The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Steven Pressfield On Attaining Your Dreams, Pursuing Your Goals, Mastering Your Craft, & Defeating Resistance

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

#539: Today we're sitting down with New York Times bestselling author Steven Pressfield, who's written multiple books including The War of Art, Turning Pro, Do The Work, and most recently released his memoir, GVT CHEESE. Today he's telling us his story from starting out as a writer, broke & living in a house with no electricity, to becoming one of the most prolific writers of our time. He dives into how to make it as a writer or creator in general, the top qualities of somebody who's successful, and he lays out all the reasons why we as humans are always in our own way & how to get out of those habits that keep us from success. To connect with Steven Pressfield click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Woo More Play Woo More Play is here to help you have better sex. No shame, no taboo, just great, healthy sex. Check out their NEW Disco Stick Vibez and pair it with shag juice to have the big O of your dreams. Go to woomoreplay.com to shop. This episode is brought to you by AG1 AG1 is way more than greens. It's all of your key multi-vitamins, minerals, pre-and probiotics, and more, working together as one. Go to athleticgreens.com/SKINNY to get a free 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Fashionpass FashionPass is a clothing rental service where you can get unlimited designer rentals for one flat price. Go to fashionpass.com and use code SKINNY at checkout to get $60 off your first month. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Snacks Made with freshly-ground nut butter, organic honey and 20 organic superfoods, Perfect Bar has a variety of products that are good to eat and good for you. Go to perfectsnacks.com/skinny to learn how you can receive a perfect bar for free. This episode is brought to you by Pique Tea Pique’s Sun Goddess Matcha is organic, ceremonial grade, and rich in chlorophyll that supports detoxification of the body + promotes clear skin. Go to piquelife.com/skinny to get 15% off + free shipping for life. Produced by Dear Media

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She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. The other thing about resistance, which is just sort of the name that I gave to this negative force, is that it's universal. Everybody experiences it and everybody experiences it the same way. It's the same voice, that same negative voice telling you you're no good. You can't really do this and trying to distract you. I was being defeated by resistance and I had no idea that it was even defeating.

There is this thing and then I'm going to have to deal with it before I can do anything else. It's not the writing that's hard. It's the sitting down to write. That's where resistance gets you. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, author Steven Pressfield. And today, we are covering a lot of ground with one of the most prolific authors of our time.

We have been trying to get Stephen on the show for years. It only took us about 500 episodes to finally do so. Many of you may recognize his work. He's a New York Times bestselling author who's written multiple books, including one of our favorites, which we've talked about and recommended on this show multiple times. It's called The War of Art. Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles. I think everybody in every line of work should read this book. He's also written Turning Pro, Do the Work, and many others. He's written some great fiction books. One of my favorites, Gates of Fire, which is an epic novel of the Battle of Thermopylae.

And so like I said, we've been trying to get Steven on the show for a long time. This episode is jam-packed. We're talking his new memoir, Government Cheese, and we're also talking about his story from starting out as a writer, how he broke into it as a living. We're talking his new memoir, Government Cheese, and we're also talking about his story from starting out as a writer, how he broke into it as a living. We're talking about procrastination, the power of habit, how you can stop procrastinating. We're talking about instant gratification versus delayed gratification, how long it takes to get where you want to be, and a lot more. We're also talking about self-doubt and defeating that inner resistance, that voice in our head that we all have that holds us back from doing what we want to do and executing on our dreams. So with that, Steven Pressfield,

welcome for the first time, but I'm sure not the last time to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. What can someone do who is resistant and procrastinating when it comes to creativity or work? Well, the first thing I think that, you know, one months, whatever it is that you think will get you rolling on whatever it is, and just say, for this amount of time, I'm going to establish the habit every day, no matter what. I mean, every day, seven days a week, like Stephen King writes 365 days a year, right? Christmas is the birthday. And just make it a practice.

Like people have a yoga practice or a martial arts practice, right? Where they just say every day, I'm going to do my yoga, I'm going to do my poses, I'm going to do whatever it is. And they're not, I think I'm probably giving too long

an answer here, Lauren. No, no, that's great. The real mistake I think that people make is in thinking of some fantasy ending. like, oh, I'm going to finish my book. I'm going to finish my movie and everything is going to be wonderful. And instead, I think to think of it as a practice, particularly to think of it as a lifelong practice that I'm in this for the rest of my life, you know, and every day I'm going to do it. A habit, there's nothing that can beat a habit. You know, ants do it. They build, you know, ant colonies. That is the trick. It all comes down,

I think, to sort of the most boring, obvious concept, you know, just make yourself do it every day. And it gets a little bit easier every day. When did you realize that that was the trick? That's a good question. I think I originally started, I'll give you a too long of an answer. I originally started to write my first book when I was, I think, 23. And I worked for, I don't know, about two years. And then I just choked at the very end. It was right at the point of actually getting it done. I choked. I blew everything up. How do you choke writing a book? You just stop writing.

You just stop, okay. You stop. You say, I just can't finish it. I haven't got that guts. I don't have to submit it to do whatever it is. So I just stopped, blew up a marriage, blew up the book, et cetera, et cetera. At some point, or for quite a few years after that, I was sort of driven by guilt and shame to, you know, I've got to finish something. And at some point I'd saved up enough money to quit a job and just go to a cheap place in the country to live and rent a little house. And that was when I sort of,

it was sort of do or die for me. And I just said, I'm going to take a year, two years, whatever it takes. And I'm just going to work every single day on this. That's, this is my full-time job. And that was a great period for me. You know, I, I wrote all day. I read all night and just worked for, you know, as long as it took to get that first book done. And by the way, it didn't succeed. I couldn't sell it. I had to write another one after that. I also couldn't sell that one. So it wasn't until like 27 years of work later that the first book of mine actually got sold. Let me ask you this, doing that kind of work and then putting in those hours and changing your life that drastically, and then writing to that don't get picked up and don't get sold. How do you push through and still persevere with that kind of disappointment? Maybe, you know, there were times along the way, Michael, where I tried to go straight, where I sort of said, let me get a real job and let me, you know, this is silly, you know, cause my family thought, you know, poor Steve, the guys, you know, lost his mind type of thing. But every time I do it, I was so depressed that I just couldn't keep going, you know, at a regular job I had to, I was working in an ad agency in New York at one point. So you went back and actually got a job and tried after those

books didn't sell and you just, okay. And just couldn't do it. The only thing that sort of kept me sane was to go home at night and try to write what I thought was a real book. What do you think about people procrastinating in 2023 with social media? Ah, that's a great question, Lauren. It's like, I've always said, if you want to make a billion dollars, invent something that will help people procrastinate. And they invented it. It's called the web, right? And I get sucked into that thing too. But I think you really have to, if you want to do anything, break that habit. Fortunately, I'm sort of, I came into, you know, came into my age as a, before the web. So it's not as hard for me, but that is like the, I don't know, the devil. They know what the most, like the most shocking thing to me. So I, I'm an avid reader. I'm not

the biggest reader, but my whole life been avid reader. My dad was a big reader. So I grew up watching this guy just basically live in a book. And, and, you know, that was my example. So I love reading. It's my, it's my escapism. Right. And, you know, sometimes I'll share book recommendations on social and I'll have people write in and say, I don't have the time to read. How do you have the time to read? And I want to write back half the time and say, you have the time by getting off this thing that you're talking to me on. Right. You know, there's so many people, we make these excuses, like we don't have the time. And then we're endlessly scrolling on this thing that takes our time. And I always feel like if something's a priority and it's important to you, you find a nine months from now, and I'm going to train, it's going to take me that long to get up to the point. You just have to say to yourself, okay, each day I have to run a certain

