Mark Bell's Power Project - Lean Into Resistance and Fight The War Of Art - Steven Pressfield || MBPP Ep. 860

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Steven Pressfield, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about pursuing your passion, how to recognize Resistance and how to please The Muses to win The War of Art. Follow Steven on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steven_pressfield/ Purchase our favorite Pressfield Books: The War of Art: https://amzn.to/3FY2Ob5 Turning Pro: https://amzn.to/3C08yjl Pre Order Govt. Cheese, a memoir: https://amzn.to/3Q3JpKj New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWER20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #StevenPressfield #WarofArt #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

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automatically links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. He's got to hit the button over there. The button has been pushed. Is it working today? I think so. Better make sure it works, Doc. I do. Trust me. He's a piece of crap. I don't think I've ever been this nervous to make sure everything works for sure. It's running. It's running. You're going to keep time clocks going. Seeing that it says record. It says record. The red lights are on. Everyone's mic's on. We're good to go. What I like about this is that it says record. It says record. The red lights are on. Everyone's mic's on. We're good to go. What I like about this is that it's the day after Christmas.

Yes. And when I was driving here today, I noticed there wasn't a lot of people on the road. That's nice, yeah. People aren't doing shit today. But we're in here working, right? Yeah. God bless you for doing this, Mark. Yeah, I appreciate you spending your time with us.

I know you got places to be. But I really thought it was important to have you on the show. And I think there's just so many things to dive into. I'm a big fan of trying to follow your interest. And after being somebody that has dabbled in a bunch of different hobbies slash sports over the years, I got myself kind of caught in some interesting spots where I felt like sometimes I was forcing myself. And over time, I learned for myself that it was, things felt better for me if I was a little kinder to myself, if I was a little nicer to myself, if I didn't get on the side of, sometimes you'll hear people say like oh you must really

hate yourself to do that and for me personally I've learned that over time it's just been well if I did it I think it just means that I'm interested in it so when you talk about resistance and stuff I find it really interesting because I've noticed that when that little thing of resistance the second that it pops up for me I just go and do because I'm like I can't have this conversation with myself. I know that this war, this battle is probably not going to go well for me. So I want out of here. And so I'm just going to go do the damn thing that I'm trying to teach myself to do that I'm interested in. You know, I'm really curious in what your whole theory, Mark, about what you mean

by interest, you know, is that would you equate that to your passion? Or like I'm thinking about if you're trying, if you have a kid, they have a son, let's say that's into athletics, and you want to, you sort of are sussing them out. Do they want to be in baseball? They want to be in soccer, water, what You're looking for that interest, right? And then is that what you mean, the one sort of thing that lights them up? Is that your – A hundred percent, yeah. What's the thing that gets you excited?

What's the thing that you, at least on day one, you want to get out of bed for or you feel like it's in your best interest? Maybe it is – maybe you feel like it's in your best interest to be on a better diet, to lose some weight. And so you might say, I don't really want to eat this next meal. This is frustrating, but I think you have to remember what is your, how high is your interest level in this thing? And if you continue to fail, I think rather than beat yourself up over it, I think that you might want to just keep in mind that maybe you're just not that interested in it as you think you are at the moment. So would you say, I'm going to be interviewing you here, that the higher your interest is

in something, interest, your word, the higher the resistance is to it or is it less? I would say there's a lot less friction. There might be some friction in the beginning, but there's a lot less friction. I think how people go about getting past some of those first couple days or weeks where there is friction, I think is highly individual. And that's maybe where we get people saying, like hate myself so much i'm gonna go run run at five in the morning or something like that but i i like your point of bringing up the kid uh you know bringing up you know somebody having a child and trying to expose them to a bunch of different things and to find their interest and i think that's what we should do for ourselves

yeah just keep poking around what is it that you like what is it that you're yeah what does somebody recognize that you're maybe a little bit better at than most like wow i really like what you've written there that was really cool i love that painting that you drew wow holy shit i never saw someone throw a baseball like that before yeah those kinds of things yeah i mean i'm definitely a believer i know you know this that we're not born as blank slates, right? That we come into this life with a history of some kind. I mean, I'm a believer in previous lives and that sort of stuff too. But I believe that you talk about interests.

I think we're born with certain, you know, proclivities or some areas that light us up and other areas don't. areas that light us up and other areas don't. And in many ways, I think our job in this life is to find that, those interests, you know, and focus on them and not try to imagine that we can be anything we want to be. You know, that's, you know, if I understand, Mark, what your definition of interest is, that's how I would translate it. And I really like that you said it's your job, your job to find what is this thing. I'm a believer also that will is a divinity within everybody. The power of will and the sharpening of your sword and making yourself stronger over time.

People will say, holy crap, I can't believe you're able to do that. They're marveled by it. I can't believe that someone was able to do that. We can't believe the amount of work that Joe Rogan can put out. We can't believe the career of Kobe Bryant. Yeah, just what I was thinking of. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. I mean, that's a great thing. I'm really interested in what your sort of philosophy behind what you do. But it's – I think willpower is vastly same thing. And the answer is willpower, right? The answer is you just want to do it and you focus and fucking do it, you know? And – but nobody sort of teaches you that in school I don't think. I think it's almost a negative to have too much of that, right? In some crazy way, which I think is absolutely wrong. I've seen you say that you didn't have a plan B at certain points in your career. I mean, I read that, but when I see that, it's admirable and I

understand it, but I also wonder what if someone doesn't manage to get there? You know what I mean? I get putting all your eggs into that basket and focusing on that, especially if it's something that you're interested in. Right. And maybe if you're interested in enough, you don't perceive all of the stress as much as somebody else who's less interested. Right.

But what are your beliefs on not having a plan B towards that thing? That is your purpose. Your, your, what you believe is your purpose or your interest? Well, I can only speak from my own life, my own experience. And for me, wanting to be a writer actually was – I sort of started off – we can swear on this.

Absolutely. I started fucking up big time. We have a penis pump right behind you. You don't want to take care of it with me when I leave. So I was just sort of trying to dig myself out of a hole, you know, to right my way out of whatever bad situation I was in. right my way out of whatever bad situation I was in. So – but from time to time, I would try to have a plan B.

I would try to sort of go straight, get a real job. Like there are all kinds of writing jobs that you can have. But what I found when I would do that was I was so depressed at the end of the day that I just couldn't stand it. So it wasn't like I said, oh, I don't have a plan B. It was like I tried to have many plan Bs, but it just didn't work. So there was no plan B for me. But I also think that the idea that somebody is going to make it and hit a point and, oh, you've made it, right? You're over the top. I don't know if that's ever true for anybody.

And I think a lot of people, as long as they're pursuing their plan A, even if they're not pursuing it at the Kobe Bryant level, even if they don't get to the – which is all of us, right? That's good. That's still okay. And people find a lot of happiness and a lot of fulfillment in being maybe not at the Kobe Bryant level, but at

least doing their thing. You know, I would bet that everybody that's in this room here right now is in some form of that place, you know? That you're doing what you love, you're pursuing it, you know, as best you can, and you know, what more can you do than that

yeah would would you guys say that like because mark you're talking about interest level you were talking about passion um for me i mean i felt like writing did call to me but i never picked up the phone and then when uh i guess creating content kind of called to me but it wasn't until i started doing photos when that's happened to be when i started reading the war of art. I felt like I needed to do it. Like you said, it was my job, but I felt like it was literally like creating content, creating photos called to me. Would you guys say that's like along the same lines Yeah. It feels like it, probably to you, that writing sort of chose you in some weird way almost. Yeah. It just kept hanging around. It kept circulating and you don't know why.

