area. And as I'm driving fast, I'm thinking, I'm sure you think the same thing, Rich. If I was in one of these things, I'd kill myself, you know? There's no way I could do that. So what's so great about that? And of course, people that are living that life, they have alcoholism problems

and they're beating their wives or whatever, or they're just miserable. Yeah, and that's not to say that there aren't people who find some level of happiness in that. No judgment. If you're wired for that and you do that, that's great. Like I, you know, I think, you know, one thing we share, like you sort of were never really part of that.

You always danced around the edges of it so that you could just make enough money to be a writer. Whereas I was kind of steeped in that and had to break free. So I've lived in both of these worlds and have a pretty good sense of what they're both like. But yes, there is a falsity in this sort of promise of the American dream. And we all kind of blindly premise our future happiness

upon working towards these ideals without enough objective questioning of their veracity. And that's not to say that every, like you said, like not everyone is born and bred to be an artist and to pursue that type of life, which is to invite a certain level of suffering and pain and risk into your experience that not all people are, you know, have the constitution for.

But when you write, like when you write the war of art and you talk about resistance, I do think we all have our own unique blueprint and we have something to say and express that's uniquely ours. And there's something important about everybody exploring that in themselves. And that doesn't mean they need to quit their jobs

and, you know, go pick apples to write a book. But I think it is kind of, I think a sense of full integrity with who you are is somewhat reliant upon being in communication with your own sense of who you are and sharing that with the world because there's only one you, right? And you talk about this all the time. So please share it and don't keep it to yourself

because the more you repress that, I think that leads to all sorts of dysfunction. Yeah. I mean, I'll give you an example from a friend of mine, my friend Ruthie. If she sees this podcast, she's going to be trailing, you know, but this is an example of somebody that has a calling that doesn't have a definition to it. So my friend Ruthie is, she's, I don't think she's may have had one or two jobs in her life, but they only lasted like a couple of months. Basically she's been a wife, you know, and kind of lived off of whatever husband she's been married to. But yet her role, and this is just sort of unfolded over time, in her family and her extended family and friends,

if you're in trouble, you go to her. And she has bailed me out of stuff many times. And I know, I can see she does it for everybody. It's like maybe in a more of a old world culture, there would be the woman that you would, you know, that everybody would go to if you really needed to get your shit together and she would help you somehow.

And that's her calling, but there's no name for that. Right, you can't plug that into, you know, some specific job. And yeah, and they don't pay for it either. There's no salary attached to it. But that's her calling and she's gotten to that. So I refuse to believe that each individual doesn't have a calling.

I think we all do. And I certainly don't mean to say that it has to be in the arts or anything like that. It can be, and even the people that are working at these companies around here, I'm sure the ones that are happy probably have side things that they do, you know, that they're passionate about.

And when the weekend comes, they're heading to the mountains or they're doing something like that, you know, that is more in tune with their own soul. At least that's my hope. Right, and the difference, the qualitative difference with like the quote unquote artist is that they have some kind of like pain body inside of them that they feel like they're gonna explode

unless they give birth to it. Yeah. Like that would be like, life is intolerable unless this thing is being nourished in some way. Yeah, and they also have some sort of a platform or an outlet. If you're a dancer, if you're a musician or something like that, where you can produce an actual product or an experience

that will let you pay the rent, you know? Right, but not all, you know, and that can vary, right? Yes, definitely. It's like, you know, there's being a movie star and then there's, you know, there's doing, you know, off Broadway, there's being a movie star and then there's doing off-Broadway. This comes in all permutations. It's not like a money thing, right? This is like a yearning that has nothing to do

with like commerce or career, right? You hope it might produce some commerce, but it's really more about giving birth to something that's inside you that won't go away. And like, where does that come? Like one of the things that I love about you is that, you know, you dance with the mystical, like you're not afraid to like explore the unseen energies

and the vibrations, like the very subtle, you know, kind of wavelengths that you have to kind of be in communication with to be an expressive person. Well, I mean, you know, if you're any kind of an artist, a musician or whatever, a writer, it becomes very clear to you right away that what you're producing isn't coming from you, right? It's a question of where do ideas come from, right? Songs come completely intact to certain songwriters,

right? From where? So I think the evolution, Government Cheese is really about the evolution of a writer or of an artist. And there's certain things that you learn here. One is the kind of the craft itself. You know, what is a story, right? How does a story start? What's the middle, et cetera. Then there are the kind of soft skills like having the courage to start something.

What do you do when you bog down in the middle? How do you handle rejection? You know, how do you reinforce yourself when nobody else is reinforcing you? But then above and beyond that is the mystical element and is the question of where do ideas come from? An idea for a play or an idea for a car that you're gonna build or whatever it is.

Where does that come from? And where does it, I mean, the global idea, the big idea. And then day to day as a writer writing a novel, let's say, where do scenes come from? Where do the characters come from? And you definitely learn a respect for something that's unknowable. And, you know, in the book I talk about, and I've talked about this in the War of Art too.

I had a mentor named Paul Rink. Yeah, I was gonna get to him. I mean, this is the first, you had lots of mentors, but this was really the guy. He was probably the only actual writer that's kind of sat me down and said, this is what you do, kid, you know? I mean, how many books had you written

before you even understood what a story was or what a three act structure was? A lot. You could have saved yourself a little time and energy. Had you met up with your boy Robert McKee a little bit earlier. You know what it's like. I've really learned it all kind of in the movie business,

bit by painful bit. I got a lot of questions about that, but go ahead. But speaking about Paul, my mentor, I used to, I was living on this little street in Carmel Valley, Northern California, and I had saved money and I was just setting, trying to finish the first book I'd ever finished because I'd crapped out earlier on, you know,

and Paul lived up the street and he lived in a little camper. He parked out in front of his house and I would have breakfast with him or coffee with him every morning. And he gave me, he typed out the invocation of the muse from the Odyssey, from Homer's Odyssey, from the T.E. Lawrence translation, Lawrence of Arabia, which I still have. It's like tattered into it's like powder. But he sort of really introduced me to the idea that not only that things are coming from some other dimension, but that people for thousands of years have been have known about this and have invoked that other dimension and the muse. And so that really,

that was a huge thing to teach a young writer, you know? Right. The respect for that, that has never left me for a minute. So this guy, he's living in a camper in front of his house. He's got a house, but he sleeps in the car. I mean, this guy's a character, but he also- Well, you're sleeping in a tent, right? So you know what it is. Yeah, I get it.

I'm like, he's, yeah. Listen, this guy's my spirit animal. But he provides you with the reading list. You're gonna read all these people, all the greats from all of the Greeks, but also the Russians and really is a taskmaster in that regard and ends up providing you with all these principles that really become tenants

in the other books that you write, the prescriptive books that you write. When you finish a book, you start another one, all these sorts of things that become so fundamental. Like it's amazing. Does he, did he ever, like I don't know when he passed or whatever, but was he able to kind of appreciate the impact

that he had on you or was there a level of pride in everything that you ultimately were able to accomplish later? It's a good question because he died before I ever had any remote success. But I know that just, you know, we had a friendship and he was just, you know, being a mentor to a young guy that was trying to learn something. But one interesting thing, Rich, was that as he had no respect for writers per se, and he would sort of warn me against, you know, like, don't turn into that kind of, you know. He said, you know, they're basically egomaniacs and basically they'll stab their own, you know, wife in the back, you know.

So he said, but he did. He was certainly a real believer in working hard and doing the absolute best you could with whatever your gift was, you know, that this was serious. That you were not just churning out entertainment or something, that you were really trying to bring your gift forth, whatever it was. And he was absolutely serious about it. And he really kind of lectured me. Yeah, and that it's worthwhile.

Yes, which a lot of people don't think. You know what Hollywood is. People are there, some of them are there to do good work, but a lot of them are not. Yeah, my favorite quote in the whole book comes from the section about him, which is God's watch over lost souls, particularly when they dream.

Is that from the invocation? I just wrote it down. No, that's actually- Is that Paul or was that you? That was me actually. That was you, I mean, that's actually- Was that Paul or was that you? That was me actually. That was you. I mean, that's such a beautiful sentiment. But I do think it's true.

Yeah. That the person that's toiling in obscurity, trying to learn a craft or to bring forth whatever it is inside of them. I really do believe that God's looked down and watch over you, watch over that person and protect them somehow. I can't prove it obviously, but I believe it.