amount of time. I, and you, and you build your schedule that way. What's the priority? What is the number one thing? And the interesting thing about something like that, like I ran a couple of marathons a few years ago. And the interesting thing is there are a lot of people in divorces running marathons, right? There are a lot of people whose lives have kind of come unwound one way or another. And they say, okay, as a way of getting back on track, let me pick a goal that's going to take me, you know, months to prepare for, and that will help get my life back together. And a lot of people do that. And why do you think something like that is the, is the mechanism that gets their life in order? Is it because they have to focus so much on doing something so hard or what is the, I think one thing is that it's a, there's a, a

length of time that you have to do. Like you can't just say, I'm going to run a marathon tomorrow, right? You've got to, assuming you're not, you know, already at that level, you got to train, right? Run one mile, run three miles, run 12 miles and so on and so forth. So what's built into training for a marathon is that long time, that maybe nine month period. And again, if you can kind of wrap your mind around, you know, a length of time that you got to do something. Like one thing I've always thought that was really a cool thing was, you know, when an actor gets cast in a movie or an actress and they know they got to do a nude scene, right. Or they got to look fantastic. You know, they got to take their shirt off. Right. And it's like nine months before, you know, and of course the studio gives them a

trainer and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that motivates you. Right. And of course, immediately they fall apart, you know apart after it's over. But that's a great way to, but there's no reason why any of us can't just mentally do that ourselves and say, okay, I'm going to put nine months or whatever, and I'm going to do this, whatever it is. I think people don't want to do the boring shit. I think they want it to be some extravagant, multifaceted answer of how to get to the goal. But what it really is, is habitual systems every single day, it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that's how you guys have built your business and stuff. It's like, in a way, that's another secret. It's that the boring shit that gets it done, you know, the tedious stuff.

Again, if you're training for a marathon, you know, it's hard to go out and run five miles, six miles, eight miles and do all the other stuff you have to do stretch and all that kind of thing. But that's how you do it. I mean, I think it's almost, it's really is the tortoise and the hare. Like, I feel like if I can lay my head down on the pillow at night and think of something that I've done to move the needle as a wife, a mother, or as a businesswoman, I feel like I've had a successful day. And it could be something really small, but it's just slowly moving the needle and not being so overwhelmed by the full picture. Yeah, I'm the same way. At night, I lie down and I say to myself, did I accomplish anything at all today? And if it's just a little, if you just roll the P a little, but you hit on something,

Lauren, I think it's really important. It's the difference between instant gratification and delayed gratification, right? If you want to fail, go for instant gratification. If you want to succeed, go for delayed gratification. That's why I'm talking about a time period, right? If you're going to make a movie or become a brain surgeon, right, it's years. And you have to sort of wrap your mind around that from the start. No, I love that you say that. And you say it so eloquently, you know, it, I think having someone like you on the show is it's always surreal for me because

we've been doing this for seven years and I've been reading your work for longer. Right. And it's not like I could just start one day and say, Hey, Steven, get on the show that nobody's ever heard of. Right. It took a lot of time and a lot of boring hours and a lot of effort. And I think people see the end result. And like, I want that right now. And I wish more people would talk about all the boring, all the tedious, all the grueling stuff that takes place before you can get to the place where you want to be. And I always think that, I know this is a financing, but when you look at that chart on Warren Buffett's net worth and people don't realize it, it wasn't until the much later years in his life that that thing skyrocketed. And I look at your work here now sitting on the table and I hear you talk about all the hours you put in and how many books at

this point is it? I think it's 22 or something. 22 books. But in the first one was published when you were how old? 52. 52. So 52 years until you got the first one. And now, how old are you if you don't mind me asking? I'm 79. Okay. So basically 27 years later, you have all of these books, but it took the majority of your life to get to the point where even one caught. Yeah.

I mean, these days, the big thing is to find some kind of a hack, right? That's what people want. Some sort of instant thing that immediately, you know, you're Kim Kardashian, you do a sex tape and two minutes later, you know, you're all over the internet, right? That's on the table for us. If this doesn't go well, you never know. But you know, one thing that people don't talk about, Michael, is that the years that it takes to do anything, right? If you want to be a concert pianist or a brain surgeon, you immediately say, okay, that's going to be 14 years, 15 years. And you accept that. But there are a lot of other things like being a writer.

People say, well, you know, I got a laptop, you know, I'll do it. And I did that too at the start. Nobody wants to read your shit. That is one of your books. I think it's incredible. Can you talk to our audience about that message and why you decided to write that book and call it that? Okay, great question, Lauren.

I realized at one point that I had worked in five different areas in writing in my career. I'd worked in advertising, I'd worked in movies, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. And I thought there's an overlap between all these things. You learn certain lessons in advertising. You learn other lessons in historical fiction, let's say. So I sort of wanted to put everything I knew about writing into one book. And the idea, the first lesson you learn if you're

writing ads is nobody wants to read your shit, meaning your ads, right? If they've got a remote, they're going to click right past your commercial immediately, right? If it's a print ad, they're going to turn the page. So you have to say to yourself, I have to do something that's so interesting or so compelling or so sexy or so whatever that people will be crazy not to read it. So the bottom line is you've got to work hard, pay the dues, and remember that nobody's waiting for you to do your thing, right? I think we all go to school and we write papers and we turn them in and our professors have to read them. Right. So we all think, oh, anything I write, people are going to want to read.

I found my mom. I couldn't get my mother to read my shit. You know, you know, I can't get my family to read it to this day. You know, so nobody wants to read it. You got to make it so good or so interesting that, you know, they have no choice. Because of what you do for a living and because of all the books that you've written, is there any tips that you have for parents who want to raise kids who are really self-assured and resourceful and can create that habit and be the tortoise in the hare? Asking selfishly. That's a great question. You know,

I don't have any kids, so I can't really say, but I would imagine it's just set an example because kids watch you, right? They watch you all the time. If you're a kind of a self-motivated, self-validated, self-reinforced person, the kids pick up on that. I think that would be the only thing I can say, not being a dad myself. No, that's smart. It's actually show them the practices every single day. I started saying to my daughter, no, mommy's working, mommy's working. So she understands what I'm doing. Even sometimes it doesn't look like work, but. Do you explain to her or let her see what you're

actually doing, Lauren? Yeah. I'll write in front of her on the computer or I'll show her my book and I'll say, this is mommy's work. She doesn't understand it. She's two and a half, but it's your right about, about just showing the example. I think that's smart. Yeah. There's a lot of young people that listen to this show and a lot of people are comparing to other people online. They have self-doubt. What are some tips and tricks that you do when it comes to self-doubt? Self-doubt, it goes with the program, right? It's a form of resistance with a capital R, that negative force that tries to keep us from realizing our dreams. And I find that any book that I start, I am riddled with self-doubt for months. Still.