Yeah, because I certainly wasn't good at it at the start and didn't have success at all for 20 years or something like that. And didn't even like it that much. You didn't like it. No. Of course, it's hard work.

Even for the best people. I don't think anybody says, oh, I love to sit down and write. It's like Gloria Steinem or somebody said, I don't like to write. I like to have written. It's like the gym.

It's like there's tremendous resistance at the start and at the end when you're done, you go, oh, thank God I did that. I feel a million times better. That's exactly what I should have done. But the first 10 minutes or getting into it is tough. So yeah, for years and years, I really didn't even like it. But yet I knew that I had to do it. So it was like taking photos.

What do you think starts the war? What do you think kind of starts the internal battle? Can you elaborate and say that? Yeah, maybe how has it worked out for you in the past where you started recognizing that there was a war going on, where there was conflict within you. And then you started to maybe surmount some small victories here and there. Well, I certainly like for me, I'll get into some details here even if this may be a little boring. My first attempt at writing, I was working in an ad agency in New York and I had a boss who was kind of a star and he wrote a novel and it was a hit. And he quit and he became like a star. And I thought, well, shit, I'll do that too.

What could be so – so I sort of got into this world as a real dumbass. It's like why would you – I had no more business doing that than trying to fly to the moon or something like that. So that – I found that I was getting my ass kicked by resistance for running away from it, running away from writing, doing a million other jobs, et cetera, et cetera, for maybe six or seven years. And just before I finally sort of, it finally dawned on me that there's a force out there, a negative force that's been beating me up all this time, you know, that it isn't just me. I'm not just a loser and an idiot. There is an actual force, you know, that radiates off the – for a writer, off of the keypad, you know, that radiates as a negative force trying to stop you from doing that thing. Same thing as a gym. You know,

I've read that David Goggins sometimes will stare at his running shoes for 20 minutes before he finally says, OK, I'm ready to go. So we all know that negative force. So for me, just finally giving a name to it, calling it Resistance like in the War of Art with a capital R, that was a tremendous breakthrough for me. Now, I still did not, quote-unquote, unquote, succeed, quote unquote, for like another 30 years. But at least at that point, I was able to sit down and do the work, you know, even though it was lousy, even though I wasn't getting anywhere. So giving it that, giving it a name, that was a huge breakthrough for me. And just saying that they're, the playing field is not level. It isn't easy to do anything right there's a you know it isn't just that it's hard to lift weights it's hard to even get into the gym

to lift weights um some people believe that thinking and thought begins when there's conflict uh-huh um have you ever found it useful to like just not think or to think a lot less? You know, you just said that a few minutes before. I agree completely, Mark. To me, the only answer to any of this stuff is action. You know, the more you think about it, the more you screw yourself up. And the more you think about it, the more paralyzed you become, right? So the only thing is just do it.

Just stop thinking and do it, whatever it is. That's my answer to everything is action. I found it really useful when I was doing a bodybuilding show years ago just to wake up really early and do cardio first thing in the morning. And I would say that I'd be 15 minutes into the cardio where I'm finally awake and like almost conscious of the decision that I made. And then at that point, I was like, yeah, this kind of sucks, but I was already in it. Uh-huh. Are you guys at all familiar with, uh, Yogananda Paramahansa Yogananda? Who's a, he was like a great kind of guy that came over from India. He died like in 1954 or something like that. So he's not like one of these hip – but his thing was when you – as soon as you

open your eyes, he says in bed, wake up in the morning, he says, get up. Get out of bed. Do not lie there thinking. He says nothing good ever came from that. And I'm absolutely – nothing good ever does come from that, right? I don't care what you're thinking. You're never – at least for me, I'm never thinking anything positive. The more I sit there and think, the more I'll go down a rabbit hole.

So he would say just get up and start doing stuff and I think it works. It's pretty funny because like we have a sweatshirt that says think less. Whenever I've like – whenever I've seen comments of people like, look at that, they're like, you guys are dummies. Why would you, why would you think less? Why can't you just, you'd want to think more about things, but exactly right. It's, it's, it's more about taking action. But the thing I'm kind of stuck on right now that I've been thinking about as you've been talking is you saying that you didn't like writing because I can, like you've written so many books, right? You knew it was what you wanted to do.

But I guess when I thought of anything that I wanted to do, there's aspects of it that may have actually been difficult to do. But there's part of me that really did still like the process of it, right? So when you say that you didn't like writing, what do you mean? that you didn't like writing. What do you mean? Just that it's so hard, you know, just to write a single declarative sentence that you like, to write a paragraph that you like.

It's really hard. And it's not to say that I hated every minute of it because at the end of the day, if I had achieved something, you know, if I'd got, you know, half a page or something that I liked, then I could say, OK. I felt like, OK, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. But certainly over time, I did get to like it. As I started to get better and actually have an understanding of – like the gym, like when you learn how to do whatever you're trying to do, right? You start to get a little better. You see some success and you can actually look at your day's work and go,

well, it wasn't a total waste. You know, I did roll the P a little bit. So then – and now I do enjoy it once I'm into it. But it's never not hard. Never not hard. But to follow up on thinking, and I just was thinking of this as we were talking. Even in an activity like writing that you think is a cerebral activity, I don't think it's smart to think there either. You know?

It's just sort of get into it and get into it, you know, the story, whatever it is that you're doing, and don't analyze anything. Don't think. Don't get in your own way. So I think think less is a great motto for any of us in any field. You know, one interesting thing, though, about the think less thing, on the physical side of things, for example, when it comes to something like martial arts or jujitsu, when you're able to get to a point of proficiency where you can now do things without thinking, that's when things get dangerous. That's when like you can actually, your body just does what it's supposed to do. Dangerous in a good way. In a good way, in a good way, not dangerous in a bad way, dangerous in a good way because your

body's just now doing what it knows how to do and you're just acting, you're acting. You're not thinking of your next move. You're just doing it. But when you're caught in the trap of like thinking of the next thing you're going to do or thinking about what your opponent is doing, you slow down. And that actually causes – it causes a level of friction that gives your opponent an opening to figure something out on you because you've paused. You slow down because you're starting to think. Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. Yeah.

Do you think some of this resistance is important, like in our decision-making skills? Do you think maybe it's not great for, you know, trying to lose weight or have a regimen with the gym or even starting something like writing? But maybe there's protective mechanisms that are in there of like, I don't know if I should do that because that kind of seems kind of dangerous. Or how do I pick or choose this? Do you think that maybe that kind of all comes together in some way? Let's see if I understand what you're saying, Mike. You mean like that sometimes it makes sense not to go real hard or not? Or sometimes the voice of resistance is actually speaking the truth? Is that what you mean? Yeah, it's smart sometimes to not go that hard or not or or sometimes the voice of resistance is actually speaking the truth

is that what you mean yeah it's smart sometimes to not go that hard yes sometimes i think that's true but i would say i have a i have a little saying that i tell myself like when i say when in doubt it's resistance when you hear that voice, it's resistance. I mean resistance to me is the voice of the status quo, which can make sense sometimes. Sometimes if there is a method that we're using and it works, maybe it's okay not to do that. But resistance always wants us to stay exactly where we are. Don't go beyond and so if you want to go beyond then you have to ignore that voice um what like so early on um when resistance was beating you up and you weren't having too much success how much like is it ever just that you're not

good at this like whatever particular thing or is it just resistance just being really, really difficult? You know, one of the things that I think is absolutely true, and I'm sure this is in almost all fields, is you can get better, right? You can start off lousy and not able to do something. But if you keep trying, right, you get better. So for me, when I was getting my butt kicked by resistance, basically what I was doing was I was running – completely running away from writing, not doing it at all. I had my typewriter. I never even touched it. And I was just doing other jobs and doing other – and try to – following other kind of imaginary plan Bs. Let me try this.