Yeah, I mean, I believe it. I've felt it in my own life and it's a very tangible experience. And I think life, you know, we could have an argument, is this real, is it imagined? But you know, I have my experience, you have your experience, and I think life is just better and more interesting when you indulge in this.

I'm interviewing you, what's your experience? I mean, my experience is that, is that when you take those energies seriously and you respect them, that you are rewarded is the wrong word, but you are heard and you get what you need. Now, specifically, are we talking about athletics? Are we talking about writing?

What are we talking about? I think of it in terms of the pursuit of the authentic self. So in your case, that's through writing and becoming an artist, but I think that can be, you know, experienced in many different ways, whether you're trying, you're in a space in your life and you have aspirations to be this other person, or you have a broader imagination

of what your life could be like, but you don't know how to get from here to there. Like, how do you navigate that? Well, there's practical considerations like, well, I interview for a job or I do these things. But I think from the unseen kind of spiritual realm, there's a, that's the lever, right? That you wanna tap into.

And I think it's about really connecting with the truth of who you are and living as integrous with that as possible. And when you do that, I think the universe sees that and pays attention and little sort of bricks on the path are put in front of you to gently nudge you in one direction or the other.

And if you are in a place where you have the presence of mind, the awareness to see that and heed that, then that process compounds upon itself. Can you give me like a specific moment in your life? Well, I mean, I think, you know, and I told this story in Finding Ultra, like we, you know, like I was like, I can't be a lawyer anymore. And now I'm like going off and like training

for these races, there's no career path here, but I felt certain in my conviction that this was necessary as a building block towards a different life. Even though there was no logical or rational justification for that. And I had an aspiration or a dream of being in a place where I could provide for my family

in a way that was personally meaningful to me and helpful to other people. And what that looked like, I had no concept of. So it was holding loosely to that while also taking actions that honored that internal voice, even if that voice was orthogonal to societal values or what other people expected of me. even if that voice was orthogonal to societal values or what other people expected of me. And the more you honor that,

the more likely you are to find evidence in the world to support that. So like this idea of when the heart is true, the universe will conspire to support you, which is sort of my version of saying, God's watch over lost souls, particularly when they dream. And that doesn't mean it's gonna manifest in the manner in which you choose

or on the timeline that you prefer. Certainly your timeline, you know, probably was not a preferred route for yourself. But in retrospect, when you look back upon your life, it all looks like every little piece was necessary to allow you to be here today, right? There's this incredible design to the whole thing that when you're in the midst of it is very disorienting.

And your only true North is that voice within yourself that you either choose to honor or you repress. Yeah, yeah. And the other aspect of that is that when you, at least this has been my experience, that when you achieve some sort of a breakthrough on that path, even if it's just a private breakthrough, that it doesn't, success, quote unquote,

doesn't manifest immediately. It might be another 20 years before that thing, you know, comes to fruition. So in the movies, it's never like that, right? You know, somebody turns a corner and all of a sudden everything's great. But in real life, it doesn't seem to work. So what is an example of that for you?

The fact that like War of Art is still like finding new audiences and exploding in the way that it does or? Like, you know, there's a story that I tell in the war of art that I repeat in government cheese about a night when I was alone in my sublet apartment in New York, where I finally got out the typewriter, sat down and it worked, you know?

And I felt like in that moment, okay, I'm a writer, you know, I'm a writer. I knew I was a million miles away from actually succeeding if I ever would succeed, but I felt like, okay, at least I can do this and it works. It charges my battery, it doesn't. But yet it was still another like 25 years until I got a book published. It's so insane.

But still at that point, I became a different person. Something changed in my DNA. A certain level of self doubt went away at that point. And if you had to identify specifically what that was or how that happened and why that happened in that moment, how would you describe that? I think it just for me was, it's a really good question because it's kind of mysterious. It's sort of like you fail and you fail and you fail and you fail and you sort of build up a head

of steam of failure. And like, finally, it's like, you can't fail anymore. You know, the gods are going to give you something. That may be a moment where, you know, heaven looked out for souls that dream, you know, where the other dimension said, okay, we're gonna give it to this kid, you know. He's earned it, let's give him a break. Which I think is true, right? You sort of build up and build up and finally the gods say, okay, we gotta give this guy something.

Right, right. And your job is to not relent, to not quit. Yeah. If you stay in it and your heart is true at some point. It's like swimming in the middle of the ocean. It's like, what's the choice, right? Well, you say like, so you characterize it

or you talk about it or think about it as this like underground river, right? The price of admission to which is the work. Yes. So your job is to do the work, then you get to flow in this river and the river is gonna take you where it's gonna take you. And there are these unseen energies.

And when you're in that dance with the muse and on a daily basis, and you're consistent in that regard, like something is gonna happen as long as you don't, you know, pull out of the river or stop doing the work. Which is, it's a weird sort of contradiction in that we're talking about something really airy fairy. Yeah.

Like when I say an underground river, I mean like for a writer, it's the stories that will come to you, right? Or whatever it is that you're trying to write. And that is this underground river that's inside you. But how do you get to it? You don't get to it by mystical means at all. You get to it by just busting your ass every day, grinding it out through day after day after day of having no inspiration at all.

That's the price. Right. And there is no other way of getting it. Like the least sexy or airy fairy thing ever, which is like the grind. Yeah, and there's no, it's athletics too, right? There's no other currency other than getting out there on the trail and doing your thing, right? You can do it smart,

but there's no other currency that heaven is going to accept. Yeah. One of the things that I think is remarkable about you, and I see this in Ryan Holiday also, is your ability to like produce a work and you're already steeped in the next work. And this almost seamless segue from one thing

to the next without like understanding that to take a break is to interrupt momentum and momentum is something to be protected and respected above all it has its own like force field and energy about it and you don't want to interrupt that right so you have to always be in this sort of about it and you don't wanna interrupt that, right? So you have to always be in this sort of perpetual motion from one thing to the next, which also is about decoupling the work from the results of the work, right? Like, so it's easy to be like, let's sit back.

You just like government cheeses out, you're doing all these podcasts. Hey, let's, how's it doing? Like, let's take a beat now and let's, you know, like really get into like the results of the work, but I'm sure you're already well into whatever it is you're writing next. Yes, I am.

And I certainly have found that just through hard experience that the worst thing that any artist or creative person can do is finish one thing, put it out there, and then like wait for the world to respond, you know, because either the world is going to totally ignore it or they're going to crap all over it, right? So, plus it violates some cosmic law. You're not allowed to reap the fruit, you know? You're only allowed to move on to the next harvest, whatever it is, or the next planting. That's just the cosmic law.

Yeah. And do you find yourself, like is there superstition around that too? Like if you actually indulge in like, Oh, if I check that, then that's gonna really, this is gonna undercut my, you know. Exactly, absolutely. You know how when you sort of,

when you really want something and you sort of check, I don't know what, like you check your email or your Instagram or something, the act of checking it on some level prevents the thing from happening. At least that's my, it's like when you forget it, then you come home and there's a letter,

oh, there it is, here's a check. But so yeah, I'm very superstitious about that. Yeah, what are some of the other superstitions? I mean, I just do. We'll call them that, not obsessive compulsive behaviors, but. I'm sort of a believer that, things like fairies and elves and angels, they exist.

And they're right here right now and watching us. So I don't wanna piss them off. I wanna show them respect, even in my own thoughts, because I don't want to piss them off. I want to show them respect, even in my own thoughts, because I don't know. Did we ever talk about when I was with the Maasai? Did I ever tell you that story? I can't remember, but please. I'll tell you this for whatever this is worth.

Somehow I had this job and I got to go to Africa and I got to go to, we flew out to this Maasai encampment by helicopter, no roads. And when we got there, there was a camp of maybe a thousand people, women, kids, the whole thing. And the shaman had just decided, oh shit, we got to move the camp. And everybody was just sort of getting set to do that in order to do that they had to get the white cattle to lead the other cattle to the new camp anyway it was a whole involved thing you know and everybody had to like pack up all their shit and it was all done in the greatest of good spirits you know nobody was going what do we have to move the camp for

and they can move the camp like 300 feet, just up the hill. That was it. Boom. Thanks. Okay. And I thought to myself, I wish I could have talked to that shaman because I would like to ask him, what was wrong with 300 feet down there? Why did we have to move? And I'm sure he would say something like, if we had stayed there, so-and-so would have broken his leg.