I'm thinking, this is a dumb idea. Nobody's going to be interested in this. I'm never going to be able to sell it. It's been done a hundred times before, way better than me. I'm crazy to do this book, you know? And it's usually only maybe six months or nine months into something when I've kind of got some traction and I've read it, read, you know, maybe I'm halfway through it or something. And I say, well, you know, maybe there is something to this, you know, but self-doubt I think is, it's just, it's part of the program. If you're not

feeling self-doubt, something's wrong. You know, sometimes people will tell me, oh, I love to write and I'm like really a good writer. And I hear that immediately saying this person's an idiot, you know, because anybody that does that or any creative thing knows how hard it is and how riddled with self-doubt you are all the way through. If you're not feeling self-doubt, something's wrong. I want you to talk about resistance. And I know, and you chose that word specifically. I love your book, The War of Art. I think everybody should read this book. I just think it's one of those books that can really change your life and at least changed ours for sure. The theme of resistance, how did you come to contemplate that that was the thing that is maybe holding us back from hopes, dreams, ambitions, aspirations? Before I answer that,

Mike, let me ask you, how did that concept help you guys? I think what it did to, what it did to me for me is it, it basically highlighted everything in my mind that I was thinking, but couldn't articulate. And it basically put on a pedestal, all of the reasons why I wouldn't take a leap or wouldn't do something or wouldn't try something or wouldn't get off my ass to actually take some action. Right. And I think as soon as I recognized that I was going to have resistance in every aspect of my life, right. Conversations with my wife, creating this podcast, creating a business, trying to creative and whatever it is, it kind of gave me the tools to recognize that this is going to pop up regardless. And that I just had to continue to basically push through

anyways and do the things that 99% of people just don't want to do. Like I was about to write this tweet the other day and I said, you want to separate yourself from 99% of the people do the things you don't want to do every day. Right. And I think that, I don't know if I articulated that well to you, but that's pretty good. That's basically how it manifested in my mind. And it, you wrote it in such a way that was so easy to comprehend while, well, basically sharing such a prolific message. I don't know if that's the best explanation. That's pretty good. I like that. I love meditating. It's one of my favorite things to do every day. And what I noticed with your book

is when I am putting something off, I'll be able to pinpoint what that is. I'm like, oh, there's the resistance. I'm able to almost look at myself from an outside perspective, almost like over myself and be like, this is why you're not doing the thing that needs to be done. You're resisting it. So it gave me, like Michael said,

a word to identify what that feeling was. I couldn't identify it. Like I feel like with this book and I'm not just yanking your chain here. I literally just opened a random page and I'm not just yanking your chain here, I literally just opened a random page and I'm just going to read it to you real quick. It says, resistance can be beaten. If resistance couldn't be beaten, there would be no fifth symphony, no Romeo and Juliet,

no golden gate bridge. Defeating resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully with support and without for 50 million years. I just think that it's such an important message for people to hear that are feeling, quote unquote, that resistance to understand that it is possible. You just have to put in the time to work and understand that it can, in this case, be beaten. The other thing about resistance,

which is just sort of the name that I gave to this negative force, is that it's universal. When we experience it, we hear that voice in our. You know, when we experience it, we hear that voice in our head that says, you're no good, you know, you don't have enough education, you have too much education, you're too fat, you're too thin, all that sort of stuff. We think it's our own voice talking. We think we're the only, I always did.

I thought, oh, I'm the only one that knows, experiences this. But I can tell you from the tens of thousands of emails that I've gotten, everybody experiences it. And everybody experiences it the same way. It's the same voice, that same negative voice telling you you're no good, you can't really do this, and trying to distract you. Like, don't do it right today.

You know, put it off today. We'll do it tomorrow. Procrastination. Or let's go check our, you know, Instagram or do it right today. You know, put it off today. We'll do it tomorrow. Procrastination. Or let's go check our, you know, Instagram or whatever it is. But to me too, you know, I spent like about, after that first book that I tried to write that I blew up and choked at the end, I spent like seven years kind of on the road working crazy jobs and stuff like that and not doing any writing at all. I kind of carried my typewriter with me, but I never touched it, you know, and I was being defeated by resistance

and I had no, no idea that it was even defeating me. And at some point on one day, I just sort of said, there's this force out there that nobody's given a name to, and it's been kicking my ass for years, you know? And if I can just sort of accept the fact, like you said, putting a name to it, Michael, that there is this thing, and then I'm going to have to deal with it before I can do anything else. I got to teach, like I say, at the start of the war of art, it's not the writing that's hard, it's the sitting down to write. And that's where resistance gets you. So for me, giving it a name, it's also like what you said, Lauren, you kind of pull back from yourself and that's sort of the trick to it. You say, oh, that's just resistance. That's not my voice

telling me I'm no good. That's this other force. And to me, resistance is a force of nature. It's like gravity, you know, it applies to everybody and it's out there and nobody teaches you that, you know, they really should teach you that. It should be like the first thing they teach you in school. Anyway, that's my definition of it. Why do you think it's universal? In all of your years of studying this topic, where do you think this comes from? I think I've heard you talk that maybe it's a fear-based mechanism, the way we've evolved. Is that correct? Or what do you, why do you think this comes from? I think I've heard you talk that maybe it's a fear-based mechanism, the way we've evolved. Is that correct? I have a long, long explanation for it.

We have time. I'd love to hear it. Okay, this is a long one. That's okay. I think if we were to describe the human psyche and do a diagram of it, there would be like a big circle that we could call the self, the capital S self, like the Jungian self or the Joseph Campbell type self. That would include the unconscious, dreams, intuition, et cetera, et cetera. In the middle of that would be this little tiny black dot that would be the ego. And I've seen a diagram of this thing where adjacent to the bigger self are like three little arrows and it says the divine ground.

And I'm a definitely believer in that, that when we get into that bigger self, we're touching on something from other dimensions of reality, from the wisdom of the ages, whatever it is. So my sort of theory is that if you're any type of artist, filmmaker, a writer, a dancer, what you're trying to do in your daily work when you're sitting down at the keyboard is to get from your ego, from that I-based self of, I want to succeed, I want to be famous, I want to, you know, blah, blah, to the bigger self. And that's sort of where ideas come from. Like that's the zone, right?

When you can sort of get your ego out of the picture and allow stuff to just kind of ideas to just come, right? And I, so my theory of resistance is that when we start to move to the, to identify with the self, meaning when we really start to work as writers or as artists or whatever, it's very threatening to the ego. The ego that tells us, this is me, I'm in charge, et cetera, et cetera. And it wants to stop us from going there. So in other words, my long way of saying this, Michael, is I think the ego throws up resistance and puts that voice into our head. Who do you think you are trying to make a movie, trying to start a business, trying to do this or

that? You're a bum, you're a loser, you're not good enough, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's really a spiritual passage, I think, as we grow and mature to get out of our ego, get out of that kind of narrow, fear-based, selfish thing and into a greater world where ideas come from and where we can also embrace others and not be sort of fearful into our own selfish, scared place. I think what you said, earlier about, about how you write every day for two hours to four hours, depending, I think just writing, it's like, it's like not going into it with like all these expectations and just writing that helps get over the ego hump. It does or anything, meditation, martial arts, painting, any form of art, you know,

and I include a lot of broad things in that, you know, designing motorcycles in your garage, anything, anything like that, that take, it takes you out of your ego because you have to focus so hard on whatever the thing is that you're doing. And you do have to sort of surrender to it. You know, if you're writing a song, it's like, well, you know, you get this much and you go, well, what's the next part, you know, if you're writing a song, it's like, well, you know, you get this much and you go, well, what's the next part? You know, and you start fiddling around. And, you know, if you're working with a band, you know, somebody has another contribution and that gets you out of your ego into this other place. And that's why it's addictive in the best sense, because when you get to that other place, that's a great place to be.