Let me see if this would work. And so that – so I was believing the voice in my head that's saying, you're no good. You're never going to get anywhere. This was a total mistake. You never should have tried this. total mistake. You never should have tried this. And, you know, finally turning that corner and saying, okay, it is okay to try this. That was what made all the difference for me. So it's a day after Christmas. Do family members sometimes want to turn the other way when they see you coming? Because maybe they didn't act on, they maybe didn't act on this.

I'm totally sloughing off now, you know, I'm eating terrible food and, you know. But I'll get back to it as soon as I get home and start to it, yeah. But no, family members understand. Are people sometimes concerned they maybe told you of like their hopes and dreams or something and they didn't act on it? They sometimes feel compelled

to like dump a bunch of stuff on you probably. It's true, yeah, yeah. Which doesn't feel good to me i feel bad you know i don't want to make people you know you're just self-reproach and you're expressing things that worked for you yeah and hopefully i don't say it unless somebody asks me you know right i'm not going around telling everybody anything when did you kind of realize that unless i'm wrong about this that you wouldn't retire retire. Um, because, uh, there's, there's something in your book where you were talking to somebody and they said, it's a habit.

It's not a habit. It's life. And then you also, that was TR actually. That was TR. Here we go. Um, and then you just mentioned that, um, you, you said something like, I don't know, you mentioned some aspect of you're not, you wouldn't be stopping writing. You know what I mean? So a lot of people, when they do get into careers or they start something, there's an end date. There's, there's a time, okay, I'm going to stop this at this time. But for you, it seems like you're not really going to stop writing or. No, they're going to take me out first, you know? Right. Was that always the intention that you just keep doing it? Uh,, for years, like I was saying, I was just trying to right my way out of a bad place, you know, to get over the hump.

But once I did sort of get some traction and got going, I realized I'm not going to stop this. There's no way to stop this. Like, are you guys going to stop? You're not going to stop until your body completely breaks in half. And even then, you'll coach, right? You know? Yeah, there's no going to stop until your body completely breaks in half. And even then you'll coach, right? Yeah, there's no way to stop. To me it's sort of like if you're swimming in the middle of the ocean,

what are you going to do, right? You've got to keep swimming. What are your thoughts on like writer's block? There is no such thing. Because even just having writer's block, you could just write about that, right? But no, I mean, again, it's sort of action action the answer to that is just to sit down and do it you know i'm knocking on wood as i say this you know uh yeah i don't think there's it's willpower again i think you know that you can always kind of jump start yourself maybe not in one day but you know

yeah i think i mean is there such a thing as power lifters block yeah right yeah you don't hear in other fields right yeah is it is it just like the sum of other things like maybe you're you didn't sleep last night so now you can't think straight it's resistance it's people it's giving into resistance of course resistance is there every day saying don't do it don't do it you're not good enough. You're a loser. Let's go to the beach. So the only answer to that is to do it. Just power through. Have you found that resistance in your life ends up being assistance when you're able to kind of cut through it?

Well, I don't know about being assistance. But I do think there's like like there's the opposite force to resistance you know it's an equal and opposite force and that is in what i call the muse it's the force of inspiration it's uh you know um uh you know one analogy that i i use sometimes is like uh if you imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow and the tree is the dream that you have, whatever it is. As soon as that tree appears, a shadow appears, right? The shadow of the tree is there. So the shadow is resistance. So the bigger the dream, whatever it is, a book you want to write, a business you want to start, something like that, the more resistance you'll feel to it.

But the dream always comes first. And so that dream is the opposite of resistance. It's assistance or whatever. That dream is living in you like a baby is in a pregnant woman, right? And we all have them, right? Like a baby is in a pregnant woman, right? And we all have them, right? We're all constantly, I believe, having dreams and aspirations and ambitions and so on and so forth.

So the trick, I think, if there is a trick, is to believe in that tree, believe in that dream and dismiss the voice that says you can't live that dream and remembering that it's just the shadow and as soon as you take action the shadow goes away i like to kind of personally lean into resistance a bit you know just like we would in the gym yeah like okay i feel okay i'm fine like that first set was good that warm-up felt good you can go a little heavier you can do a couple extra reps and kind of lean into the assistance now sometimes it makes sense to uh say well you're just not feeling it today and some that could be fake that makes sense that could be it could be resistance but it could also just be yeah you literally like have been going at it for a couple days in a row pretty hard yeah i found that to be something beneficial as i get through some of those things, I'll end up

being a little stronger or end up with some of the results I was looking forward to. But also like with resistance, just understanding that it exists is a superpower in my opinion, because it's like, okay, am I really unable to do X, Y, and Z? Or is that resistance just being a little bitch to me today? It's like, I'm not going to answer that side of that call, right? So then I'm just going to understand it, recognize it, and then go ahead and keep following that dream. I think that's exactly true. I mean, the biggest breakthrough for me was just realizing that there was a force. Once you understand that, then you can get around it. Then you can dismiss it, then you can overpower it, then you can use whatever trick you use to – which I think are all forms of action, all forms of stop thinking and start doing whatever it is that you're going to do.

Yeah. Can you get into like appeasing the muse? Because there's been a couple of instances recently. Appeasing, did you say? Yeah, appeasing the muse. did you say? Yeah, appeasing the muse. Because lately, I've just been saying yes to a lot more things, even though whether I get sick or I feel banged up, I will still show up at jujitsu, or I'll still show up to coach other people. And something good always ends up happening. So I'm putting myself where I really want to be. And also, I feel like I'm pleasing the muse a

little bit here. So can you get into detail about explaining what that means for a lot of people that maybe haven't read War of Art? Well, I certainly agree with that completely. I'll give it kind of a longer, a long-winded thing about this. The Muses were goddesses, Greek goddesses, nine sisters who were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne meaning memory. And the muse's job was to inspire artists. And there was a muse of music, a muse of dance, a muse of whatever, you know, nine sisters. So that was just sort of the way the Greeks looked at things.

They loved to kind of personify things, put a human face on things and imagine like the classic visualization of the muse would be somebody like Beethoven at the piano. And there would be a sort of a goddess-like figure whispering in his ear. But I'm absolutely a believer in that, that there is a constant, almost like a trade wind of ideas coming into all of us, right? And we never go wrong when we listen to those, when we show up for the muse. And I also feel – I kind of anthropomorphize this thing too. I sort of think of the muse a little bit like Santa Claus, that she's flying overhead and she knows if you're naughty or nice, right? And so she's looking down. And again, this applies to all forms of athletics, I think, too.

You know, the goddess is looking down and she can look right into your soul and know, is this person showing up for the work today or not? And if you are showing up for the work today, she will give you a gift. You know, in terms of creative arts, it'll be an idea. You know, you're working on some scene and you can't quite get it and then suddenly you got it right and it an idea comes from nowhere you know or in athletics it's some sort of a you know you just make a little breakthrough in something right a different feeling or a different sense of your own power or something and to, that's coming not from us, but from some other dimension or our soul

or our, you know. So if people ask me what my job is, I say I'm a servant of the muse. And whatever she tells me to do, I do. And like in terms of books, you know, I'll have I'll write one book and then I wonder, well, what's the next one? And I sort of am silently asking the goddess, tell me what the next one is. And I'm looking at as ideas come in. I'm going, is that the one? Is that the one? Is that the one? Is that the one? And then when I find it, then I sort of commit myself to that one. And then when I find it, then I sort of commit myself to that one so that over a career, it's like Bruce Springsteen's albums, you know, album, album, album, album, album, album, right? He moves from one to another to another. But in all of those, he's kind of serving his goddess, right?

