Do the Work

adversaries.
     
    It comes from us.
     
    You can board a spaceship to Pluto and settle, all by yourself, into a perfect artist’s cottage ten zillion miles from Earth. Resistance will still be with you.
     
    The enemy is inside you.
     
    Principle Number Four:
The Enemy Is Inside You, But It Is Not You
     
    The fourth axiom of Resistance is that the enemy is inside you, but it is not you.
     
    What does that mean? It means you are not to blame for the voices of Resistance you hear in your head.
     
    They are not your “fault.” You have done nothing “wrong.” You have committed no “sin.” I have that same voice in my head. So did Picasso and Einstein. So do Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga and Donald Trump.
     
    If you’ve got a head, you’ve got a voice of Resistance inside it.
     
    The enemy is in you, but it is not you. No moral judgment attaches to the possession of it. You “have” Resistance the same way you “have” a heartbeat.
     
    You are blameless. You retain free will and the capacity to act.
     
    Principle Number Five:
The “Real You” Must Duel the “Resistance You”
     
    On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon.
     
    You are the knight.
     
    Resistance is the dragon.
     
    There is no way to be nice to the dragon, or to reason with it or negotiate with it or beam a white light around it and make it your friend. The dragon belches fire and lives only to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom, which it has been charged to guard to its final breath.
     
    The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.
     
    The contest is life-and-death, mano a mano . It asks no quarter and gives none.
     
    This is the fifth principle of Resistance.
     
    Principle Number Six: Resistance Arises Second
     
    The sixth principle of Resistance (and the key to overcoming it) is that Resistance arises second.
     
    What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us.
     
    Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self.
     
    Resistance is the shadow cast by the innovative self’s sun.
     
    What does this mean to us—the artists and entrepreneurs in the trenches?
     
    It means that before the dragon of Resistance reared its ugly head and breathed fire into our faces, there existed within us a force so potent and life-affirming that it summoned this beast into being, perversely, to combat it.
     
    It means that, at bottom, Resistance is not the towering, all-powerful monster before whom we are compelled to quake in terror. Resistance is more like the pain-in-the-ass schoolteacher who won’t let us climb that tree in the playground.
     
    But the urge to climb came first.
     
    That urge is love.
     
    Love for the material, love for the work, love for our brothers and sisters to whom we will offer our work as a gift.
     
    In Greek, the word is eros . Life force. Dynamis , creative drive.
     
    That mischievous tree-climbing scamp is our friend.
     
    She’s us, she’s our higher nature, our Self. In the face of Resistance, we have to remember her and hang onto her and draw strength from her.
     
    The opposite of fear is love—love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
     
    Principle Number Seven:
The Opposite of Resistance Is Assistance
     
    In myths and legends, the knight is always aided in his quest to slay the dragon. Providence brings forth a champion whose role is to assist the hero. Theseus had Ariadne when he fought the Minotaur. Jason had Medea when he went after the Golden Fleece. Odysseus had the goddess Athena to guide him home.
     
    In Native American myths, our totemic ally is often an animal—a magic raven, say, or a talking coyote. In Norse myths, an old crone sometimes assists the hero; in African legends, it’s often a bird. The three Wise Men were guided by a star.
     
    All of these characters or forces represent Assistance. They are symbols for the unmanifested. They stand for a dream.
     
    The dream is your project, your vision, your symphony, your startup. The love is the passion and enthusiasm that fill your heart when you envision your project’s completion.
     
    Sometimes when Resistance is kicking my butt (which it does, all the time), I flash on Charles Lindbergh. What symphony of Resistance must have