I could see, right? Something like that. Somebody would have miscarried. So we had to move there. So I don't know how to justify this, but I believe it. Yeah. I think they saw, the shaman saw something. So I'm superstitious about that sort of stuff. And have you ever read Bob Dylan's book, whatever, Chronicles Part 2 or Part 1? It's very much like that. I mean, he's like that. He thinks that way too. Yeah.

Like I had never thought about how you actually make an album. Like he's got, let's say he's got 14 songs. He's written them. He's got them on the piano them he's got them on the piano he's got them on the guitar but then the question is what musicians am i going to have to do who's going to produce this should we do it here in la should we go to memphis you know and he's looking for that mysterious thing you know right who's the guy that's going to produce it and the sort of the book is about his kind of,

he believes in this, his crazy sort of, we're going here and then we're gonna go to this honky tonk. We're gonna talk to this guy. I never heard of this guy before. He's gonna introduce us to this woman. She lives in Biloxi and we're gonna go there. Right. Somehow it works.

Right, it's not something that makes sense on paper. No, not at all. But it's about resonance and vibration. And you know, like there is something about, you know, the unseen energies. And I think in our fast paced, modern, Western industrialized world, we've become people who live predominantly in our minds.

And I think we have a certain hubris and arrogance about our intellectual capacities, where we believe that we can be all knowing and our senses are unlimited. But the truth is like, our senses are incredibly limited. I think there's a lot going on that, our eyes and ears and taste and smell are not attuned to be able to notice.

You know what's really interesting to me, Rich, is now AI, I keep reading these articles, right? It's capable of writing stories, writing songs, but can there possibly be any soul to that? You know, what's- Well, that is a philosophical question. As the AI continues to sort of not just advance, but like self-learn at an accelerated pace,

at some point do we cross the Rubicon into inevitable consciousness, right? And sentience on some level, even if it's different from our version of it. It's gonna be fascinating stuff. But the broader point being like the idea that, like if you think about quantum physics or the idea that like time is a mental construct,

like are we living multiple existences simultaneously or can we explore the Hindu tradition of past lives and all of that, like whether there's veracity to that or not, like I do think that there's just so much more happening and we're so arrogant to believe that we have a grip on this. And I think it's just better to be in a place of humility

and to acknowledge that kind of mystery. Yeah. And it makes life more interesting anyway, you know, it's more fun. And, you know, it's always interesting when, you know, the minds that we know what we're doing. And then like two years later, you realize like, they didn't know what they were doing at all.

Right? Like over, you know, enough time, we realize that so much of our, you know, self-avowed intelligence has been proven to be incorrect. So. Or like the premise of Blade Runner 2049 or whatever it was, right? Was that a replicant gave birth to a child, right?

That's not supposed to happen. So that means these replicants that are manufactured human beings could have a soul. And that was the whole case of the movie. Yes, they do have a soul. Yeah. And then we wonder, are we replicants as well? But it's great.

Yeah, I mean, how do you, I mean, when you acknowledge the muse and these energies that have shown up for you time and time again, that it becomes impossible to rebut the notion that they're real and how they operate in your life, you start to think about universal truths, right? Like universal unspoken truths. Like, is there, like, this is a truth, right?

If you show up for the work, the muse is gonna appear for you, right? Like I'm thinking about this cause I had Peter Singer here yesterday, who's a moral philosopher, kind of a legendary guy. You get some such amazing people in here, energy in here. It was really cool to talk to him.

And this is a guy who spent his whole life thinking about these very questions in the construct of ethics and morality. And I said to him, is there a universal, like does a universal sense of morality exist independent of the human condition? And this is a guy who he said yes, but he's also an atheist, which is confusing to me.

Like how can you believe in that if you don't have a sense of some kind of spiritual truth that extends beyond our ability to comprehend? I don't know if I asked him that directly. It's all like a soup in my mouth, but yeah. Like, so when you think about these energies that you're tapping into and your relationship with them

is so real, it is real, right? Yeah, so yeah, the next question is, real. It is real, right? Yeah. So yeah, the next question is, what does it all mean, right? If not just me, but tens of millions of people out there are all sort of tapping into energies and coming up with stuff, does that mean that there's a great consciousness, God, whatever, who is moving humanity in some direction,

and we little drops of water are contributing to that ocean in one way or another? Are we co-creating? I never knew exactly what that meant, but is that part of this deal? And then you think to yourself, well, what about the guy who invented national socialism? Or the evil stuff that's in the world, right?

That's coming from some source. Some place beyond. I don't know, it boggles the mind. I don't know the answer to it. Yeah, I mean, it all goes back to this same question that you posited, which is like, where do ideas come from? Like, where do they come from, right? The last time that we sat down and spoke-

And why are they coming? This book, Government Cheese, didn't exist. You probably were already writing it on some level. In your blog, you're like, you know, a year into it and you're like, this is terrible. I should never be writing this. Like all the same stuff that an amateur would think, but here we are and it's done.

And this is something that came through you, right? And now is a thing in the world. Where do ideas come from? Do they emanate from some super intelligence or some Godhead that disperses a collective consciousness? Because I do think there is something about like on that idea of listening to your internal voice, like doing enough inside work where you can kind of

make sure it's clear skies inside of you and whatever you're hearing about yourself is coming through unadulterated by whatever past traumas or experiences you've had. So you have a clear signal. And I think when you're tuned into that clear signal, there's something about your kind of antenna being attuned to the greater consciousness,

like that consciousness saying, yes, this is your role. You're supposed to be doing this. And when you fulfill that role, whether it's like your friend, right? Who is this person who does so many things for other people? She is in her Dharma fulfilling that role. And we all have some version of that role. And what does the world look like when everybody is,

you know, attuned with perfect fidelity to that signal? Yeah, and the other weird thing about this, Rich, is that I don't think there's ever been a time in history where this concept had any wide bearing, right? If you think about the middle ages, right? People were just trying to dig a turnip out of the ground, or the Roman empire, Alexander the Great, it was all about conquest and stuff like that, right?

There never was a time until now, I think when there have been people that have enough leisure time and enough resource that they can indulge this kind of top of the Maslow pyramid thinking. Right, yeah, this is the very peak of the pyramid for sure, right? What was I put here for?

You never could even think about that. No, that was indulgent. Yeah. And also I think the world is basically breaking down in my opinion, because people can't deal with that. We want to get into politics, we probably shouldn't do. I think a lot of the dark energy that's out there comes from people en masse who can feel

that there's something inside them, but can't bring it out or don't know that it's even possible to do. And so that energy goes into a dark direction and the web feeds that, cause dark minded people can get together. Anyway, I'm getting off on another tangent. I mean, I think there's truth to that.

Listen, not everybody has the ability to indulge the very peak of Maslow's pyramid, right? So it is a privilege to be able to even entertain that. We can acknowledge that. And I think there's a lot of people who are suffering, who are just trying to make ends meet day to day. Perhaps they do have some impulse inside of them, but because of the circumstances of their life,

it doesn't feel plausible for them to pay attention to that. And I think it then festers and gets more deeply repressed. And that creates a dissonance between the aspirant self and the day-to-day existence of the self in the real world. And that has to, over time kind of erode the soul, right? And it's not surprising that somebody would become depressed or resort to some kind of erode the soul, right? And it's not surprising that somebody would, you know, become depressed or resort to some kind of darkness. Yeah, I mean, you've read Eric Hoffer

as a true believer in his stuff. I don't know if I have actually. Do you know who Eric Hoffer is? No, who's that? Oh, this is great. I'll really turn it on to something to blow your mind. Eric Hoffer was a philosopher, an American philosopher, but he was a longshoreman.

And he was this, I think he was German. And Eric Severide back from the day, the newsman, back in the day, a contemporary Walter Cronkite, did it like Bill Moyers, remember, did that thing with Joseph Campbell about the power of Eric Severide, did a series with Eric Hopper, where it was multi one-on-one interviews.

And Eric Hoffer wrote a series of small books. And one of them was called the true believer. That was his main thing. And his premise was that mass movements like communism, Nazism and so on and so forth, get their recruits from people in the exact state of mind that you're talking about now. And of course we can all relate to that.

We've all been in places like that, where there's something trying to be born inside them. They don't know what it is that the energy turns dark and they're looking to some furor, right? Right. That will, Jim Jones and Jonestown or whatever the hell that thing was, you know, that's where this kind of true believer thing comes from.