You know, you're in touch with a power that's beyond just your own limited fearful self. think what their families think, what strangers on the internet think. And I feel like it holds people back so much from actually going out and taking, you know, executing on a pursuit of their dreams or whatever it is. I feel like that's all must be ego based, right? I think so. I mean, if you think about it, it probably evolutionarily comes from when we were in the cave and we were in a tribe, right? And in that case, your life depended on the other people in the tribe and that you were okay, right? You were part of the tribe, right? They're not booting you out of the cave. Right. If you were like some sort of individual that stood up to, you know, you could see it in like the Taliban and stuff like that now, right?

If anybody stands, that's why they don't let women go to school, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think it's kind of natural. Like high school is sort of the ultimate kind of hierarchical ego world, right? Where everybody's kind of fragile. They haven't really found who they are yet or what they love. And they're so concerned with other people's opinion of them. And then the internet becomes an extension of that. I got a digital extension of that. What do other people think of me? And I don't, I think it's just

a natural process of maturing that at some point you say to yourself, I don't give a shit what anybody thinks of me. You know, I remember there was a, there's a story of, do you know, David Baldacci is, oh yeah, the writer, the fiction writer, the fiction writer. So he's a, you know, multi, you know, whatever, but he is a lawyer or was The fiction writer. So he's a multi, whatever. But he is a lawyer or was a lawyer for years. He wanted to write. He would write novels and he couldn't sell them or he'd sell them sort of and then something would fall through. And he came to kind of a crisis moment where something got rejected and the conclusion

he drew from it was, I'm never going to make it as a writer. You know, I'm just going to have to be a lawyer for the rest of my life. I don't like it. And it was a crisis for him. And his response to that was, he said, after however many days of agonizing over this, he said, you know what? This is just him talking to himself.

I'm a writer. I don't give a shit if I never sell anything again. This is what makes me happy. This is what I'm going writer. I don't give a shit if I never sell anything again. This is what makes me happy. This is what I'm going to do. If I don't succeed, I don't care. I'm still going to keep doing it. And that's a really powerful moment. Of course, right after that, he started selling stuff, but that's sort of a moment of maturity where you say, okay, this is who I am. You know, this is what makes me happy. I don't care what anybody else thinks of me and I don't care if I succeed or not. This is what makes me happy. This is my bliss,

the Joseph Campbell thing, and this is what I'm going to do. I think once you break out of the box that society wants to put you in, it's liberating. People are like, if you're a doctor or a lawyer, you can only be a doctor or a lawyer. No, that's not true. You can be multifaceted. I am going to give you a little hack to your morning routine. It is AG1 by Athletic Greens. Okay, so I first learned about this through Andrew Huberman, who is so savvy when it comes

to health. He's absolutely incredible. And on our podcast, he raved about this. And then Michael started doing it every single morning. He would put a scoop in his blender cup before we went to the gym and shake it up. And I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm doing AG1 by Athletic Greens. And so I was like, okay, I need to get out on this. First of all, I looked into it. It's made with 75 super high quality vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients. And everything is designed to just boost your mood, your immune system, and sleep support. It also gives you sustained energy. I actually like doing this in the morning after my lemon water. I add sometimes some lemon,

some ginger, and then I just drink it down and I do it on ice. It's so great before you go to the gym. I just feel like it helps your gut and your whole body and it's all your daily nutrients. People are obsessed with this. You've seen it absolutely everywhere. And of course, we have a code for you. So if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. I'm obsessed with their travel packs. I take them everywhere. They're so convenient. It's just like a little pack that you put in your water and go. You're going to go

to athleticgreens.com slash skinny. That's athleticgreens.com slash skinny. Check it out. If there's one thing you know about me, it's that I like things seamless. And I even like things so seamless that I can just grab and go. So one of the things I did to make my life easier is I created a snack situation in my fridge. So there's like one shelf that's all snacks. So Zaza can open the door and grab a snack. Michael can do it when he's hangry and I can do it when I'm on the go or traveling. And one of those snacks, one of the main snacks we have is by Perfect Bar. So Perfect Bar is amazing. It's made with freshly ground organic nut butter,

organic honey, and 20 organic super foods. What I like about it though, is there's protein in it. So the big ones that I give to Michael have like 17 grams of protein. And the mini ones that I love to give to Zaza and that I like to take on the go have six grams of protein. The one that she likes the best that she will not stop grabbing is the dark chocolate chip peanut butter with sea salt. I think it's because it tastes so amazing. You don't even know it's like a healthy bar. Perfect Bar is made with only whole food ingredients and contains no artificial preservatives. And it's stored in the fridge. So you could grab one before a workout, after a workout, when you're traveling,

all the things. They're non-GMO, gluten-free, soy-free, kosher, and low GI. And Perfect Bar knows it will be love at first bite. So for a limited time, they're offering you a chance to try the refrigerated protein bars for free. So here's how it works. You're going to sign up for email or text and upload a picture of your receipt from your local grocery store. And you guys, they'll reimburse you for the cost of one bar directly to your Venmo or PayPal account. I mean, this is so cool, right? All you have to do is go to perfectsnacks.com slash skinny to get a free Perfect Bar today. That's perfectsnacks.com slash skinny and you get a free perfect bar today. Happy snacking. I would like to know your real resistance when it came to writing your new book.

Like what were you resisting with this book? Because this is a little bit different than your other books. So I'm sure you experienced the big R. That's, well, that's a really good question. This, this, the new book is, is government cheese. It's a memoir. This goes right back to my life partner, Diana. So basically what the book is or the way it started was with her. And cause she's heard all my stories about when I was driving trucks and working in the oil fields and the blah, blah, blah. And she said, you know, you should write these down. These are interesting. So the form that resistance took for me, I immediately rejected that. I said, who cares about my stories? Everybody's got a million stories.

It's just boring. You know, my ego telling story, you know, I can't do this. It's nobody will care. And so we were talking about self-doubt before Michael. It's like, I had tremendous self-doubt through this as I started for that exact thing. That voice kept saying to me, who cares about, you know, your individual life, you know, but after a while I thought, you know, this is really the story of, of a writer going from nowhere, knowing nothing to actually becoming a writer. And it's a, it's a long odyssey. And I thought this will help people because people who are struggling, they say this guy, Pressfield took 27 years to get this done. You know, I can hang in there for 11 years or something like that. So finally, once it got, you know, it's six months

of momentum going, I said, you know, okay, I think this is a good idea. Or at least it's worth taking a shot. So when you were writing it every morning, you said you, you wake up, you go to the gym and then you write for two to four hours. Were you resistant within the process? Like after you got started, were you resistant within the process? No, not in the actual working day. Once I could get started, then, because I've learned over the years, you can't second guess yourself at that point. You just got to commit to it. Like if you're going out on a six mile run and you start out, you got to finish. Right. So once you just rip the bandaid off and start, it's a lot easier to get that momentum. Yes. So once you just rip the Band-Aid off and start,

it's a lot easier to get that momentum. Yes. I feel it's like an analogy I think of is like diving into a cold pool. You can walk around the edge for 10 minutes going, I'm never going to do it. But once you're in it, then you're okay. Right. And you see an end in sight, kind of.

Yeah. You can only go so far before you collapse. I would like to know just selfishly what your process is when it comes to writing a book. Do you write a proposal? Do you write note cards? Do you do any of that? Or do you just hop right into it? Ah, that's another great question, which I'll give you like a really long answer to. Perfect. I want to know. We love your long answers.