And if you look at his career back and you go down one album after another, you see there's a real theme to it, you know, and that nobody else could have done those. They're all very Springsteenian, right? And in a way, you know, that's, we're talking about what your job is, Mark, you know, that's your job, I think, on this life, to connect to whatever that force is, that unseen force, that positive force, and give yourself over to it, you know, surrender to it. And the voice of resistance is constantly trying to talk you out of that. You know, it's always negative. It's always seductive. It's always trying to pull you away from that area. So you're sort of, it's a great skill, I think, to dismiss that voice. And nobody teaches you that in school, right?

Nobody teaches you that there's a good voice and a bad voice and listen to the good voice and dismiss the bad voice. Teach it at home. Fuck school. Do you think it's important to – I guess I should say it's important that people ask questions because you're talking about asking the muse. Like you're not going to get answers. You're not going to get – no one's going to open the door unless you're knocking. So you need to be pursuing these things. You find that the muse is like more friendly to you if you're doing the right things.

Yes. But the muse is also a little mysterious. It doesn't send you a telegram that has it all spelled out. So you have to ask the questions. I'm just reading – you know who Rick Rubin is? Yeah, of course. act you have oh my god i had it i mean i've got it in a manuscript but i think it comes out like in a few days or a week or something like that so rick rubin for any of us who don't know is a music producer who's done a milli sort of like the godfather of of hip-hop right he's worked with ll cool j the beastie boys and you and on and on, right? And basically he facilitates their creativity, right? He has a studio called Shangri-La and he'll bring a group in to produce an album.

And maybe they've only got a couple of songs or maybe they don't have any songs at all. And he'll just sort of set the – he always walks around barefoot. He has a beard. He's like kind of a crazy hippie-looking guy. But he to me is sort of like a guy who's constantly saying, believe in the muse. Believe in the muse. He's like a handmaiden for the muse or an assistant. Anyway, in his book, what I call the muse, he calls Source with a capital S, Source, as if it was a radio station or something that was beaming positive frequencies to you. And his – my definition is smaller than his.

I see it as kind of a narrow thing. But he believes it's like everywhere and everybody gets it and it's constantly coming in, these ideas and signals from the cosmic radio station. So he's just such a believer and such a positive influence that I think these – the bands that come in to work with him who maybe are self-conscious or a little afraid or afraid of going to the next level or something. He's so positive that they just finally surrender to his positive energy and then they do find the courage to take a chance. This song that they thought might be a little too crazy, maybe we shouldn't really go – let's

go for it. Go for it. Yeah. So – but I love his idea of source with a capital S as this constant stream of positive ideas coming through. You know, one thing that I was really curious about and it's kind of – I find it kind of sad. But as I was going through your book, there's this idea – in Turning Pro, there's this idea of like losing friends as you go deeper and deeper into what you're doing. And we've talked about it on the show where you do want to surround yourself with like if you're trying to get better in terms of your health and your fitness, you want to maybe assess the people that are around you because maybe they're feeding into the bad habits that are keeping you where you are. Right. But even as you're going towards something else professionally, I was curious for you, do you still have a lot of your friends from

like maybe childhood, your twenties, your thirties, or have you managed to keep any of those? Because what I've like, what I've found is over the years, I've had friends that I've had for a long time, but most, many of those friends are somewhat gone at this point, you know, and it's, it's unfortunate, but it seems as if it's almost necessary, you know? So I was curious for you, since you've probably known a lot of people through your life, what have you found with your friendships? I still have a lot of my old friends, although they're in different parts of the country, so I don't really see them very often. Yeah.

But I also have, as I've gone along, made new friends like T.R. T.R. Goodman, my wonderful trainer and friend and guru, is like a classic thing of new friends that you make that are really positive toward you. And I do think that sometimes there are – once you commit to an ambitious course, right, to going better for yourself, you do have to – there will be people that will try to bring you down. That you're – and the reason for that and this is in The War of Art as you know and Seema is that when you make the decision to go on a positive source for yourself, if they – they have a dream too. And if they're not acting on it, they look at you acting on it, on your dream and it's

a reproach to them. And it's like they say to themselves, well, if Encima can do it, why can't I do it? And so the natural thing is to try to drag you down, try to talk you out. And those people, unfortunately, you do have to distance yourself from them. Otherwise, you're never going to get anywhere. You think people are tormented by their dreams um yes i had my oldest brother um he wanted to be great more than anything and it basically killed him um he had a hard time i guess you could say of like being good and being consistent for a long time like maybe he didn't have a good understanding

of like what it took to end up being great. And then there's not really a destination of being great. There's not a destination, as you mentioned earlier, of like making it either. Right. So what are kind of your thoughts on that? Like, can it, I mean, do you think it really can haunt people? Definitely. I mean, I think that when we, if we believe in source and we have – and we believe in interests and we have some sort of a calling that is pulling us as a dream, if we don't enact that, if we don't try to follow that dream, it doesn't just go away. It turns inward in a negative way. It becomes,

I can't think of the word right now, but it becomes malignant. So dreams are definitely something that can kill us if we don't pursue them. Now, just to – on the subject of making it for a second, there's – as if you finally reach some point and you're over the hump and you've made it. I don't think that's true at all and I'm sure you guys believe this with me. It's like there's a concept in yoga or in martial arts or in everything, the concept of a practice, right? Or a power lifting practice, right? the concept of a practice, right, or a powerlifting practice, right,

where it's a thing you do every day and you're going to do it until the day they carry out in a pine box, right? And what's – it's not the goal. It's the practice, right, that each day if you have a yoga practice, know you go in you to the dojo you know whatever it is and you you enter that sacred space you leave your problems outside you leave the shitty half of yourself outside and you commit to that thing and each day you try to get a little bit better a little bit better a little bit better and even if you can't get a little bit better you're trying every day and again again, when I say sacred space, I'm bringing in the goddess again, you know, that she's looking down on you and wondering and seeing

into you how hard you're trying, how your commitment is, you know, and blessing you as you, right? When you come out of the gym, you feel good, right? You know the bad vibes are gone, right? They're going to come back. They're going to be back again tomorrow morning. But for now, you've kind of exercised them and gotten rid of them. So again, I don't think it's about like making it. It's about a practice that you kind of keep doing your whole life. that you kind of keep doing your whole life.

And it's always great to see like these, they're usually either Chinese or Japanese or Filipino, or somehow they're over there where it's more, where they're more into like martial arts practices and things like that. And you see these guys that are 85 years old or 90 years old doing their thing, and it's just absolutely amazing, right? Yes.

That what they can do. Power Project family, how's it going? I want to talk to you guys about Within You Supplements, which is developed by Mark Bell. The cool thing about Within You is that it's not a crazy supplement line, just has a crazy amount of unnecessary supplements. They stick to what is necessary.

