Do the Work

been playing in his head when he was struggling to raise the funding for his attempt to fly across the Atlantic solo?
     
    “You’re too young, you’re too inexperienced; you’ve got no credentials, no credibility. Everyone who’s tried this has failed and you will, too. It can’t be done. Your plane will crash, you’re going to drown, you’re a madman who is attempting the impossible and you deserve whatever dire fate befalls you!”
     
    What saw Lindy through?
     
    It can only have been the dream.
     
    Love of the idea.
     
    How cool would it be, in 1927, to land at Le Bourget field outside Paris, having flown from New York, solo and non-stop, before anyone else had ever done it?
     
    The seventh principle of Resistance is that we can align ourselves with these universal forces of Assistance—this dream, this passion to make the unmanifest manifest—and ride them into battle against the dragon.
     
    Resistance’s Two Tests
     
    Resistance puts two questions to each and all of us.
     
    Each question has only one correct answer.
     
    Test Number One
     
    “How bad do you want it?”
     
    This is Resistance’s first question. The scale below will help you answer. Mark the selection that corresponds to how you feel about your book/movie/ballet/new business/whatever.
     
     
     
    Dabbling • Interested • Intrigued but Uncertain • Passionate • Totally Committed
     
     
    If your answer is not the one on the far right, put this book down and throw it away.
     
    Test Number Two
     
    “Why do you want it?”
     
     
For the babes (or the dudes)
     
The money
     
For fame
     
Because I deserve it
     
For power
     
To prove my old man (or ex-spouse, mother, teacher, coach) wrong
     
To serve my vision of how life/mankind ought to be
     
For fun or beauty
     
Because I have no choice
     
     
     
     
    If you checked 8 or 9, you get to stay on the island. (I know I said there was only one correct answer. But 8 and 9 are really one.)
     
    If you checked any of the first seven, you can stay, too—but you must immediately check yourself into the Attitude Adjustment Chamber.
     
    The Attitude Adjustment Chamber
     
    Did you ever see Cool Hand Luke ? Remember “the Box”? You don’t get to keep anything when you enter this space. You must check at the door:
     
Your ego
     
Your sense of entitlement
     
Your impatience
     
Your fear
     
Your hope
     
Your anger
     
    You must also leave behind:
     
     
     
All grievances related to aspects of yourself dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how neglected/abused/ mistreated/unloved/poor/ill-favored etc. you were when you were born.
     
All sense of personal exceptionalness dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how rich/cute/tall/thin/smart/charming/loveable you were when you were born.
     
All of the previous two, based on any subsequent (i.e., post-birth) acquisition of any of these qualities, however honorably or meritoriously earned.
     
    The only items you get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse.
     
    This ends our special section, “Belly of the Beast.” We return now to programming already in progress:
     
    You and me, two-thirds through our project and stuck in a hell of Resistance.
     



 
    The Big Crash
     
    We were doing so great. Our project was in high gear, we were almost finished (maybe we actually were finished).
     
    Then inevitably …
     
    Everything crashes.
     
    If our project is a movie, the star checks into rehab. If it’s a business venture, the bank pulls our financing. If it’s a rodeo, our star bull runs away with a heifer.
     
    The Big Crash is so predictable, across all fields of enterprise, that we can practically set our watches by it.
     
    Bank on it. It’s gonna happen.
     
    The worst part of the Big Crash is that nothing can prepare us for it. Why? Because the crash arises organically, spawned by some act of commission or omission that we ourselves took or countenanced back at the project’s inception.
     
    The Big Crash just happened to me. My newest book, a novel called The Profession , was done—after two years of work. I was proud of it, I was psyched, I was sure I had broken through to a level I had never achieved before.
     
    Then I showed it to people I trusted.
     
    They hated it.
     
    Let me rephrase that.
     
    They HATED it.
     
    The worst part is, they were right. The book didn’t work. Its concept was flawed, and the flaw was fatal.
     
    I’d