I know. I'm actually doing'm doing a a little video series on instagram now called the fool's cap method have you seen any of that at all yes and i do want you to speak all about that because i i'm not understanding exactly what what that is so maybe you can also package that into this is sort of an answer to the question anyway my dear friend norm stall kind of a mentor me, when I was at my lowest point trying to write a book, he kind of took me out to lunch and I told him, I'm just lost. I don't know what to do.

And he reached into his briefcase and he took out a legal pad, which is they call fool's cap, right? A yellow pad. And he said, Steve, God made a single sheet of fool's cap to be exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel. And that to me was a breakthrough in that moment. You know, it was just the idea of trying to grasp the whole thing on a single page,

you know, not getting into massive, you know, Bible writing of this character grew up and, you know, Poughkeepsie, whatever that is. And it's not overwhelming.

No, because if you can do that- I love that. Or any process, starting a business or coming up with a plan to get your daughter into Harvard, if you can just do it on one page. So the short version is I have now sort of over the years evolved certain points that go on that page. There's like 10 points that go on that page for a book. For instance, what's the climax? Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What is the inciting incident? What is the theme? What is it about? What genre is it? Is it a thriller? Is it a love story? Is it a

detective story? And I'll sort of do all those things in just, just like in one line. And that will sort of give me an overview of, of what this project is. And that helps me to evaluate it. This is step one, Lauren, you know, is this worth doing? You know, I can look at it and say, you know, it is worth doing. But then from that point, I sort of will elaborate on those things and I'll write an actual file. Like who's the hero that I don't want to write that out. You know, who's the villain, what's the clash in the climax, that kind of thing. When you're writing the war of art is the villain resistance. Is there a villain when it's not an

actual character? That's a great question. Is it, is it when it's not an actual person? And so with the villains resistance. In other words, the same principles that apply to Is it a villain when it's not an actual character? That's a great question. When it's not an actual person, is the villain's resistance? In other words, the same principles that apply to storytelling, like a fiction, apply to nonfiction. So in the war of art, the hero is the reader. The hero is the person that's coming to this going, I know I've got a movie in me. I know, but I just can't get myself together. The villain is resistance, the force that's stopping them from doing it. And then the climax is a clash between the hero and the villain, which is sort of the final note of the book, which is kind of, you can do it, you know, buckle down and do it. In other words, the same principles that apply to fiction apply to nonfiction, I think.

So basically, I won't have a massive outline because in writing a fiction book, because so many happy accidents happen along the way. A character will appear in three months in that you never even thought would happen at the start. And it's a good character. You want to keep it. But in general, I will sort of, I'll know what's the climax. I'll know how it's going to end. I'll know what the inciting incident, meaning the incident where the story starts is, and I'll know what it's about. What's the theme of it, you know? And then I'll just sort of plunge in. Can I ask you a book nerd question? Sure. Because I think you're a rare breed of author that you bounce back and forth between fiction and nonfiction. You mentioned Baldacci,

and I think he's mostly fiction writer. I think so, yeah. But you do both and on vastly different topics. I've always personally felt when I read that sometimes fiction writers, not to generalize, fiction writers are sometimes some of the best writers because you have to maybe think of so much more and you have to be so much, you have to use your imagination in such a different way. I don't know if you'd agree with that statement. I do agree with it. Yeah. But I wonder just from your perspective, what's harder to write, fiction or nonfiction? For me, I mean, because the nonfiction that I write is like, you know, kind of about writing, right? The war of art or something. It's not like

I'm writing a biography of Harry Truman or something. That would be a different thing. Fiction is definitely much harder and more rewarding too, more fun. And is that because you get to use your imagination more? And is it harder because you have to paint a different picture with a different brush because it's out of your mind as opposed to someone... I can think about Harriet Truman and I can imagine all the events and all the people that actually happened because it really happened. Is that why it's more difficult or... The problem is sort of... Somebody asked Philip Roth once, he'd been writing, he's done 30 books or whatever it was, and they said, asked him, does it get easier? And he said, no, because each piece of fiction is a story and each one presents its own problems

that you haven't dealt with before. You know, you might've dealt, the last book might've been told in the first person by a single character. Now in this book, it's in the third person. So it's a whole, you know, because the book kind of requires that a specific story, it doesn't get any easier. A movie or a, or a novel is so complicated to make it all come together that that's the fun of it, but it's also the real, the difficulty. Whereas I think, you know, a lot of people sort of write self-helpy type books and I'm kind of doing that. These things are, they're, they're easier. You know, they just, they're about one subject and you can kind of focus on, on one subject. You don't have to create characters that are believable. You don't have to create story points that are believable. So the reader doesn't say, oh, that's bullshit. That

would never happen. You know, you gotta, you don't have to worry about that. You know, it's sometimes people, I don't articulate this well enough, but I've said sometimes personally in my own life, fiction books have actually been more helpful to me in some cases getting through hard periods. Like very early. Are you familiar with James Clavel? Oh yeah. I love James Clavel. Oh God, you guys are going to nerd out. I mean, I think that he doesn't maybe get enough praise. I mean, he's been passed for years now, but he doesn't get enough praise for how deep that work was. Right. And yeah,

it, and he studied for so long, sansu, the war of our, the art of war and was over in Asia for such a long period of time. And I feel like, you know, not only just from a life perspective,

but business, like he wrote about so many things and so many human elements, or even like Larry McMurtry, just writing about the human condition. And when people ask me what books are the most helpful, there are some great self-help, but I say dive into great pieces of fiction more because I feel like sometimes you can find life's greatest answers there. I agree with you completely.

If our audience is listening and they sort of don't know where to start, out of all your books, what is a book that you think would be most beneficial? And if, if you had to pick maybe someone who's starting out in their career, maybe someone who's in a nine to five job that wants to break out and do something that's creative, which one would you say? I would say the war of art is probably the first one because it's such a seminal concept of, of resistance that if you can't defeat that at the start, you can't do anything. I would also say the new one, Government Cheese, because it's about, you know, my long struggle. And if you read that, I think it'll cure you of thinking that there's some hack that I can do and I'll be an overnight success. No, I think it's so important to see the struggle because so often with social media,

we do, like you say, see that instant gratification and it looks like there's overnight success. And I think it's so important to see through your memoir, the entire struggle. I read here that you had no power. You lived with no power. Is that correct? Oh yeah. Yeah. I was driving trucks at the time and I lived in this house for, I think it was $15 a month. It had no running water, no power, you know, no, it didn't even have a back door, but it was okay for me because basically I was on the road all the time, you know, and I could take showers and truck stops and stuff like that or sleep in the sleeper berth of the truck. You know, I would just come home and I was going to be on the road that, you know, later that night,

you know, so I'd fall asleep on my little mattress on the floor and, you know, get up and go to the terminal and get back to work. That was why that worked. What's another, obviously don't give away everything, but what's another story in your new book, Government Cheese, that you can point to that was a big, sort of shows the struggle? I was driving trucks in North Carolina and had a boss who sort of took a chance on me when I was, you know, the youngest kid at the place. And I kept screwing up. I was, I had this self-sabotage thing. And at one point, without going into great details, I completely dropped a load, it was like $100,000 of stuff,

right? So he, my boss, took me out. He's like maybe 20 years older than me. He took me out to this hot dog place in Durham, North Carolina called Amos and Andy's. He said, kid, I can see that you're going through something in your life. I know you're living out some kind of drama. He says, I don't know what it is and and I don't want to know what it is. But just remember, you work for me, and this company's job is a commercial enterprise designed to make money. And when I give you a load, you better deliver that load. And nobody's going to help you, and et cetera, et cetera. And I was just like shaking you know, shaking and everything.