Whey protein, electrolytes, and the electrolytes are dope because they have amino acids and they have zinc. Then there's fasting gum. So we talk a lot about intermittent fasting on the podcast and this fasting gum has apigenin, rudin, and caffeine, which can actually help you prolong a fast. It's really freaking cool. It was developed by Mark and Joel Green, who we've had on the podcast multiple times. So you guys got to check it out. Andrew,

how can they get it? Yes, that's over at markbellslingshot.com and at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT10 to save 10% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Do you think it's important to be able to identify yourself as a loser? I think that's like maybe really hard for somebody to do. But you mentioned that about yourself, talking about yourself in the past. I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean by identifying yourself as a loser. Could you be elaborating a little bit on that, Mark? You mentioned being at kind of a low point,

and you were at a low point, low point, low point, and going lower, lower, lower. And then somebody was asking you if you would go on this ranch with them and if you would be a cowboy with them, and you were just like, fuck. Like, this is not me. Like, what am I kind of, what am I doing type of thing? And I think that you picked yourself up by your bootstraps at that point, but you had some sort of realization or some sort of identification that that was maybe not a loser, but that was not what you wanted to do. That was not in pursuit of your dreams.

Yeah. I certainly felt like I was on a path for a long time that was not my right path. So in that sense, I definitely did think of myself as a loser. And I hate that word. It's not exactly the right word. It's just you're in the wilderness and you haven't quite found your right direction, your north star. And you're kind of bumbling and stumbling. Yeah, maybe you were lost for a period of time.

That's normal. Yeah, absolutely. And certainly for me, I was completely aware of it 24 hours a day every second and wanting not to be in that place, which is, again, it's kind of willpower, right? But for all of us, if that abyss is there every day, right? We can go down that hole every day I think. Just like somebody who has a drinking problem can always pick up a drink, right? The temptation is always there to sort of yield to that instant gratification or whatever it is.

And that's our dark side, right? That's the side that yields to resistance. But resistance never goes away. It's always there. Yeah. Your mention of instant gratification makes me wonder. I don't know if you use social media much or you use your phone, but there are so many things nowadays that kind of just all fall into instant gratification, which sometimes makes it difficult for if an individual's wanting to start something that, like, if you want to start learning how to be a writer, it's going to take a long time.

If you want to start jujitsu, it's going to take a long time. time. And it seems as if it's because of a lot of things that give us instant gratification. Now people are finding it much harder to pursue things that take a long time to become proficient at. And I was curious since you've been doing so much for so long, have you found yourself getting caught in those traps at all of like, this isn't happening fast enough for me. I'm not getting this fast enough. Do you ever fall into those traps anymore or are you just – I don't because it took me so long to even get to the starting line. So – but you're absolutely right and this instant gratification stuff that's out there is all about money, right? It's all about them trying to suck you into all these little businesses that are trying to suck you into whatever it is. But if there ever was any sort of a guiding principle for what we're trying to do, it's when you see instant gratification, a temptation for that, go the absolute opposite way.

There can be nothing worse than instant gratification, you know? Yeah. And the idea of being able to defer gratification to say, you know, if we want to be a brain surgeon or a concert pianist, we say to ourselves, well, shit, that's going to take – I got 14 years of schooling or I have, you know, 20 years of sitting at the piano doing scales all day. That's reality. Yes. of sitting at the piano doing scales all day. That's reality.

And anybody that's trying to convince you or you ourselves are trying to convince ourselves that there's a shortcut, that's wrong. That's bad. I think delayed gratification is kind of where it's at. Yes. And then also it's going to be kind of fed to you like over a really long period of time. And then also it's going to be kind of fed to you like over a really long period of time. So in writing your book, The War of Art, which probably took you how many years to kind of get to that point where you – I know you wrote the book quickly. But how long did it – It took whatever, 10 years of thinking about it, right?

Right, 10 years and many other books that people maybe weren't nearly as popular, right? Yeah. maybe weren't nearly as popular, right? Yeah. And then you come out with this kind of a banger of an idea, but the idea hits and it's not like you're celebrating all the time just because sales might be good or whatever, but you have people constantly telling you their interaction with the book, how it changed their life.

And sometimes you might start to get used to that, but most of the time probably makes you feel amazing. Actually, it really doesn't. This is sort of, you know, it's a reality that... It really doesn't make you feel amazing. No, it doesn't. I mean, I really, it sounds kind of weird to say that. It is gratifying, but if you're, like we were talking about Bruce Springsteen's albums

or books that I might write, you write one. The next one is your focus and what you did before is in the past. So I'm always focused on whatever is right in front of me and also in writing a book like The War of Art, I'm really writing it for myself in all honesty. It's not like I said to myself, oh, I really want to help people. I want, you know, I just really want to understand this, the idea, that idea myself. And there's no better way to try to understand something than to have to write it out, you know, then, but yeah. So it's always for me, whatever the next thing is, whatever the next album is or whatever. So when people come up to you and they tell you how excited they are about the book Help Them, you say, hey, I'm already on to the next one.

It's true. I mean I don't want to be – I don't want to blow anything off. I really appreciate it and I'm happy for everybody. But for me, it's on to the next thing. I like that. I'm curious. The war of art is a first off yeah the war of art is a book that i've read a few times now but you haven't written so many books and i don't know what you were inspired by but are there any books that you turn back to and have read multiple times that have kind of informed the way you think about certain things uh Yeah, there are.

There are quite a few, but they're actually not in that area. Oh, yeah. You know, they're in whole other areas. You know, I have certain novels that I love. You know, The Movie Goer by Walker Percy or The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway. But also I love The Ancient Greeks. You know, I'm a big fan of those books. And they're like books that nobody would ever read.

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War to me is like a fantastic book. But funny, they're not in that area. It's not like, oh, I've read a bunch of other things there. What I'm wondering is for some of those books, maybe from the ancient Greeks, as you mentioned the muse, you've mentioned a few things in your books, there seems to be somewhat of a supernatural element to a lot of this stuff. And I'm curious, does that element, I know it probably comes from so many things that it's hard to, you know, come to one thing, but does it come from reading books from like the ancient Greeks

and historical texts like that? Yes. Yeah. And other things. And, you know, Eastern religions, Buddhism and stuff like that, you know, and, you know, Musashi Miyamoto and martial arts kind of things. Because they're all different disciplines, different cultures, different centuries, but

it's all about the same sort of thing, which is what we're talking about here, right? A practice, a kind of a dedication, and that there are higher levels of reality that we're trying to aspire to and be true to. Yeah, so yeah, definitely. Tons of books in that area. Does writing help you a lot with – or does reading help you a lot with writing? Yeah, definitely. If you're a musician, you want to listen to other musicians

and what they did. Even if you're not really studying it in the sense of, oh, this is a technique that they use, I think it just goes into you by osmosis or something. And definitely, you know, it helps. It all helps.

Does the muse recognize that as you still kind of reaching for answers? Yes, she approves of that. She does not mind you reading. Okay, well, because what I was really getting at was because, like, right now I want to get back on the mats and roll jiu-jitsu, but I can't because my ribs and my back are kind of jacked up. So I've been reading and I've been watching a lot of stuff, but I'm like, hey, Muse, I'm still interested in this. I still want to get better, but I currently can't do the thing.

So even though I'm still surrounding myself with it, she still appreciates that. I think the Muse does appreciate that. Okay, good. Although I was reading something. Do you know who Elizabeth Gilbert is? I do not. She's a writer.

She wrote Eat, Pray, Love. I've heard of the book. And Big Magic. And she's done a – she has a TED Talk that has like 20 million views. She's a big believer in the muse and in other sort of – and she tells a story about – see if I can get this right. story about see if i can get this right she she started on a project a writing project and somehow it stalled and she went away and started doing a few other things and when she went back to it she found that the energy was sort of dead on this project so she had happened to make friends with another woman writer whose name I forget, another really good writer.

