“For writers and artists, the ability to self-reinforce is more important than talent. What exactly is reinforcement? It’s when your coach or mentor tugs you aside and tells you how well you are doing, how proud of you they are, and how certain they are that ultimate success will be yours if you just stay who you are and keep doing what you’re doing. That’s reinforcement. Can you tell yourself that? Without a coach? Without a mentor? Can you be your own coach and mentor? That’s self-reinforcement. When we say, ‘Put your ass where your heart wants to be,’ we also mean keep it there. Self-reinforcement keeps us there. It keeps us committed over the long-haul.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 95)
“When I finish the day’s work, I turn my mind off. The office is closed. The work has been handed off to the Unconscious, to the Muse. I respect her. I give her her time. If I see family or friends, I never talk about what I’m working on. I politely deflect any queries. But beyond not talking with others, I refuse to talk to myself. I don’t obsess. I don’t worry. I don’t second-guess. I let it rest. The office is closed.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 79)
“Work is good, but it should not become an addiction. Many people have turned their work into a drug so that they can forget themselves in it—just like a drunkard forgetting himself in alcohol. One should be as capable of nondoing as of doing—then one is free. One should be capable of sitting, not doing anything, as perfectly and beautifully and blissfully as when one is working hard and doing many things; then one is flexible.
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 235)
“I stop working when I start making mistakes. Typos and misspellings tell me I’m tired. I have reached the point of diminishing returns. Steinbeck said he always wanted to leave something in the well for tomorrow. Hemingway believed you should stop when you knew what was going to happen next in the story. You and I, as writers and artists, are playing always for tomorrow. Our game is the long game. When you’re tired, stop.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 78)
“It goes without saying, I have turned off all external sources of distraction. No phone. No e-mail. No Instagram. No Facebook. I am on an ice floe in Antarctica. I’m circling alone at seventy thousand feet. I’m on the moon. Barring a nuclear attack or a family emergency, I will not turn my attention to anything that’s not happening inside my own demented brain.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 76)
“Here’s my frame of mind as I sit down to work: This is the day. There is no other day. This is the day. In other words, I release every thought that smacks of, ‘Maybe we can do this some other time.’ There is no other time. Today is the Superbowl. Today is the day I give birth. Today is the day I die.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 74)
“Can we put our ass where our heart wants to be if we’ve got a family, a job, a mortgage? Yes. The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 58)
“In the struggle against injustice, it’s easy to let bitterness and hatred harden your heart. As Marcus Aurelius wrote: ‘What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.’ When we close ourselves off to love and hope, we naturally experience less love and hope. The Bible reminds us that ‘whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.’ And James Baldwin, that ‘hatred…has never failed to destroy the men who hated.’ Hatred corrodes. It takes you south, backward, down, down to depths. Love, on the other hand, protects, trusts, hopes, preserves. Love does not fail. It takes you north, it leads you forward. It always wins. Which way are you going? Is your heart growing or shrinking? Is your love and compassion and connection for other people, your hope for a better future, growing or shrinking?”
Ryan Holiday
“Hearing is one thing—listening is altogether different; they are worlds apart. Hearing is a physical phenomenon; you hear because you have ears. Listening is a spiritual phenomenon. You listen when you have attention, when your inner being joins with your ears.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 232)
“When you and I put our ass where our heart wants to be, the universe responds. We change. We see ourselves differently. But others, sometimes those we are not aware of (and whom we have no idea are aware of us), see us differently too. They may come to our aid in ways we could never have predicted and by some word or act of kindness change everything.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 41)
“Station your physical body in the spot where your dream-work will and must happen. Want to write? Sit down at the keyboard. Wanna paint? Step up before the easel. Dance? Get your butt into the rehearsal studio. Dumb and obvious as it sounds, tremendous power lies in this simple physical action.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 11)
“To me, smoking might be the most attractive activity a woman (or anyone for that matter) can do. Yet, the irony in this attraction is that if I were to fall in love with a woman who smoked, I’d want them to stop the disgusting habit immediately. Perhaps there is a metaphor in there for love. Where people fuck up tragically in love is that they fall in love with someone and then immediately attempt to make them someone else.”
Cole Schafer
“Growth is not as smooth as people think. It is painful… and the greatest pain comes when you have to go against your likes and dislikes. But who is this that goes on saying, ‘This I like and this I don’t like?’ This is your old mind, not you. If it is allowed, there is no way to change. The mind will tell you to stay in the old rut, because it likes that. So one has to come out of it. The old has to die for the new to be born. The old has to go for the new to come. If you go on clinging to the old, there is no space for the new to come in.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 229)
“I know that sometimes, persistence is not a virtue. I would trade my other abilities to be an exceptional songwriter. I gave it a serious enough try to know that I don’t have the knack, for years, and I’m not interested in being publicly mediocre at the performing arts. My life is incalculably better for having let the dream go. The world will be happiest with a certain range of behaviors from you—life will be easier if you find a place in that range where you’re content. David Whyte calls this the conversational nature of reality, and he is correct about the importance of this concept.”
Sasha Chapin
“But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 87)
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it. And you shall see.
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.”
“You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 82)
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.”
“Meditation is not a seasonal flower that blooms after weeks. It is a very big tree. It needs time to spread its roots.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 227)
“And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 69)
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.”