I said, but that was a great, you know, thanks. I needed that moment, which I've used, you know, when I'm on my own trying to finish a book, I kind of think of his name as Hugh Reeves. And I just think of that, you know, this is a commercial enterprise designed to make money and you're a professional and you've got to do your job. What do you do when people come to you out of all people with excuses? There's got to be people in your life that have come to you and said, I can't do this because of this. I can't do this because of this. I mean, you can have a little talk with them like Hugh Reeves had with me, but if they

don't kind of have a come to Jesus moment really quickly, I don't waste my time on it because I've lived that life myself. And I know that until you make the commitment yourself, nobody's going to be able to change you. What are some excuses that you hear all the time across the board that are the same? I would love to know. I'm sure you've heard them all. A lot of times people will say, I'm sick. I've got this condition, financial difficulties or something like that, which may be absolutely valid. I've got a sick mother, I've got three kids or whatever. But when you think about the great success stories, Toni Morrison, the writer, you know, Tony Morrison, the writer, et cetera, et cetera, they had kids, they had troubles. They didn't have any money. Oprah

Winfrey had nothing, you know, some find a way to do it. You know, I think sometimes people are addicted to the narrative because it, it gives them a identity. Yes, true, exactly. I've lived that myself. Yeah, you get addicted to this narrative, but what you don't realize is that the narrative is actually what needs to be removed and it's hurting your identity. Yeah. I want you to talk to us about the hero's journey.

I think our audience will love this. In what concept? Just tell us the definition of the hero's journey. Maybe give us the hero's journey in your own life. Oh, okay. This book, Government Cheese, is my hero's journey. The hero's journey is a piece of software that we're born with in our brains, right? And this was, I'm blanking on a guy's name who was so great, the professor that was a popularizer with Bill Moyers. Can't think of his name at the moment.

So The Hero's Journey is sort of a template in our minds that every book, every movie, every legend, every myth is The Hero's Journey. It starts in the ordinary world where a person is like Luke Skywalker is on the evaporator farm on the planet Tatooine, right? Now I know. Now we have a subject I can talk about. And something happens. The call to adventure comes. In Luke's case, it's like he finds R2-D2 who says, you know, projects a hologram. It's Princess Leia.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. And so he makes a decision to cross a threshold to go from the ordinary world to the extraordinary world, to follow his destiny, to become a Jedi Knight or something like that. And then the hero's journey goes through all kinds of meeting allies, meeting enemies, learning lessons, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Any story. Rocky, the first Rocky is about that, right? He gets a chance to fight the champ. He goes into training, et cetera, et cetera. Then there's a crisis where the hero confronts the villain.

And usually, you know, he either gets away like Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford has the, you know, the gold thing is fleeing from everything. And then in the end of the hero's journey, the hero returns home. It's really Homer's Odyssey is the classic Western civilization version of the hero's journey, right? Odysseus is 10 years traveling, trying to get home from the Trojan War,

finally gets home in the hero's journey. The hero returns home with quote unquote, a gift for the people. And what that gift is, is usually the product of his or her solitary journey, this long journey, whatever wisdom they can pass on, you know, it might be music, it might be something violent, but that's, that's, so that's kind of the hero's journey, which we all have inside us. And I think it's, to me, it's like a woman's biological clock. You can't get away from it. It's ticking in there, you know? And what it's really about, the hero's journey is really about is finding who we are. Like the end of the hero's journey, when the hero comes home,

the hero has finally decided, male or female, finally knows it's like David Baldacci when he said, I'm a writer, I don't care, you know, and has finally discovered what they love, what their gift is, you know, who they really are. So we're all on the hero's journey, whether we know it or not. And we're on many hero's journey, many, many hero's journeys throughout our lives. Okay, so I have one cup of coffee every single day, and I used to have two. And the reason I have one now is because I've switched one of my cups of coffee for matcha. I just noticed that when I was drinking that second cup, I wouldn't be able to go to bed until like 10, 30, or 11. And I like to be in bed at like nine, you guys. So I switched to matcha for the second cup, and it's absolutely life-changing. Here's the deal. You've got to

drink Peaks Sun Goddess Matcha. It's the best matcha ever. First of all, it's organic, it's ceremonial grade, and it's screened for toxins, which is so amazing because I learned all about matcha and there are some ones that have a lot of toxins in them. And you don't want to get the ones with a teabag either because the teabag is like seeping all those microplastics into your tea. So Peak Sun Goddess Matcha is in like a little bag. You rip the top off, pour it in. I do a little bit of almond milk and then I froth it and then I put tons of hot water on top and it like foams. It's so amazing. Their matcha too is like rich in chlorophyll, which supports detoxification and promotes clear skin, which we love. It's like an

antioxidant facial for your skin. I notice too, when I take it, I have like a sustained calm energy. So I'm energetic, but it's also calm. Unlike coffee. I also notice a lot of mental clarity and a Zen-like focus and there's no crash, which we love. If you're on Peak Sight, obviously get their Ginger Digestive Elixir Tea. It's my favorite. I'm a huge fan. You're going to head over to peaklife.com slash skinny. That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com slash skinny. And you get 15% off plus free shipping for life when you start your new ritual. Recently, I went to Cabo and I wanted to do a lot of neons, but I don't have a lot of neons in my closet. So what I did because I didn't want to spend a ton of money is I went to Fashion Pass. You guys, this is the best shopping hack. It's a clothing rental service where you can get

unlimited rentals for one flat price. They have insane brands. The brands are like For Love and Lemons. I think they have free people. Show Me Your Moo Moo. Tons have insane brands. The brands are like For Love and Lemons. I think they are free people. Show Me Your Moo Moo. Tons of good brands. And what you can do is you can save so much money because you're no longer spending $200 on a trendy piece. And you're probably just going to wear it once or twice, especially for me, like the neons. I only was wearing it once or twice. So I didn't want to spend a ton of money. So here's the deal. I'm on the trendsetter plan. So I get to pick four clothing items in every order, or I could pick three clothing items and two accessories. So if you want jewelry or bags, you can switch it out. The shipping is so fast. My favorite part personally, though, is they take care of dry cleaning. So you literally just

send it back in a pre-labeled bag and you give it to them when you're done. And then you get to choose new items and they do all the dry cleaning. It could not be easier. I can't believe it. Plus, you should know every month you get a $10 purchase discount that counts towards anything you buy. And I have a discount for you today. If you go to fashionpass.com and use code SKINNY at checkout, you'll get $60 off your first month so you can try it for literally $29. That's unlimited rentals for just $29 with code skinny. Go to fashionpass.com. So for people that are starting out and they don't really know what their passion is or their purpose, and they haven't found that thing that gives them their spark in life, is that a book or a piece of work that you would suggest they start with that? Or is there certain tactics that you would suggest that they do in order to figure out who they are?

You know, I don't know if there's any tactics or tricks or anything. I mean, life sort of has a momentum and propels you along. I'll tell you one, here's a story, a true story, simple one that shows this in kind of everyday terms. I have a friend, actually this is the son of a friend of mine. Here's his story. It's a quick story. After 9-11, he joined the Marine Corps. He's 19 years old or something like that. Joined as an enlisted man, served over in Iraq and later Afghanistan, came back from that. And he said, you know, this is not my thing. You know, this is too, you know, this is war. It's not my thing.