The recruits that will be, you know, doing this, it comes from that. Yeah, repressed rage, frustration, and then, you know, finding an outlet in a scapegoat. We can, I mean, this is how national, you know, the rise of nationalism and then, you know, finding an outlet in a scapegoat, we can, I mean, this is how national, you know, the rise of nationalism and all, it's their fault. They're the reason why I'm unhappy or I don't have the thing that I need

and a strong leader to kind of affirm that sensibility. Yeah, but where this is all coming from, getting back to the concept of resistance, if you'll forgive me for throwing that back in there, this is what we're here to talk about. Is that the individual soul being attacked by its own tendency to sabotage itself and to prevent itself from living out its destiny

and being unaware of this, nobody has ever brought this up or taught them or anything like that, inevitably turns down a darker path. And that's where these movements come from. I know I'm super oversimplifying it, but we're in this place now, the world is, where freedom is possible.

And the top of the Maslow pyramid is possible for lots of people. And this is the dark side of that, if you ask me. Right, because if it's possible and you're not experiencing it, that has to be extra painful. If you're in a society or a situation where it's not possible,

perhaps you could find peace with your circumstances. Yes, it's like de Tocqueville, talking about democracy in America. When there's a society that's theoretically, at least of equals and theoretically free so that everybody can be whatever they want to be. If somebody else is living that out and you are not, that's a hell of a reproach.

Even if it's unconscious, you don't know that. I mean, I think this whole, I know we're getting into politics here a little bit. It's kind of like the know-nothing party, you know, and the concept of people saying he's no better than me, that son of a bitch. You know, who's

he to tell me that I should get shots or that I should vaccinate, you know, whatever it is. That kind of concept of if he can, you he can live out his life or dream and I'm not, then that's something it's very hard to live with. Yeah. And something has to give somewhere in there.

Right. I should stop with this. No, no, no. I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. So that's how resistance operates with how it dances with the dark forces. Yeah. And can lead people down a path that less blazed, I guess.

But if somebody is like, let's say somebody is feeling stuck and they are in a kind of a, quote unquote, dead end situation. And they're harboring some aspiration for their life being different or better. And they can't see the path forward. And they pick up the war of art.

Like what is the aspiration that you have for that person? I mean, I think that there is, regardless of your circumstance, there still exists the ability to change in a positive way, even if incrementally. Yeah, I absolutely think so. I mean, I'm proof of that. But, and I dare say that if we,

if you could bring in three or four people and sit them down here who are in that sort of state of seeking something but not being able to put their finger on it. And we said to them, okay, answer in 1.2 seconds. What is your dream that you're not doing? They'd know it. They might be ashamed to say it or embarrassed to say it, but they'd know it. And so then it's a question of, well, what are you gonna do about that?

You know, is there any, what's the first step to going there? Or what are you willing to risk or sacrifice? Yeah. And not everybody's willing to kind of implode their life in the pursuit of whatever that aspiration is. And that's okay also. True. Right.

And of course, you know, you don't have to blow up your life to do it. You know, you can do it in one hour a day. Right. How did you not end up, you know, pursuing kind of a Robert McKee, you know, kind of I'm gonna do seminars and teach people the war of art, you know, career path. I'm sure that mustee, you know, kind of, I'm gonna do seminars and teach people the war of art,

you know, career path. I'm sure that must have, you know, you must have thought of that at some, you're friends with Robert, you were here when he, you know, you brought him here to do the podcast. It's interesting, cause you guys kind of speak to the same things, but you're also really different guys.

Well, you know, I've thought about, from time to time people have said to me, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, but I would have to kill myself if I did that. So I just- You knew yourself well enough to know that that's not for you. Not for me, not at all.

Do you write or I just wanna write? I wanna talk about some of the Hollywood stuff because the stories like in the book are insane. But do you look back on either the Hollywood phase or even all these different jobs that you had? I mean, you must have sort of a romantic relationship with that period of time, even if in the midst of it, it was confusing for you.

That's true, that's very astute. It's like in the midst of it, it was confusing for you. That's true, that's very astute. It's like in the midst of it, it was hell on earth, but when I look back on it, now that I'm sort of out of it, I think it was probably, all of it was probably the best sort of stuff that could have happened to me. And that to knock the snot out of my nose and to put my feet on the ground and to give me some role models that I have,

that I could call on anytime I needed to do that. That's who I wanna be. That's how the way, how would so-and-so treat this situation? So yeah, I do sort of romanticize. And I really feel like if I hadn't had that period of my life, I don't know where I'd be now. But that was absolutely essential,

way better than four years at whatever institute. Right, some writing academy or wherever where you just were, where all of it was explained to you. But do you look back and think, well, I could have saved eight years here and there. Like I could have snipped around the corners a little bit, or are you able to really value and appreciate all the color and nuance of those experiences?

I value every minute of it. I really don't think I could have accelerated it at any, wasn't like there was any hack that I could have done or anything I could have leapfrogged, like the Hollywood period. Right. I learned a lot, you know, it was sort of the school of hard knocks. You learn this, you learn this, you learn this, you learn.

And if you didn't learn them, you wouldn't have them. Yeah. Well, the fork in the road there is, you know, I could see an alternate reality where you did stay there or you worked it out with your agent or whatever, or you found a way to make peace with writing screenplays because you were having success. And by all indications, had you hung in in that world, who knows what would have happened,

but I have no doubt that you would have become a prominent, well-produced screenplay writer in this town. You end up making this other decision that you explain, liberally in the book, But do you ever think like, wonder what would have happened if I just kept doing that? You don't, right? Because again, it's sort of, you know, and I'm just thinking of this right now,

just as we're talking. What happened was the idea for the legend of Bagger Vance came to me as a book, not as a screenplay. So, and it just came to me, just like talking about the muse there was, the whole thing, you know? And I knew, or I wasn't, no, I didn't really understand this at the moment,

but the fact that it was a book, inevitably my agent was gonna fire me because he'd worked too hard, you know? He can't come off and do that, right? So, again, it was sort of other forces, you know, mysterious forces that intervened. Like I had no choice. I mean, this idea came. I was just seized by it.

It seemed to me completely uncommercial. I had no thought like, oh, this is great. I thought this is the dumbest idea I've ever had. Who's gonna want, but I just had to do it. So I didn't really have a choice. And I'm glad, I'm glad I got out of that world. Right, well, it is interesting that the thing that everybody told you not to do,

that was the least commercial thing you could possibly do and was effectively career suicide in Hollywood was the one thing that kind of worked and gave you this new life. And not only that, it became a movie. Yeah, it becomes this movie, right? And there's not a good movie, but like Matt Damon was in the movie.

That's so kind of ironic and the compunction that you had, like the clarity of like, I don't care, this is right, I'm doing this, I'm willing to have my agent fire me and all these repercussions are of no matter because I am in communion with the muse and this is what has to be. Like, and that's earned, right? Like that's earned over the many years

of being in the process and understanding, what made you tick and what was important to you and what your values were. Like you can't, that doesn't come in some seminar or some writing program that's through life. And the other thing, Rich, was that the Legend of Bagger Vance, the book at least, was qualitatively different than anything I had done before.

And even though I had done some good things, screenplays that never got produced, but if you read them, you'd say, oh, these are good. But that book was qualitatively different and I can't even really describe it other than to say it was really coming from me. It wasn't me doing a genre. Let's do a Western. Let's do a detective story.

It was coming straight from me. And everything since then has been straight from me too. So something changed. Some Tumblr clicked over there. And I can only say it happened on another dimension of reality. And then the word, you know, the telegram came down to me. It had nothing to do with any decision I made

or anything I did. Right, which then goes back to the original question, where do ideas come from? I mean, you did, you were a caddy when you were a kid. And so you have this experience in the world of golf, but the merging of golf and the Bhagavad Gita, and then like, you know, Gates of Fire, like these other books that you've written,

like the original notion for them, the inception point, like that's where the mystery resides, right? Cause you don't, you can't locate that. Yeah. And the other side of the mystery is, at least is that for my career, for the things I've done, each book is a surprise to me.

It's like the assignment comes down, I get the envelope from the muse and I open it up and go, what? You know? And how does that, like when you wake up in the morning or after, like it just arrives, like what is the experience of that for you? Like, how do you know?