And she went and visited her for a few days wherever they lived. And somehow when they said goodbye, they kissed. And sure enough, this other woman writer came by her own way to that same idea that Elizabeth Gilbert had dropped. And she didn't even know that Elizabeth Gilbert had done it. She wrote a book that won a Pulitzer Prize or something like that. So you take that for what it's worth. That maybe the muse said, okay, you've left me too far long. I'm going to give up on you.

I'm going to go to somebody else. But I actually don't believe that. I think when she comes with an idea or with a thought, it's for you only. And I think she understands if your back is tweaked and you can't get at it right now. What do you have going on workout-wise? I've known your trainer for quite some time. What does TR have you working on? Well, you know the way TR's kind of –

actually, TR's now focusing more on longevity than he is. I know like when you guys were – really knew each other, he was training pro hockey players. A lot of hockey, yeah. And a lot of it was about getting ready for the season and getting in shape. And he had this thing called the circuit, which I know you know about that was like – it was just really to get you getting in shape. And he had this thing called the circuit, which I know you know about that was like,

it was just really to get you an amazing shape, a professional shape to do a season, you know, but now I think he's more with like regular people like me that, and longevity is a big thing now for TR. So, you know, everything that he does is all kind of supersets.

If you're doing one thing that's a pushing exercise, the next thing you're doing is the opposite of that. And a lot of it is about doing it fast. You know with TR, you never talk. There's no socializing. Not a lot of rest. There's no hanging around shooting the shit. But I think he's really boiling it down for somebody like me just for the basic stuff that – and the other thing that two days a week that we do is just hip rotators or shoulder rotators. The little muscles in there that – when you injure yourself, that's where you injure yourself, on those little muscles. So it's for a lot of what he's doing now.

But he trains women. He does all kinds of stuff. But it's basically a long-term fitness and that kind of thing, rather than professional athletes getting ready for the season. You like it a lot? Like what do you feel like it's doing?

I do. From a mental standpoint, you feel like it's doing some stuff for you there too? Yeah, absolutely. I mean TR is like a guru to me. And it's hard to get out of bed early in the morning. There's a lot of resistance for that. But like I say to him, I started working with him like nine or ten years ago. Yeah.

And I was 70 at that point. I'm 79 now. And I was definitely in a downward, you know, psychological thing of like every day you're getting older. Every day you're getting weaker. Every day, you know, you're getting closer to the grave, you know. And TR totally turned that around for me, you know, where it's all about, you know you're getting closer to the grave you know and tr totally turned that around for me you know where it's all about you know getting younger and that kind of concept you know yeah so you know he's he's really saved my life in more ways than one 31 years old eggs and

liver i so what what made you want to do that? When you mentioned that in Turning Prior, I read that. I was like, wait, what? He was eating eggs and liver? This was when I was having failed on my first book and blowing up my life and spending like six or seven years in that sort of state of shame. And I finally kind of saved enough money to rent a house to where I was going to work for a year just to finish a book. Actually, I wound up spending two years there and the amount of money that I saved to last for two years was $2,700 by the way.

This was back in the day. $2,700 for two years. But yeah, what I used to do is every Monday I would go into the Bank of America, cash a check for $25 and I would live for a week on that. This was in the 70s. But in any event, I thought to myself – I was just kind of by myself in this little house. I didn't have any girlfriend, didn't have anything like that. Just to read and write was all I was going to do. And I said to myself, I'm going to power through this no matter – for my breakfast, I'm having liver and five eggs because I need the power to do this.

Yeah. And so that was the whole – that was the concept. Like bacon was too weak for me or anything like that. And so – You were able to follow it for a while? Yeah. Yeah. I did for – yeah, the whole – that was the concept. Like bacon was too weak for me or anything like that. And so – You were able to follow it for a while? Yeah. Yeah. I did for – yeah, the whole way.

Yeah. Damn. He was on to this before any of us. That's the interesting thing about that for anybody. Like so I did finish that book. Like you would think, okay, a triumph, right? Couldn't sell it. Couldn't sell the next one.

It was another like 20-something years before I actually started to make any money even though at that point, I really had broken through. I mean I really was a writer. I was a professional writer. I was working my ass off. I was focused but success, quote-unquote, was still a long, long way off after that. So I think that's one of the sort of lessons of my – this book that I've – that's the newest one. It's called Government Cheese. It's a kind of a memoir about that time in my life.

And one of the things that I realized writing about that was you think when you achieve some kind of breakthrough, physical or mental, oh, my life's going to change. But it doesn't. It's maybe another 10 years or 20 years before it manifests in a material sense. But you can feel that it has changed internally, right? You know I'm a different person. I've gone to another level. right you know i'm a different person i've gone to another level um even if nobody knows it and you know and i can't prove it by any material um success or external validation yeah no external

validation once you start making some money then you're like yay i get to be out of debt so you get to be just like for me like the idea of making money is just so i can keep doing my work that's all i care about you know uh did you ever write with the intention of any of the books end up becoming movies like the legend of bagger vance no no what was that like that whole ordeal uh in in what in what sense what was it like seeing your writing come to life on a movie theater? In that case, I actually had been a screenwriter for about 10 years before that. So I'd had screenplays produced. And the big thing in my opinion is every time you see a movie that you wrote or it's participated in you hate it

you know and it's always like zero creative satisfaction i don't know why maybe it's because in the movie business the writer is like the bottom person on the totem pole a lot of times the writer gets fired and replaced by other writers and another and another. And by the time a movie actually gets to the screen, it's completely different from what you thought it was. I remember this is just a little silly story. I had been working as a screenwriter for maybe four or five years and trying to get a handle on what it was. And my agent sold a script, somebody else's script for a million bucks, which was a lot of money in those days.

And I said to him, can I see that? I got to see what a million dollar script was. So I read this thing and it was really good. It wasn't the movie Hard Rain, but it was that sort of a story of a storm that came to a town and these criminals were going to loot the town and there was only one sheriff, blah, blah. And it was really good. So – but the script was really good. Then I saw the movie. The movie, they had changed.

This guy had been – the writer had been fired, replaced, replaced, replaced. There was not a single element, replaced, replaced, replaced. There was not a single element including the rain was gone. So that's what happens in the movie business. Everything becomes totally changed. So I got fired immediately. As soon as they optioned the book, they fired – they immediately fired me as a screenwriter. And I would do that too if I were the director because not – I know I'm rambling on here about the movie business. But once a property gets acquired to be made as a movie, it becomes the director's movie.

In the case of Bagger Vance, it was Robert Redford who was a great director. But it became his movie, not mine. So they wanted to get rid of me and he brought in his own writer and then he did his version of what it was. So there's still a lot of people reading because it seems like a lot of people are just like kind of on the internet getting quick information. You know, somehow the book business they say is doing better than it ever has. I don't know if anybody actually reads. They might buy the books. But they buy them, yeah. I don't know. anybody actually reads. They might buy the books. But they buy them, yeah.

I don't know. But I guess people still do read. I don't know anybody that reads other than me. There's the idea you mentioned of pulling the pin in one of your books. And I actually had a question because we've been talking about this idea of like lenience resistance.