I want to do something that heals people. I want to bring them, you know, into unity or whatever. So he came from a family that valued education. So he went back to and got his master's in hospital administration. And sure enough, he got a job and got his master's in hospital administration and sure enough he got a job and he became a hospital administrator and he did that for like seven or eight years and he just wasn't happy he thought he was doing one and one day it just sort of hit him he said you know what he says i don't want to be just pushing paper i want to be in the room with the suffering fearful

patient to put my hands on him or her and help them, you know? So he said, I'm going to be a nurse. And he went to nursing school and now he is a nurse. And he's still, that's, it took him to find that. So I'm thinking like, if we had intercepted him at 19 years old, when he's joining the Marine Corps and we said, you know what, Frank, you should be a nurse. He would have looked like we were out of our mind, you know, but through the process of going in these other, you know, let me try this or let me try this. Now he was finally ready. He said, this is what I want, you know? And what's sort of interesting to me about that story, and I think it's true in every case, is like the three things that he tried, the Marine Corps and hospital administrator, were all sort of metaphors for his final calling.

Like the fact that he joined the Marine Corps showed that he was service meant something to him. It wasn't money. He didn't go for money. He wanted to dedicate his life to something bigger than him. But that war service, that wasn't it, right? So then he thought, okay, let me get into health. Let me get into that. And now he's a hospital administrator it's a metaphor for helping but he's not really in the room really helping you know so it was like nice try but you sort of missed it just by

a little bit then he said okay that's what i want to be i don't want to be a doctor you know because i don't want to be like god you know passing I want to be in the room when a person is dying or scared to death to help them. So that to me is kind of a hero's journey. It is a hero's journey. And him deciding to be a nurse was the moment of coming home. And so it's not necessarily being an artist, although I would call that an art or some glorious thing. And so, you know, it was a job that he was born to do. And it just took him that journey to find it. That's so parallel with, I was talking about the other day, how when I was little, I was obsessed with scrapbooking. Like, I just loved scrapbooking.

And my parents would say, what do you want to do? And I'd be like, I want to be a scrapbooker. But that's not really like a tangible career. But now as I'm grown, I am a scrapbooker online. I mean, a blogger, a storyteller, it's putting visual images together to make a story. And so I think you're so right. Sometimes what you may think maybe doesn't look like a career, you have to go through the motions to sort of get through the other side. You have been surrounded by some incredible people.

Ryan Holiday talks about you all the time on his Instagram. You were on Joe Rogan. I mean, you have multiple people that are very, very, very famous and successful reading your books. Who are some people that you can point to that you think have really fought through resistance and succeeded? Like just have done a good job of the war of art. I mean, there's so many people, I mean, anybody that would be, you know, at the top of their field or even just, just working somebody you never heard of my friend, Ruthie, who this is another sort of parallel to the nursing story. She's about my age, a little bit younger in her

whole life. She's never really had a job. She's always been married to somebody and kind of, and so sometimes people would say, been married to three people. Oh, you know, what is she doing? You know, she's sort of bouncing around. But of all the sort of extended family and people that she knows, which let's say maybe 50, 80 people, if anybody's in trouble, they go to Ruthie. And she has saved me personally. You know, she's just the kind of person, like I'll give you an example. My mom was like failing with dementia and all kinds of things. And my brother and I, we had her in a nursing home and it was just horrible, you know. But we, my brother and I were utterly paralyzed to do it, you know, to get her out of there.

And I just called Ruthie and I said, help. And she just kind of swept in and did what had to be done, found the people, got my mom home. That's an art. That's an art. It's a finesse. That's, there's no, it's like being a scrapbooker. There's no definition as a profession, but that's her calling and that's her gift. And so through time, she sort of, I don't know to this day that she would even define that, but that really is who she is.

So life has a way of teaching us, you know, as we go on a dead end, dead end, dead end, and finally, hopefully we find whatever it is. But like you with scrapbooking, Lauren, it's like it was always there, right? When you were four years old, that thing that you're using now as a profession was always there. Like I'm sure with our Marine friend, the idea of being a nurse was somehow if we knew him when he was five years old or eight years old, he probably was that kind of a guy even then. He just didn't know it. I also think like when he was five years old or eight years old he probably was that kind of a guy even then he just didn't know it i also think like when i was four and five scrapbooking this career didn't exist there was no such thing as a blogger so sometimes maybe when you're doing something that you love maybe the thing that you want to do doesn't exist and you have to create it in my

case exactly every teacher i ever had kept saying, shut the hell up. Shut the hell up. And now, now I get to talk all day long. He still doesn't shut the hell up. What are some roadblocks that you see and observe for our generation?

Like when you look at you know, 20 to 40 year olds, what are some things that you see that could potentially get in the way? Okay, that's a good question. Again, I don't really have, it's not like I have a lot of friends that are in. But one thing I do think is that, first of all, the internet and social media are a real handicap. You know, it's a real headwind blowing everybody into distraction and stuff like that. But also I think something happened to the education system along the way.

I mean, I just went to a public high school. I didn't go to anything fancy, but the knowledge that I have is like when I talk to young people and I cite just normal books that they should have read, normal things they should know, just cultural things. And people look at me like, Canada? That's to the north of them? It's like I'm amazed at how uneducated people are. This is the story that Roseanne Cash talks about her dad, Johnny Cash, right? Where they were on a bus together on a tour, on a tour bus together.

They just sat, they were playing some songs and Johnny Cash said, well, let's play, you know, Shall the Circle Be Unbroken? And Roseanne said, oh, I don't know that song, you know? And then he named, you know, like two or three others and she didn't know them either. And he became like really alarmed. And he said, I'm going to write out the list. And he wrote out a hundred songs and Roseanne made an album called The List, right? Of the songs that if you're going to be an Americana country singer, you got to know these songs, you know? And so he gave her this list and she just took it as, you know, gospel. You have to know that. And I say that's true of books and movies, you know, you have to read James Cla i say that's true of books and movies you know you have to

read james clavelle you know yes oh my god michael no you have to know i just downloaded shogun because he said lauren if you don't read this so it's it's so good but there's so good what you're saying is there's just basic things that people just don't know or take the time to know anymore correct it's also even just concepts, like the concept of resistance. If you don't have that, which I didn't have for years and years, you're almost guaranteed to fail. I think what I would say is the answer to this is not relying on the education systems, but actually going out and being your own guru and actually seeking out knowledge i think that we're in a time where we want like stuff like

sort of handed to us like you have to go read the books and you have to go talk to people who are a lot older than you and you have to kind of go out and get it. And I think that's true. I mean, you can't just rely on the school to sort of spoon feed you the information. You really have to go out and kill the tiger and bring it back. Yeah, no, that's exactly true. It's alarming as parents of young children, because I agree with you on the school system. I don't know what's going on there, but just basic education seems to have going out the way. Now, listen, there's a lot of great educators out there, so I'm not trying to bash them, but there's something that needs to change.

And what I tell people all the time is if you're solely reliant on what the education system's gonna provide you for a future, you are going to be in for a severe come to Jesus moment when you realize, like, I mean, running this, even this business, I don't even look at a college resume anymore. I look at see kind of where you've gone.

I look at like, do you have the basic knowledge? You have the basic understanding? Are you a self-starter? Are you somebody that has some grit that wants to put in some hard work? Like those are the things that I look for because I don't, I can't rely at all anymore on the educational system, preparing people to be able to handle what life has to offer now. Yeah. That's interesting to hear. I believe it completely. I don't know where one person of the 70 people in this business went to school, not one. And I know that's changed because employers for a long period of time, that had a lot of merit. And I'm not saying great schools don't still exist, but the world changes and I can't trust that system to prepare people to handle what life actually throws at you anymore.