Well, let's say the idea for Gates of Fire, the book about the Battle of Thermopylae, which was the second book after Bagger Man's. So I write this one book that's this crazy sort of golf story, how do you follow that? Am I gonna write another? But yet once you have one book, they want you to do another one. So I was just casting about for what to do.

And I happened to be reading Herodotus, and I got to that part where they're talking about the Spartans at Thermopylae. And there was a section in there and it just was like a Thunderbolt type of thing where I thought, this is it. And I thought, you know, I can write this. There's a story here and I can write it.

And here's the sort of handle. But that was nothing I had ever prepared for. It wasn't like I was a classical scholar. It wasn't like I ever thought of doing anything historical. I never thought of that. But once it was sort of there on the table, I thought, I've got to do it. This is the thing.

Again, it's a mystery. But I do believe there must be some sort of law to that, that when something real lands on your plate, it's a surprise. Otherwise, there's something wrong, I think. It'd be interesting to hear what Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan would say about it, Otherwise, there's something wrong, I think, you know? It'd be interesting to hear what Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan would say about it. Cause so much of their stuff seems like

part of an overall theme, you know? Yeah. But I would bet they would, I would bet Bruce Springsteen would say, you know, Tom Joad was completely different from whatever came before that, you know, even though it might look like it's not. Right, and of course they would all say

that in their peak creative moments, that there is an effortlessness to it, that it's flowing through them, that the body and the mind acts as a channel, right? And your job is to just let it flow out and the source of which, you know, is that's what resides in the mystical unknown, right? And when this thing lands on your plate, boom, here it is.

It's your job to run with that. But if you don't, what are you saying to the universe? What are you saying to the muse, right? And then what's the cost of that? Yeah, I think you get sick, you know, something happens to you, something bad happens to you. There's a dissonance, like you're not living in integrity with that,

that like energy within you. And it's not like for me at least, it's not like it just flows immediately. It's still an incredible grind and an incredible hell that you have to go through to do it. But there is that sense of blessedness in there somewhere that doesn't go away. Have you read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic?

I have it, and I know what it's about. I have not read it. But I've listened to all her other stuff and I'm in complete agreement with her. Big Magic is like a compendium to the war of art. I mean, her notion is, I mean, it's back to that idea of the collective knowing or the collective consciousness. And when that impulse to express something exists,

like that idea lives up here, right? And you pull it down and you either express it, but if you don't, if you pass, you're like, I'm not gonna do that. Someone else is gonna pull it down. Like it's out there, which is why, you know, there's two volcano movies that come out at the same time where these things tend to be like, there's trends,

you know, like, oh, why is, you know, these two artists who live on the other side of the planet and don't know each other, both created something that kind of they're similar in certain ways. Like the idea that there are ideas out there objectively and back to the antenna,

like are you receiving that signal? Is that signal for you? I'm not sure I agree with that. I know it was that great Elizabeth Gilbert story. I forget the other female writer that they became friends and they kissed and some idea got passed. Like from Elizabeth Gilbert had sort of started a book and then kind of left it on the shelf

because she had other things. And when she went back to it, it was stale. It wouldn't happen. And then after this kiss, I forget the other writer's name, also famous, really wonderful female writer. This sounds familiar. She wrote the book and it won a Pulitzer Prize or something. Right, so that's-

But in my opinion- You can say theft, but like- I don't know if I agree with that. Maybe, yeah, she, this is, I don't know. I think that those ideas just come to one person alone. That's my- Well, the expression of the idea is gonna be different contingent on the person,

but perhaps the core idea itself. I mean, how that idea is expressed is obviously gonna be different from person to person. Yeah. So I don't know. It's all a mystery. Yeah, I mean, how are you? What is the, for somebody,

I don't wanna assume that anybody who's listening or watching this, listen to our first conversation. So maybe, you know, let's explain. At hour 113, like, what is the war of art? Like, what are you trying to tell people? And how can somebody who's new to these ideas start to think about, you know, investing in their own creative expression.

Are you asking me to like talk about the war of art? Well, just in general, in broad strokes. So, you know, we're kind of grounded in the vernacular of what we're talking about. The concept of an earlier book of mine called The War of Art is that there is this negative force out there that I call resistance with a capital R. And it equates to a voice in our head that tells us, you are no good.

You can't do this. Who are you to think of whatever project that you have in your mind? And also to distract you. Let's go to the beach. Let's have another drink. Let's have an affair. Let's go to the beach. Let's have another drink.

Let's have an affair. And the concept is that if you decide you want to be in the creative arts, it's a war. And you're going to have to fight this dragon every morning that you wake up. This dragon of self-sabotage and self-doubt and all that kind of thing. And that to do that, you have to find some kind of a mindset, whatever it is, a warrior mindset, the mindset of a mother that's gonna protect the life growing within her, whatever it is, to overcome that thing called resistance. That it is a war and you have to fight it every day.

And the war never abates. Never abates. Right. Never gets any less. Like the idea that you had to go to war with it for this book, reading that blog post and all the negative self-talk that you're telling yourself about this book after all the successes in the many, many books

that you've written. Like, I don't know whether to feel kinship with you or feel depressed about that. But it does seem to be a law, Rich, that we've talked about this before, that when you're onto something that's real, that you really should be doing, self-doubt is enormous.

It's never like, oh, I can't wait to do this. This is so great. It's gonna be so wonderful. It's never like oh i can't wait to do this this is so great it's gonna be so one it's always like oh god why did i come up with this terrible idea this uh you know my whatever reputation i have is it gonna be in the toilet when i'm doing this one you know whatever so that that uh that is a thing that must be overcome that self-d and it never goes away. And I had a lot of self-doubt on, you know, on government cheese, which is like stories from my life, right, I'm thinking to myself as I'm writing it, what are you, everybody wants to read

your stupid stories, right? Everybody's got a million stories, you know, you want to tell a story, but when you're picking apples and washing, who cares about it, you know? And so I, you know, I think to myself, you're an idiot for doing this. Everybody's gonna hate it, or they won't even care at all, you know?

But I know from experience that that self-doubt is a good sign, that it's, you know, the bigger the resistance, the bigger the dream. So as we talked about before too. Right. So that kept me going, you know, but I know that that happens in every project

and then it'll be in the future. I'll always have to deal with that. And I think everybody has to deal with it. Right. And it just morphs and changes, right? So when you're unsuccessful, it's, you know, who do you think you are? When you become successful, it's like,

you're gonna ruin everything you worked hard to create, or they're gonna find out you're an imposter, all of that. It just pivots, right? And like, why is that? Why does that exist? Like, why is it that we have to go to war with this thing? Like, why can't we just be in our expressed self? I'm sure there are people who have very little resistance.

I wish I was one of those people. I wish I was one of them too. There are people who have very little resistance. I wish I was one of those people. I wish I was one of them too. There are people who have very little resistance. So when I've talked to people like that, I go, I'm looking at them, you tell me the truth. There's no way it's that easy for you. But some people do. For some people, right?

And I think those people, when they become successful, that's what we all look to and say, well, obviously, this world is reserved for people like that. Yeah, maybe. But did you see the Howard Stern, Bruce Springsteen thing? No. Oh, it was really great. And the, just really recent, I don't know,

on HBO or something like that. But even Bruce Springsteen had to struggle like hell. You know, these albums didn't just flow. They do months and months trying to get something right. And before they finally got it together. So that was very encouraging. It wasn't easy for him either. Yeah, it's good to see all of those things.

When you, it's a very, I listened to that. So I listened to government cheese on audio book. I had to drive to Fresno and back on the same day for a Memorial, my college from college passed away. So I had eight hours in the car. So I listened to it literally over the course of a day. And at the very end, as you conclude the book, when the book's kind of done,

then you do a little kind of riff. Like it's not, doesn't feel written or scripted. And you're just like, I hope you guys liked it and got like something out of this. And I hope it was like, but then you ended like, I was tearing up. Like, I just felt very heartfelt. And you said, you know,

I hope this is instructive and helpful on your journey. You know? And you end the book with this word journey. And I immediately thought like, what would Robert McKee think about that? Because he has such a problem with this idea of life being a journey. But you and I would agree with you,

like I think life is a journey. And I think that we're all on some, you know, you can look at your life and lay on top of it that kind of hero's journey architecture of it. And on some level, we're all living a version of that. I think so, absolutely, yeah. And that is a journey. So like, have you had debates with Robert about this?

