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Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be [Book]

    By: Steven Pressfield

    Book Overview: Are you losing your “war of art”? Are you being defeated by a tendency to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, distraction, and perfectionism? Are you self-sabotaging your loftiest artistic entrepreneurial dreams? The antidote is in nine words: Put your ass where your heart wants to be. Can you shift your artistic identity—your “ass”—from the shallow, fearful, superficial ego to the wise, loving, fearless self? Can you commit to your dream for the long haul and for keeps? In this book, best-selling author Steven Pressfield delivers the tough-love inspiration to help you make this life-altering transformation.

    10 Quotes ➜
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      “If you are in a difficult situation, a low mood, if you are afraid of other people and of yourself, if you are tormented, then tell yourself: ‘I will love everyone whom I meet in this life.’ Try to follow this rule; and you will see that everything will find its way, and everything will seem simple, and you will no longer have doubts or fears.”

      Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 202)

        “It’s hard not to begin doubting ourself just a little when, with the stroke of an airbrush, someone slims down your thighs or shaves off half your booty. And if I’m doubting myself, imagine what that does for the young people forced to digest these images of so-called beauty.”

        Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 174)

          “We are all guilty of allowing so-called experts, or just people who have more experience in a given field than we do, to cap our potential.  One of the reasons we love sports is because we also love watching those glass ceilings get shattered.  If I was going to be the next athlete to smash popular perception, I’d need to stop listening to doubt, whether it streamed in from the outside or bubbled up from within, and the best way to do that was to decide that the pull-up record was already mine.  I didn’t know when it would officially become mine.  It might be in two months or twenty years, but once I decided it belonged to me and decoupled it from the calendar, I was filled with confidence and relieved of any and all pressure because my task morphed from trying to achieve the impossible into working toward an inevitability.” ~ David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me

            “No matter the task at hand, there is always opportunity for self-doubt.  Whenever you decide to follow a dream or set a goal, you are just as likely to come up with all the reasons why the likelihood of success is low.  Blame it on the f*cked-up evolutionary wiring of the human mind.  But you don’t have to let your doubt into the cockpit!  You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot’s seat, defeat is guaranteed.” ~ David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me

              “When we’re plagued with self-doubt or a lack of motivation, we can breathe in the inspiration of others. Seek out the passion that other people have for their work, the compassion they bring for other people, the goodness in their hearts that inspires them to do their work. We don’t have to copy what they’re doing, but instead be inspired by their spirit.” ~ Leo Babauta, Zen Habits

                “I know people who have been stuck in doubt their entire lifetime.  Each of these unfortunate individuals – some of them my very own friends and family – came at some point to a crossroads.  They came to this crossroads and found themselves rooted there, with one foot firmly planted on each side of the intersection.  Alas, they never moved off the dime.  They procrastinated.  Dithered.  Finally, they put a folding chair smack in the center of that crossroads and lived there for the rest of their lives.  After a while, they forgot entirely that there even was a crossroads – forgot that there was a choice.”

                Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life

                  “We all have tremendous potential, and we all are blessed with gifts. Yet the one thing that holds all of us back is some degree of self-doubt.”

                  Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad (Page 126)