Like you didn't have major success for, you said over 30 years, right? Now we may all have somebody in our lives where they're doing something and they maybe have a dream and you, let's say you want to encourage them, but there's something where maybe you just can't see that dream for them and you want to encourage them. But at the same time, you don't want to encourage them to keep beating their head upon a wall that is not going to break. But you, exactly, for you, it was over 30 years. So I'm wondering, number one, there were probably people who were trying to discourage you from

that. And if you did, you wouldn't have all this right now. But how can one navigate that? Like in terms of maybe helping a friend, if you do truly don't think that your friend is going to be able to do that, who knows? They might. But what do you do? Do you just keep encouraging this person? I always encourage people.

You always encourage. I never say anything negative. Okay. Never. Okay. Because when somebody says something negative to me, I know how harmful it can be. Yeah. And who are we to say that somebody's going to succeed or not?

Sometimes that resistance is nice to pivot off of, though. Yeah. That motherfucker told me I was never going to do it. I'm going to show you. That's it. Yeah. And then you go and do it. Yeah, like Tom Brady.

You know, hey, you're number 199, and we picked six other quarterbacks ahead of you, you know? Yep. Tom Brady also famously said they asked him which Super Bowl was his favorite, and he said the next one. Yeah. That was kind of like the books. Yeah. Very similar. So will he still be playing at 55?

Who knows? Yeah, I don't know. You think writing is helping to keep you young? Definitely. I mean, definitely. I do think that it's sort of a secret of artists, architects, musicians, painters that – I mean Picasso, whatever he was, 90, whatever he was, he's still doing great stuff. So I do think – again, it's that flow from source, Rick Rubin's source, that is really the life force. So as long as we're sort of – and in athletics too, right? As long as we're going with that flow, the life energy, that's what – that keeps

you young or young as you can possibly be given the fact that our bodies all break down at some point. Are you actually writing writing or do you do that at all or do you just type on a computer usually? Oh, I just type on a computer. It's so much easier when you can change things. And it saves it and everything. But for years I wrote on a typewriter, a manual typewriter back in the day where if you wanted

a copy, you have to have carbon paper. I don't know if you guys even know what that is. It's been a while. You don't know what carbon paper is? I don't personally know. Oh, wow. This is amazing. I'm really an old guy.

If you want a copy, you'd have like – you put one sheet of paper. Yeah. Then another – it's called carbon paper. Just like – and then another piece of paper on top of that. That's magical. And as the key from the typewriter hits the top page, the carbon paper make, makes the bottom page,

you know, also have the imprint. So you would take out when you're finished with your page, you have two pages and that's how you would copy things. And back in the day. Wow. Yeah. Earlier you mentioned that you,

you kind of talked about past lives. You just kind of glossed over it. But I was kind of curious, what is your belief when it does come to past lives? Now, again, I have no – I can't approve any of this sort of stuff. That's fine. But, you know, if you have three different kids, they're different from the day they pop out of the womb, right? And they already have a personality, right? And they even have issues, right?

They might have health issues. They might have anger issues. You know, they might have certain dreams that they have, right, or interests, right? They're going to be interested, and it's already there, right? So my question is where does that come from? Why wouldn't they just be born – and it's even true with animals, puppies or kittens or something, right? They're all in a litter.

Everyone is different right from the start, right? So I don't know. I find – speaking of interests, a bunch of my books have been set – historical fiction have been set in ancient Greece. Why? Why does that – why do I like that? Why not – some people love to write about the Civil War. Some people love to write about science fiction and invent you know whatever so i don't know where do those interests come from i i don't know yeah but it wouldn't surprise

me if in some crazy way we've lived you know in that in that time i mean uh you know bagger vance the story of the book of bagger vance, which is not the movie, was really about previous lives. And it was about – the premise of it was that we don't go as individuals only through previous lives, but there are other people with us that are with us. We're with us back then and we're with us back – and another one and are with us now and are all still in the same relation. Like one of the persons might be a mentor to the others. And I don't – that was just a story. But I believe it. Of course we can never prove it, but yeah.

I've heard you talk before about how there's a lot of power in the depth of stuff, how deep we go into things. And again, being a big believer in kind of following your interests, that there's going to be a lot of hours, a lot of time spent diving into things. We were just saying how we're not sure if people are reading or how deep they are getting into stuff uh it's kind of my hope that people do find something that sparks them that excites them and gets them motivated that they're interested enough in where they can get the depth that they need but it can be very difficult in today's day and age with internet stuff and instagram tiktok things that are very fast there's only short clips. And so we get a lot of surface-level stuff, and we don't really get the depth that we need a lot of times. Yeah, that's so true.

I mean, in athletics and in everything else, nobody teaches you to work at a deep level of something. It's all these days like instant gratification, be on the surface of things. But I can tell you that, and I'm sure this is true for music or for mathematics. Hour four is different from hour one. You know, it's not the same in powerlifting, I'm sure, becausestein was sitting down hour four hour five hour six he got into it deeper than he did in hour one and i do think that's another if there is a kind of a secret

to anything it's working deep you know in and going deep in athletics and anything else i think that's what she said. I couldn't resist. I've noticed that, you know, I've taken up running recently and you're a hundred percent right. It, once you're in it for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, it's way different than previous. And then even if you extend out, it's like, you might be in the zone, you know, you might be in this weird zone that feels amazing. An hour in another 30 minutes later, you might really be in a place where you're hurting. So it can shift and change. But you learn a lot going through those depths.

Pretty neat. Yeah. I was going to ask, do you work on like meditation or anything like that? You know, I'm not a meditator but i'm certainly a believer in it okay i mean for me i my my one story is that writing is my form of meditation that makes sense because i do think that you you have to go to another place you know you have to go to a you have to get rid of the ego and surrender to whatever it is that you're working on, which again is what we're talking about, depth, right? The deeper – as time goes by, hour one, hour two, hour three, you surrender deeper and deeper.

Is a sober mind the easiest way for you to write or have you ever found like having a drink or something like that helps? No, I'm not from that school. Mushrooms or anything like that? No, I'm not from that school. Mushrooms or anything like that? No, I'm not from that school. You know, I've experimented a little bit back in the day with that sort of stuff. And it's interesting to go where it takes you, you know, to see what it is. But in terms of, you know, doing the actual work at a keyboard, I think sober is the way to be. doing the actual work at a keyboard, I think sober is the way to be.

You've probably heard of the idea of flow and flow type state or whatever. Do you find nowadays, is there anything that any part of the ritual when you get yourself into writing that helps you get into that? Do you get into that every time you sit down and write or? That's a great question. No, I don't get into it every time it's a rare thing it's a rare thing it's a rare thing but uh one thing i'm definitely a believer in and again this comes back to action is i believe like when you sit down at the keyboard start writing minute one second one don't think think, just start. And that helps get into at least a little bit of a flow. But to me, flow is kind of a rare, blessed occasion when it happens.

But it does happen. What's that look like for you? Is it just jibber-jabber? You mean in the beginning? Yeah. Can I start? Yeah. No, because I'm actually – I'm a believer like Hemingway always said to stop on – at the end of the day when you know what's going to happen the next day. So if you're working on a scene, I sort of know.

Oh, OK. The cavalry is going to come over the hill and the fire. So I'll sort of start doing that. But I won't hold myself to is this perfectly beautiful – just get something down there and hope that as you get into the flow of it that it will get – some good things will come back. Because they always say there's no such thing as writing, only rewriting. There's no such thing as writing, only rewriting. And there's a lot of truth to that too, that when you're writing a book, you can count on, for me, maybe 15 drafts. So if you do – the first draft is terrible, right?

And even the fifth draft is still terrible. But the pages don't go away. So you can go back to them and work on it. So when I'm starting something and trying to get something going, I'm not holding myself to any standard of quality. Because then again, I think you start thinking and you start – you get paralyzed. You think sometimes that a flow state can maybe come from like an adversity, almost the way that we've seen Michael Jordan. I do. One particular game where he's sick and everything. Do you feel that way, Mark?