No, I was sort of surprised when he said that. Really? Because I thought that his, I would have said his teachings are really all about it. Sure. So yeah, no, I haven't had it. What is that about then? I don't know.

He really bristles at that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. He's also a believer. I have a disagreement with him about talent, where he says like talent is everything, and I say talent is bullshit. So I don't know. He thinks I'm crazy and I think he's overstating.

No, it's great. I think like a podcast between the two of you guys would be like fascinating, right? Just on like- Which one of us would lead it? I don't know. Well, I don't know. I mean, I just think there's something,

yeah, like his thing is I do these seminars and all these yahoos show up and like my job is to weed them out and disabuse them of like any kind of career glory that they're fantasizing about because it's hard, right? And if you're gonna do it, you gotta be fully committed. And I think you would agree on the fully committed part. But I think where you differ

is you have kind of a sweeter sensibility and a hopefulness and an optimism that, you know, we all have something here to express and we should be, it's not indulgent to, you know, go on that journey of self exploration. And maybe it doesn't land you in Hollywood writing screenplays that you sell, but that's beside the point because it's a worthy,

that is a worthy, you know, investment of your time for yourself. Yeah, that's exactly the point because it's a worthy, that is a worthy investment of your time for yourself. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. So I have compassion for the struggling person because that was me forever. Yeah, and he's like, don't waste my time. If you had shown up in Robert's seminar. Which I did, like multiple times. Oh, you did? Oh yeah.

And he didn't like sort of make you feel so terrible about yourself that you were gonna quit and just- No, because he was giving out such great information and he was so passionate about, you know, like Paul Rink, my other mentor. You know, the thing about Robert McKee that's so powerful is that he really believes in writing. You know, and you know, he, you know,

a lot of people people today might say, who gives a shit? If somebody wrote a book, some novel, we're never gonna read it, right? But he believes you've got a gift, you gotta give it to the world and you gotta give it to it absolutely the best you can possibly do

and not blow it off in any way. And that's very inspiring. He concludes his seminars with that kind of thought, like go forth, you sons of bitches, you know, and do something good. Were you, did you go to those seminars when you were in Hollywood writing screenplays? Yeah, I did, yeah.

Yeah, so. They cost a hundred bucks. Yeah. They're still pretty cheap at like a thousand bucks. Really? That's not so bad. Well, he's done now though. Four days, yeah, too bad, yeah. So I think this podcast is gonna go up right around

the same time as, cause we recorded that one with Robert a while back. But I think these are gonna go up kind of around each other which will be interesting. Yeah, it will be interesting. But during this period of time in which you're a screenwriter, like you have some success, you hook up with this guy,

you call him Stanley. But what I got out of reading that part of the book is you also learned a lot about structure and form and the idea of like kind of mixing different influences and genres. He's like, it's gonna be this movie meets this movie and we're gonna blend these things together and we're gonna create something unique out of that.

And just like the banging out of scripts and like kind of process of being a writer, like made you a stronger writer. And perhaps the idea of Bagger Vance being like the Bhagavad Gita and golf coming together would not have occurred without, you know, the kind of apprenticeship with this guy who- Yeah, I feel like it was a great apprenticeship

where I really learned so much. And yeah, I have nothing but gratitude for that period. Right. Am I wrong to think or to say that there's a part of me that wishes, that wants to see you kind of flex your muscle in the screenplay world? Like you, because you, cause I feel like you went off and then wrote Bagger Vance

and opted out of that world altogether, right when you were on the precipice of like showing the world what you actually were truly capable of in that world. But you're good, you don't wanna do that. No, yeah, I don't wanna do that. I mean, in reality, you well know Rich, the only way to really do that is to become a director,

to be a writer, director and do it. And that was just beyond what I wanted to even think about. Otherwise the writer is always gonna be fired and replaced. And it's just in the nature of the movie business. What is it that you want people to get out of government cheese? I mean, I think I know, but like you tell me what you think. I hope that somebody that's feels lost and struggling

and like, when is this tunnel? When do I get out of this tunnel? That they'll read government cheese and say, Pressfield story is exactly like mine. You know, the maybe the, you know, that they'll read government cheese and say, Pressfield story is exactly like mine, you know, the maybe the, you know, and it's just, it's the hero's journey. It's the process and, you know, be patient, you know,

don't lose heart. So I hope it's an inspiration to people a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly is that. I mean, I think it really, you know, in the tunnel of like how long you were in the tunnel, it's certainly, you're like, oh my God, like how is this guy still driving a truck? It's inspirational in that there were so many instances

in which I feel like a normal person would have just given up, you know, and the fact that you stayed in it, even while that typewriter was hidden for so long, it was lurking, you know, in the back of your mind, obviously, and, you know, pulling on your soul and, you know, had this yearning that you couldn't shake. And, you know, the fact that it took as long as it took

is a story about it takes what it takes. Yeah. You know? Yeah. What more can I say beyond that? Yeah, I mean. It's like, like I said, it's like swimming in the ocean. It's like, what's the alternative?

Yeah. You stop and you go to the town, you know? And there's no plan B. You're like, this is, I'm in it, you're in it, right? And so if anything, that might be intimidating for people though, like, do you have to be in it in the way that like Steven is in it or was in it or thinks about being in it?

But you do, right? Unless you, I mean, hopefully most people don't have to pay the dues as much as I did, but you do have to learn, right? If you were going to be a brain surgeon or a concert pianist, you would know that you have a certain apprenticeship ahead of you, a certain education you have to have, skills you have to acquire. But a lot of times in the arts, particularly in these days where you can do a sex tape and you're famous,

you think, oh, there's a hack and I'll do that. So, but it's not true. You have to learn the game. Yeah, well, it is an interesting and kind of disorienting time in that regard because creative product, it's called content. Content, boy, I hate that. Is essentially ephemeral, like it's called content. Boy, do I hate that. Is essentially ephemeral, like it comes and goes.

And that applies to books as well. Like we're here, we get like every new book in the self-help kind of whatever, like it arrives here. And so after getting like 10, 20 books a week, and then you never hear from these, some of them are actually New York Times bestsellers, but then a week later, you don't know. You start to have like,

I've become a little cynical about it. Like, does this matter? It's so hard to write a book and these books come and I'm somebody who should care about all these books. And even I'm looking at it like, okay, so this guy's got the answer this week and I should read this book.

And there's so many, you know, movies and television shows coming out all the time that you can't stay on top of it. And what is worthy of that tug on the soul that's gonna be so painful, that's gonna force you to grapple with the resistance and all of that. Like this, but I'm gonna have to give you props for finding ultra.

That was a book that stood out and will last, you know, and you know, God bless you for doing it. You know, that came out of your soul, you know, and that came through hard work and everything, but that's a real story. That's a real hero's journey if there ever was one. Well, I appreciate that. And so I take my hat off to you for that one.

Yeah, thanks. But then that was quickly followed by the resistance, basically doing pushups in the dark. And now it's like, well, you can't write a book like that again, or you already told your story. What else do you have left to say? Like all of that kind of stuff, right?

So I'm doing war with that a little bit at the moment. I think I have an idea though. I'm not ready to talk about it publicly, but I'm gonna share it with you when we're done here. Okay, great. I can tell you right now, before you say a word, that's the idea you should do it. Yeah.

Before you say, I can just tell by the look on your face. Yeah, how do you know? Cause I can see the resistance radiating off you, but I can also see the dream, I can see it. You don't even have to tell me the idea, I know. And I'm saying this with a thousand percent certainty, do it, you know, and do it with the same, you know, confidence or I hope you had confidence

while you're doing Finding Ultra, but let me ask you this, is it completely different from that? Yes. Okay, that's a great sign. That's what it should be. Yeah. I can see it right in your eyes, it's amazing.

I'll just tell you what's going on in my head. Let's have a close up of your face. Yeah. So in my mind, I'm like, oh shit, like this is being recorded. Now if I don't do it, now I'm gonna really feel bad and I'm gonna feel like I let Steven down and I don't wanna let Steven down.

And don't let me down? Yeah. But don't let yourself down, no. But this is great, Rich, because it's really great for me to see that you've got that, you know, that flame there, that little fetus that's kind of growing, you know, it's got a little toenail now. It's, yeah for me to see that you've got that, you know, that flame there, that little fetus that's kind of growing, you know, it's got a little toenail now. It's, yeah, it might only be two or three cells, right?