Yeah. Now this is one place where social media can be positive because there are a lot of good people out there that are like Robert Greene does his little things on Instagram, right? That if you find him, you get turned on to him. You go, oh yeah, let me read the 48 laws of power and this and that and the other thing. And that's part of the canon that you have to absorb. That's so funny that you say that because there's this feature on Instagram that everyone should use. You go on people's pages that you like and you can star them. So when you get on Instagram, the people that you like will inundate your newsfeed. So what I figured is if I'm going to be logging onto Instagram, I want to be inspired or educated. So what I did is I went and muted a bunch of things that I didn't want to see.

And I went and starred people like you and Robert Greene and Stoicism and Ryan Holiday. So every single time I get on social media, I have all of these things to learn when I'm on as opposed to looking at someone, you know, dancing with their ass hanging out. But this is again goes back to like going out and killing the tiger yourself and making sure you're curating what you want around you to sort of up your knowledge. Yeah. And people like Ryan Holiday or Jack Carr will have their sort of favorite books, you know, the reading list for this month. And there are a million ways. And also, there is a feature on Instagram. I don't know how you access this, but it's somehow where you can go to a particular person like Robert Greene,

and there'll be a list of their favorite books, of the books that they recommend. And, you know, but I agree with you completely, Lauren, that you got to take it on yourself. Got to take it on. To educate yourself and expose yourself to these things. But talk about someone like Jack Carr. I mean, what he's done now with his most recent works is nothing short of incredible, right? I mean, the guy, crazy military career now. I mean, all those fiction books that I've...

I know. I see you and it just one of them just got made into a prime show right michael the terminalist yeah michael's dream is a library he's pretty simple a book and me no it's funny people um people ask like all the time they're like who who have your favorite get and we've had all sorts of different characters all different walks up And it's always authors. We're excited that you came on. Yeah, because I feel like I have been, in a way,

I've lived in your head for periods of time. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a scary place to be. Same thing with Robert Green or Ryan Holiday. Like we, I've read the work for so long that I just feel a much closer connection to somebody who's maybe been on a television show, which is,, which is different. I would love to know some daily practices that are micro that you do. I know you write, you said for two to four hours, but what else? Do you meditate? Do

you have a cup of black coffee? What are little things that you do that really are habitual throughout your day and routine? Before I answer that, let me just go back to one thing we were talking about a little while ago, Michael, earlier about where you were talking about how fiction was a great thing to read. Let me add to that. Also for me, autobiographies are, I love, you know, a story of some general that did this or some woman that was a suffragette or whatever. A memoir? Because it's true. Like government cheese?

A memoir. Or because it's true. And a lot of those stories, you really learn. That's where you really learn great stuff, you know? I'm a big autobiography, biography person, but Michael says I need to branch out more. Well, that's probably true too, but autobiographies are great. You know, that's basically a lot of what I read is stuff like that. What are some of your favorites right now off the top of your head? I did, I wrote a book a while ago called Killing Rommel and it

was about the early special forces in World War II. And I read a whole bunch of biographies of these guys, the SAS guys, the original guys in the desert in North Africa. And they were like, you or me, or a man in the street writing a book. Regular guys. You know, just regular guys. They just told their stories. But they were just absolutely fascinating. And any sort of, there's a guy named General Slim, General William Slim.

I don't know if you've ever heard of him. We wrote a wonderful book called Defeat and the Victory about the war against the Japanese in Burma. Sounds obscure, but it was this guy that was going from getting their asses kicked to winning this and how he did it. What was your question? Oh, you were talking about. But he's going to go when you leave. He's going to immediately go on Amazon. I know him so well.

I got a couple. Before you go, I'm going to ask you two more daily practices that you do little tiny ones that are part of your routine. It could be before bedtime in the morning. How do you set your day up with little tiny habits? Okay. It's a really good question. I mean, the big one for me is that I go to the gym really early in the morning. What's really early? We're up at three o'clock. Wow. What? Three o'clock? That's when I roll out of bed and I get to the gym by five. When do you go to bed? 7.30, something like that. Okay. That's a little better. Yeah, I can't do. I love being in bed by 7.30. Like New Year's Eve, we were out cold by eight o'clock.

So was I. We got the two kids. Okay. So you're up at three, you're in the gym. But that's a really big thing for me because it's sort of a rehearsal for dealing with resistance, dealing with the resistance I'm going to deal with when I sit down at the keyboard. Because the gym for me, it's like something I don't want to do. It's something I'm afraid of. And it's something that hurts, you know? So if I can sort of start my day, which I hate when I get there, I hate it. But by the time I'm done, I feel like, okay, nothing I'm going to do for the rest of the day is harder than what I just did, you know? And I've really got some momentum going.

And so that's a big sort of practice for me. That's kind of the central practice for me. Try to do the work as early as I can. I mean, the writing work and then do the other stuff later. Government cheese. You guys go buy the book. Michael and I are such fans of Steven Pressfield. He is incredible.

While you're on Amazon, also definitely get The War of Art. Nobody wants to read your shit. The artist's journey. Put your ass where your heart wants to be. Turning pro. He has so many good books. And I feel like this audience, they'll all resonate.

We were very excited to have you on. You can come back anytime you want. I'm sure you'll have another book coming soon. I'm sure I will. Thanks for having me, Lauren. me i have highlighted bookmarked instagrammed your book for so long so it's so cool to have you on all right it was really cool did you have something else that you wanted to say michael he always does no i wrap this up so when you for personal reading pleasure when you i mean you just obviously talk about autobiography, but are there specific authors or works that you kind of lean into at this point in your career? Are there things that, you know, are authors you can recommend? a lot of stuff. Whatever I'm writing about, I'll do a lot of research. Like I'm writing something now that has to do with Spain. So I'm reading all kinds of stuff about Spain and Spanish and

that kind of thing. And which is like, I always say, because a bunch of my books have been about ancient Greece and people sort of think of me as like a classical scholar, but it's not true. It's like I drill down in this one little tiny area. I don't know anything about the other stuff around it, but in one little area, I'll read like everything. So do you just find, so say you're writing about Spain, did you just happen to get interested in some period or some place in Spain and say, okay, I got to write a story. And now for that story, I have to read everything about what happened there. How does that work? Ah, that's a good question. It's actually, it was a secondary thing, Spain. It was the story that I'm trying to tell. I want to, I was asking myself the fool's gap method, where is this set? Where does this take place? You know, what,

what time period and where, and it just sort of happened to be a certain period in Spain. So that's how that kind of fell out. Like if we were doing Game of Thrones, you would have to say, oh, it's an imaginary place with the wall, with Westeros, none of that kind of thing. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. Thanks for having me on here. No worries. Please come back anytime, any book you write. Where can everyone find you if they want to message you? And where can everyone find the book? The books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any of those places. They're not really in bookstores because at least because most of these are self-published or published by our own publishing company, but you can order them through bookstores.

I'm on Instagram just as my name. And I have a website that's just my name, Steven Pressfield. Guys, don't go. We love your feedback as always. Tell us who you want to hear next on the Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast. On my Instagram at Lauren Bostic, we are trying to book your guests that you want to hear on the podcast and we love your feedback. With that, we'll see you on Thursday with such a good episode. You're going to freak. Hope you love this episode with Stephen and definitely go get The War of Art.

It's changed my life.