Yeah, I've had days where I haven't felt good or something doesn't feel right. And then I go out and I just say, well, let me see what the hell happens. I think because my expectations aren't high. I also am a big believer that not having expectations is a blessing. So I try not to have hardly any expectations going into anything. I just want to go do something. And if I get it done, then that's cool. And if it ends up being awesome, then that's even better.

But I usually wait until I'm in it. But, yeah, I think – So sometimes your best training days are the days that you didn't – you thought, oh, I'm really fucked in here, right? A hundred percent. Why do you think that is? I found that true in my own same – my low level of training. But why do you think that's true?

I think it just gets rid of the ceiling because you're not even aiming for it at that point. You're just trying to go. And you just start to go and you warm up. And maybe you're a little bit more cautious. Maybe you take your time a little bit more. Maybe there is a little bit more thinking going on in the beginning. But once you kind of get into it, you just start to go for it and you're like, I think I'm feeling good. It is true.

Adversity does, I think, across the board. Yeah. You know, in athletics, in art, in anything. Yeah. It's crazy. Pain seems to be a, I've always said that pain is a mentor, I believe. Ah. You know, it teaches you.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, it teaches you a lot of lessons. And I think our problems do too. You know, our problems are there to teach us where they're there for us to learn from. They're trying to tell us something, but we can't quite figure it out. And we're like, man, how do I get rid of this problem? I can't figure it out. But the answers are probably there.

You probably just need to keep kind of gravitating towards the right thing, which isn't always easy to do. And you do so more and more over time and hopefully the problem dissipates. Yeah, I agree with that. So you were saying that you almost want to stop your writing when you know what the next, we'll say, page is going to look like. So that way you can just get started the next day. But how do you know if you're quitting too early and that know that's more resistance speaking to you instead of that's a good question yeah i'm i'm a believer of quitting too early i i would rather uh like steinbeck had

a thing where he would say always let the the well fill up overnight. Leave something in. And I do think I would rather – oh, I know what he said. He said that to keep pushing at the end of the day – he was talking about writing – is the falsest kind of economy. Because he said let the well fill up overnight. If you work too hard that one day and you drain yourself too much, you're not going to have the juice the next day. So I'm a believer in stopping, you know. I stop when I start making mistakes, when I start having typos. Okay.

That's enough, you know, and I think it's the same. I mean you guys are the experts but the same thing in the gym. You know, if I feel like, like you know i'm like this close to hurting myself i'd better just stop oh yeah yeah a hundred percent yeah no it's it's funny like uh especially with like for example martial arts again we keep coming back to jujitsu with some of this stuff but you know if you train train train train and train and and you don't give yourself like the time to let that stuff kind of cement, you know, you're, you're not going to be able to move forward

because you're just too beat up all the time. Like I found that without wanting this to happen, like there may have been times that I've had to take three days off training for some reason. Right. But because it's in the back of my head, I come back and I'm doing things that I've never done before because it's like my mind in the background was just kind of letting the things that I've worked on seal in and that I can do something new. That's great. I think that's true. It's cool. Let me ask you guys.

What's your thinking about recovery? In general? In training? I mean, are you, do you, do you believe in time off or what's, what's your whole theory behind that? Your workouts are only as good as your recovery from them. So, you know, your input has to be done a particular way. I think that if you just train smart, you don't have to think about the recovery as much. But we have a lot of tools.

Like right now I'm jamming my foot on something because I ran this morning and I've been running for the last 126 days in a row. And we have a cold plunge and we have eight sleep mattress that helps with your sleep, helps with the temperature and stuff like that. So, yeah, we think that's uh recovery is huge that's why we also adhere to a diet is very important how you eat is uh is a huge part of the game how you sleep is obviously a huge part of it so yeah we're big proponents of we think it's important you got to train hard but the only way you're going to be able to really train hard and have good output is if the inputs are good yeah not destroying yourself like it's funny when you mentioned practice, I looked at Andrew and kind of laughed a little bit because there's this guy we had on Bill Maeda who's on the podcast

recently and he doesn't call his workouts workouts. He calls it his practice that he does each day. He'll do what his body can give him. It could be 15 minutes, could be 30 minutes, could be 50 minutes, but he'll do that practice for the day, go to sleep, and do his next day's practice because it's turned into just what he does. It's not that like, oh, okay, I have to take a few days off because I beat myself up too much. It's literally just his daily practice. And that's what allows him to just do it every single day. Like Mark mentioned, when you're good enough at it, then you really don't end up needing days off because you can figure out something. Even if it's a 10-minute thing, you can figure out something to do that can get you some type, move you forward a little bit.

Yeah, we call that microdosing. So microdosing our workouts, just kind of get 10 minutes or 15 minutes here and there. But for me personally, gone are the days of beating myself up with a barbell. That's just not going to happen at this point anymore. So the recovery, yeah, it's gotten a lot better because my workouts have gotten a lot better. So yeah. Kind of last question because I know we got to let you go. Have you ever done this before where you just thought of the dumbest idea? Have you ever started with the dumbest and worst idea and then kind of gone from there? That's a great question because I really find that the ideas that I've had that were the best

were the dumbest, you know, or the ones that I thought to myself, like when I had the idea for The Legend of Bagger Rance, I thought, who is going to care about this? A golf story, you know, a mystical golf story? What could be a dumber idea than that, you know? And all the way through writing it, I thought that, you know. But I was just seized by it. And my second book, Gates of Fire, which was about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, I thought to myself, who's going to care about this?

This is a battle nobody can pronounce, nobody can spell. It happened 2,500 years ago. Nobody has heard of it. To people – Americans only care about Americans. This is not about Americans. So I thought – but somehow I think the ideas that you think are dumb are the smartest ones because it's like the muse knows. You and I might not know, but she knows. And so again, I think it's that quality of having faith in something,

even when self-doubt or other people are doubting you, is a huge thing. Because like I say, the muse knows even if we don't. So I think dumb ideas, I'm all in favor of them. Andrew, take us on out of here. Sure thing. And Mr. Pressfield, I know you said it wasn't the most gratifying thing, but your book, War of Art, is the first book I read about 10 years ago at this point. That's really when my photography. He's on the next book. I know.

He's already on to a couple other ones. But that was really like the thing that really like jumpstarted my photography career that led me to be here today. So I appreciate you so much for that. Thank you, sir. That is gratifying. All right. Thank you, sir. When we're in person and we can talk here today. So I appreciate you so much for that. Thank you, sir. That is gratifying. All right. Thank you,

sir. I mean, we're in person and we could talk. Yes. It's a whole other thing. Absolutely. All right, everybody.

Thank you for checking out today's episode. So we, we kept saying the same term over and over. Think less, pick up your think less hoodie at power project. Dot live along with the new power sandal. You guys have been really crushing it with those. So thank you so much.

Make sure you guys follow the podcast at MBPowerProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I'm at SeemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm at SeemaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Mr. Pressfield, where can people find you?

People can find me on StephenPressfield.com. I'm on Instagram too. And if I could put in a plug. Absolutely. For the newest book that's just coming out in a few days. It isn't out now. It's called Government Cheese.

It's a memoir. So it's sort of about the life that I was leading that we've been talking about today. So Government Cheese coming December 30th. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you spending time with us, especially around the holidays. Thank you for having me. I'm at Mark's Melly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

All right. Good job, you guys. Thank you.