No, it sounds like it's a little bigger than that to me. But yeah, actually I feel excited about this in a way that I haven't felt in a long time. And I feel like I'm onto something, but the resistance is very strong. And so the only way that I can do battle with that resistance is to really lower the stakes as much as possible.

And like Seth Godin has been helpful with this. Like, so it's really like right now, it's really just about like free form journaling and not being judgmental about anything to just build a little bit of momentum. So, you know, two cells go to four cells or whatever. I think that's exactly right. And I think momentum is really crucial and important

as we touched on before. Like I just know when I have momentum, then you're in a self perpetuating situation where the flow comes easier. But if you're stop and start and all of that, it becomes impossible. Well, you're trying to respect that. You've had the experience,

both in finding ultra and in athletics, of showing up every day and rolling the P every day. So, I think- I know how to roll the pee, but I've had a really hard time figuring out what pee to roll in the writing game. And I took, you know, it's been 10 years, honestly. So, and then I can beat myself up about that.

Yeah. That's resistance too. You just have to sort of dismiss that. I know. And remember like the measure of self doubt is the measure of how great the idea is, right? So the more self doubt you have, the better the idea is, right?

The more resistance you feel- Is that always true? It's always true. It's always true. Because it's plausible that you have a really bad idea. And that self doubt is like, yeah, you really shouldn't. Looking in your eyes that that's not one of them. This is not that.

All right. Will you be my accountability partner? This is worth it. Yeah, no, please. Somebody taught me this, that to start with when you're writing a thing with the first thought, that to start with, when you're writing a thing, with the first thought, the first sentence is, and the bad version of this is, colon,

and then start. Oh, that's a good trick. I like that. Yeah. And just, you know, in other words, it's like Seth lowering expectations. Yeah. It doesn't have to be brilliant. Just get something down.

Yeah. And if I can help you in any way, other than reading, I will count on me as any kind of a resource. I appreciate that. Seth said the same thing to me and I feel like, wow, those are the best mentors anybody could possibly ever dream of, to say, I'm happy to like, give you feedback or whatever.

It's an honor. It's incredible. So again, then it's like, well, if I don't do this, then that's a massive betrayal of the muse, I think, or of myself. You will do it. It's a dragon. All the excuses. So this is great.

I'm very happy to hear this Rich. That there's a, it's so great to have that thing growing in you. What's better than that? I know, but it's also, you know how hard it's gonna be. Right? And you're like, It's hard to run five Ironmans on five different islands.

Welcome this pain into my life. Yeah. Thank you pain into my life. Thank you, I appreciate that. Has your routine remained the same? I know that like your physical fitness routine is really important. You get up really early in the morning and you kind of have like, this is how you do it. And has that evolved at all or?

It has evolved. I wasn't always doing physical stuff first thing in the morning. And these days starting this new publishing company, that takes a lot of time, even though Diana does all the work. So I've have to sort of find a couple of hours a day. Like today I'm not doing any work. I'm dedicating, there's other stuff.

And Christmas, but I do still absolutely believe you gotta keep that momentum going, even if it's only a little bit. So it's harder for me to find. There's a time in government cheese where I talk about when I was working on that book and I was in this little house all by myself and I had nothing.

I had no girlfriend, no radio. You had a cat though. I had a cat, but the cat's quiet, you know? But I thought to myself, this is hard enough when I have 24 hours a day. What's it gonna be like if I get to a place where I have other things going on? How am I gonna focus?

And so I'm sort of, that's the way it's been since then, you know, where you do have a life, a little bit of a life anyway, you've got a lot of a life, but you can find the time, just like finding time to train, you know? And that's kind of the way it is for me. I sort of have to make sure I get it in each day,

you know, otherwise no good, you know? Yeah, so it's a consistent metronome of like 10 to one or whatever it is. Yeah, something like that, exactly. Do you then, like when you're getting close to the finish, do you go down the rabbit hole and disappear or go off to some cabin or hotel room for six days straight or whatever to like take it across the finish line

or you're able to maintain some kind of balance. I haven't done that, but I like that idea. I've heard that people do that. Because again, at the end of a project, resistance gets way, way, way, way, way bigger. So you gotta raise your intensity to combat that. So I understand absolutely going to a cabin or something like that.

Yeah, I don't know. I just, I look at the consistency and the kind of balanced equilibrium, like equanimity with which you do it. And I think of Ryan also and the way that he does it. And I don't know, man, my life is like, always like, you know, no matter what I try to do to like, you know, kind of flatten the curve

between the highs and the lows, like I'm always like surfing some kind of insane, you know. But I mean, when you train, like when you go out to run the trail or whatever it is, I'm not even sure exactly what you do. It is consistent, right? You're on a program or whatever, yeah. And you set a goal.

And that time is like a sacred time for you, right? I mean, you block everything out, right? You're on a program or whatever. Yeah, and you set a goal. And that time is like a sacred time for you, right? I mean, you block everything out, right? And you don't have your iPhone on or anything like that. So same sort of thing, right? Yeah, I think it's an interesting conversation around like structure, you create, you have your goal, like, okay, you're writing this book, it needs to be done by this date,

or you're training for this race. And so you establish a program and parameters. And like, I show up every day, and these are the things that I do to move me towards that goal. And those are very practical, real world kind of considerations in order to achieve the thing that you've set out to achieve.

How do you balance that against the mystical dancing with the muse and not being attached to the outcome? And yes, I have a goal, but I have to be in surrender also. Like I have to be open and not rigid in how I'm thinking about all of this. Like that, there is a tension there, right? That I think is delicate

and I'm interested in how that operates for you. There is a tension, but it does work amazingly enough that you can go into that office, close the door, start to work and very soon, good stuff will happen. It might not be like thunderbolts of inspiration, but you'll get into, I mean, you must've felt this with Finding Ultra because it was so good. You know, when you're describing, you know, the race or you're swimming and you're like ready to, you know, blow your

brains out because it's so hard, you know, can I keep, you know, there, you were in a flow of some sort, right? You're describing that something that happened. And so the two things really work absolutely together. The sort of structured aspect of it and the kind of other worldly stuff. They absolutely do. They have to, well, they have to be in balance with each other, right? Because too much of any of either of those

will tip it off it's ballast. Yeah, I think so. Right. But I would imagine, I'm not a meditator, but I would imagine that when you sit to meditate, it's sort of a structured thing, right? Okay, I'm going in this room, I'm locking a door. But once you get to that state, that then your mind is empty or wherever it is that you are

in a kind of another place, another spiritual, mental, whatever place. And then when the bell rings, you go out and make dinner. Yeah. of another place, another spiritual, mental, whatever place. And then when the bell rings, you go out and make dinner. Yeah, how come you don't meditate? I consider my writing as meditation. Yeah, I think meditation is qualitatively different from that, I do. I think you would get a lot out of real meditation practice.

Yeah, maybe I'll do that someday. You're starting to get sheepish about the whole thing. get a lot out of a real meditation practice. Yeah, maybe I'll do that someday. You're starting to get sheepish about the whole thing. I think you would, no, I think you would get, I think you would get a lot out of it. I think it, just having awareness of how your consciousness operates, I think could also act as possibly expanding the portal to the unconscious mind or to the muse, right?

Could be. I don't know. You're not gonna commit to that. What's next? What are you working on now? Or do you not talk about it? Are you like, Seth is like, don't talk about it. I am working on another thing.

And what is, talk me through the thinking process around not sharing what you're working, like the sacredness of protecting it in that way. It's just bad luck to talk about it somehow. I mean, maybe Hemingway used to talk about that, right? That the worst thing you can do is to start telling other people what you're working on. Like it sort of lets the air out of the balloon.

And I don't know, I'm superstitious. Yeah. I just feel like it's bad karma. Maybe I'm not gonna tell you what I'm working on now. I know. Will that jinx it? Yeah. Okay, then I won't.

It'll certainly, I mean, it might not derail it, but it's certainly not gonna do any good. I don't know what to do with that. I gotta think about that. I'm interested in how ambition plays into all of this. I mean, obviously, you had to have ambition, perhaps an outsized ambition to kind of weather the many years of setbacks and kind of not succeeding, you know,

on the level that you felt like you were capable of. How does that, like, do you feel satisfied with your career? Like when you write books, you're just onto the next one. Obviously you want them to do well, but like, where does the ambition piece come in? Does it derail you? Are you at peace with it? Like, do you care about how the world receives your work

or is it really the work for the work itself? I do, but I've almost given up on it, Rich, because it's like, you never know what work, what particular book is gonna get a positive response or what's gonna get, you know. And I really have tried to stop where, I mean, you can't help but hope for something good to happen.

But you know, like in Hollywood, you know, you work on a script, nothing happens, right? You can't say, you know, you're so used to things going out there and sinking without a trace that it's just, if I can just have enough juice left to do the next one and just keep going on. And I feel like that's really all I'm trying to do is just keep.

And anything beyond that is just a bonus. Yeah, it's a bonus, yeah. And is that part of the impetus in creating this publishing company? No, that's really more about my books that are about writing, the war of art and those other ones can be self-published. You know, they don't need a publicist.

And in fact, I can't even find a publisher. They don't even want them, you know? So I do wanna have a platform that I can, I don't have to worry about selling it to Harper Collins or something like that. So other books, fiction or anything like that, then you do have to find a real publisher. So that's a problem.

So the purpose of it is just for releasing your own books or are you gonna publish other people's books as well? Just my own. Just your own books. And Diana's. And how many have you published under your own imprint then? Well, if you go back to the war of art,

when I had a little publishing company called Black Irish with my partner, Sean Coyne. Right. And I think it was like nine books or something like that, that we did there. And then two on this new one so far, government cheese being the second one. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting in this age of removing the gatekeepers, you know, it's empowering for you to own your own content and control it. And when, you know, the majority of people buy their books on Amazon, why should you pay a publishing house an outsized percentage of the profits on that? And the other thing, Rich, is that in all honesty,

for a lot of these stuff, books post War of Art, I can't find a publisher. Really? I mean, how many, but War of Art still sells like crazy, right? Yeah, people would like, they would like to buy that. But others, no. I think this must be true for other writers.

I think a lot of times people think, oh, you've had a book or this or that, so you can sell anything. Not true. Right, right, right. Not true at all. You can't even get an agent. I mean, it's like-

That's crazy to me. That's crazy to me. I mean, it is, I think, you know, publishing is going the way of the movie studios, like to get like the, you know, kind of the advance and all of that, you have to thread a very fine needle and it has to be a book that, you know,

hits all these certain types of marks, which makes, you know, makes more sense for people to be self-publishing. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, you look at like David Goggins, I think he's the most be self-publishing. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, you look at like David Goggins, I think he's the most successful self-published book of all time.

Like right up there with Michelle Obama, like I think he sold like 4 million copies of his first book or something like that. I mean, I don't think anybody prior to that has ever sold that many copies of a self-published book, which I think, all the rules around like the New York Times bestseller list and, you know, self-published books, being in bookstores and all of that,

I feel like, you know, his success upends or challenges a lot of those rules and probably opens the door for people like yourself and other people who are writing great books and doing it their way to, you know, have a different kind of life. Maybe, I mean, I still don't understand the economics of mainstream publishing,

how they can make money, you know, unless they have one book. I think it's like the one book that supports all the other books. I think that's true, right? One book sells 10 million and then they can afford to have 1500 books that sell nothing, I guess.

It would be like the studio that puts out, Avatar, the Marvel movies, also making like 300 movies a year that cost a million dollars that nobody goes and sees, I guess, I don't know. But you can just write your books and put them out, right? Which has to be cool. But my expectations are so low.

That's another part of it. But here's the thing. See how little, you know, really. Steven, listen, all this, like, you know, part of me feels like you need to go to therapy. Cause like, if you're still having all this negative self-talk with all the wonderful books that you've put out and all the, you know,

people that you've helped and, you know, creative careers that you've helped spawn, like I want you to be telling yourself good things about your capability and your skill, right? But you know, I see- How much is resistance and how much is like just bullshit that you could purge from- I see your sales figures, you know? Well, I mean, listen.

It's a tough racket. Let me tell you this, the War of Art and Turning Pro were so instrumental in my life that they are, that like your work has, you know, infused my life and my work, like Finding Ultra is like, you're part of that book, right? And you're part of this podcast, like in the collective consciousness idea

that we were talking about earlier, like your essence is in extractable from like my career and my creative life and like the things that I've put out into the world. And I'm certainly not alone in that regard. There's lots of people who would, you know, tell you their version of what I just shared with you, which has to be incredibly, you know, affirming, right?

That's true. You can hear that. And I really am honored to hear you say that. You can hear that and like, yeah. And so. I don't blow that off. That's a big deal. No, it's real. And it's huge.

And it's like a huge honor for me, not to just have you here, but to like have you in my life. Like that's something I like talk about. Likewise. The mystery of the universe and like the idea that one day, like I would get to meet you and I could consider you a friend,

like that was just beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself. And I feel the same way. So there you have it. This is, yeah, this is, you know, resistance, go fuck yourself. And, you know, cause we're dancing with the mystical energies over here

because it doesn't make sense on paper. And all the decisions that I made, you know, when I was toiling away doing my version of you driving a truck, there's no sense when you're in that, it's, there's no sense that that's leading anywhere. Absolutely, yes. Other than some kind of deep down thing,

like I gotta keep doing this or, you know, I know that this is somehow in some weird way gonna lead me to where I wanna go. Yeah. And you stay in it. Yeah, I just did a blog post like today or something or a couple of days ago that says something like the hero's journey is enacted in a benighted state. And I think that's absolutely true.

And then somehow it's absolutely essential. It's like, if you weren't in the benighted state, you wouldn't be on the hero's journey. It's somehow the fact that we're in denial of some truth and that's what set us on this hero's journey course or this period in the wilderness course is essential that we're in denial. So we can't see it, right?

We're a fish in water and we just don't see it. It's like when you finally can see it, then you come out of it, you know? Or maybe you come out of it and then you can see it finally. Yeah. I don't know why that's true, but I think it is true. Yeah, and in retrospect, looking back many years later, you're like, of course.

It's very clear. Incredibly clear. Yeah. You know, why can't- Couldn't be more clear. Why can't that glance be clear, you know, looking forward, but you know, it's rigged against that. it's not, it's not rigged, it's rigged against that. It's not wired that way, right?

Which sucks, but that's the way it is, right? Yeah, for some, it seems to be a law of the universe. I don't know why. I don't know, man. I don't know, man. Well, maybe, you know, we can round this out with just, you know, a few more laws of the universe for the person who is, you know, grappling with resistance

or perhaps finds that finds themselves, you know, lost in the forest right now and can't see their way forward because they're not far enough down the way to have that 2020 rear view vision. So- What do you think? I'm not sure what- Speak to the person who's out there like,

I'm doing battle with resistance, but I can't see like, this is, I need to quit. You know what, I saw actually a great thing. I don't know if you've ever, do you ever see Anthony Hopkins when he's on Instagram? He has like- I love him on Instagram. He's great, isn't he? I mean, he's so authentic.

And this, it was a clip, I think he was on some talk show or something like that. And they asked him this exact thing, what's the word you, because he's the elder statesman of elder statesman. And he said, I wish I could do the accent. He said, just keep going, just keep going, keep putting one foot in front of the other

because everything is going to work out in the end. And I thought, and it was so authentic coming from him. I said, he's absolutely right. Again, that's just like swimming in the ocean. You just gotta keep going because the alternative is you drown. So that will be the truth. Just keep going.

There's no plan B. Yeah, all right, man. I love it. Well, always good to talk to you. I can't say enough about how I appreciate you and the work that you do and the inspiration and that you share with the world. I think it's a true act of service.

Well, thank you. And I'm so happy to hear that you've got something percolating that is causing you agita at night. That's the way it should be. But I'm really divided on whether I can talk to you about it now. I have to think about it.

You know, I'm happy in all seriousness. I'm happy to talk about it, but I don't need to talk. I don't need to hear it. It's not like I need to judge it. I've already decided. I know what I'm willing to share with you. We'll do it. Okay. Yeah, cool. Great, anytime. It's not like I need to judge it. I've already decided. I know what I'm willing to share with you. We'll do it. Okay.

Yeah, cool. Great, anytime, it's a deal. All right, man. And you probably have another book coming out in another month, right? So you're always welcome. It'll be a while. And let's have breakfast soon too, please.

Okay, let's do it. But not at that place. No. That derailed us. We gotta find another place that we went to. No, I know. That derailed us. We gotta find another place. All right, thanks, buddy. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way,

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Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.