Picked this audiobook up from the library. There are lots of good well-told bible stories: Joseph and Jeremiah. The author may have been a good preacher or deacon of the sort. I never heard the Bible stories told so well.

The author tries to awake the readers’ sense of urgency by asking this question: “Do we love ourselves more than our children?” That’s a powerful question. Unfortunately, most of the people who caused all these crises in our nation are people who love themselves and probably their children than others’ children. His appeal to the business leaders may be the right call to actions as the politicians are not going to do anything about them.

A couple of good ideas that were presented: 1. 1~2 years of mandatory public services by our young adults. This is an excellent idea to inject a sense of civil service to our society and can help re-program our children away the “poisons.” I like it. But is it political feasible? I doubt it. 2. more use of nuclear power generation – one of the better ways to get us out of the petroleum dependency. 3. Bite the bullet to pay off the debts with a national transaction tax of 2%.

The author covers all aspects of the issues facing this nation: debts, business renewal, social security, medicare, inflation, international relationship, technology leadership or loss, terrorism, environments, energy and etc. Obviously, the author has immersed himself in many of the issues and courageously propose solutions for them. Some of the solutions make sense to me but some don’t. But at least he is presenting solutions.

The author at the end projects two possible scenarios like the movie “It’s a wonderful world”: one without a turn-around when America goes into to a permanent decay, the other with the national debts got under control and a future reborn for the country. I think America will probably end up somewhere between the two extreme cases – a slow decay. I hope not to see within my life time the end of the greatest democracy experiment in human history.

I picked up this audiobook after reading his “Never Eat Alone” book. This is like a sequel to that book. Instead of superficial networking relationship he touted in the “Never Eat Alone” book, the author went deep on finding the lifeline relationships. This is a definitely a more impactful book than the earlier book. I enjoyed listening to it. The summary is as follows:

The 4 mindsets of creating a foundation for lifeline relationships:
1. generosity. Author touched on this in “Never Eat Alone.” Goes both way: give and let give.
2. Vulnerability: letting your guard down. 8 steps to instant intimacy: 1. create an authentic environment around you. 2. suspect your prejudices, 3. project the positive, 4. share your passions, 5. Talk about your goals and dreams, 6. Revisit your past. 7. What’s keeping your up at night? 8. Future fears.
3. Candor: the freedom to be totally honest with those you confide in. 1. Find people you respect, 2. create the opportunity, 3. make it clear any feedback you get is a gift. 4. acknowledge your faults, 5. Tell the other person what you plan to do with the advice. 6. Don’t tell them what you want to hear. 7. Ask specific questions, 8. Take it or leave it – but deliver on safety. 9. Paying them back.
4. Accountability: action of following through on your promise.

Building your dream team:
1. Articulate your vision.
2. Find your lifeline relationships. 4 C’s considerations: commitment, comprehension (know-how), chemistry, and curiosity and diversity.
3. Practice the art of the long slow dinner.
4. Broaden your goal-setting strategy.
5. Create your personal success wheel. consists of deep relationships, professional growth, financial success, physical wellness, intellectual stimulation, spirituality, and giving back.
6. Learn to fight! Sparring ground rules: 1. safety first, 2. owning the process, 3. the Socratic method 101, 4. the receiver owns the process and inputs, 5. Don’t pull any punches, 6. leave ample time for thoughtful listening. 4 R’s of listening: removed (talking over), reactive (heard but not mulling over), responsible (talking to), receptive (empathizing fully).
7. Diagnose your weaknesses. 1. Turn the mirror o yourself. 2. Try to learn lessons from your role models, 3. Ask other people.
8. Commit to improvement.
9. Fake it till you make it – then make it stick.

Make it your life: the tactics, strategies, and structures – from formal organizations to do-it-yourself peer groups – that help you stay the course.
Benefits of formal peer support groups: 1. momentum, 2. structure, 3. peer pressure, 4. self-selection, 5. diversity.
Do it yourself meeting agenda: 1. reaffirm group vows (5 mins), 2. professional/personal check-ins (personal and professional successes and challenges) (3 mins/person, 20 minutes total), 3. spotlight (20 mins), 4. sparring (30 mins), 5. “I might suggest” (15 mins). 6. Group issues (10 mins), 7. Review and setting of commitments (3 mins each, 20 mins total).

The Greenlight Method of building peer-supported teams within companies: 1. make the case. 2. raise the stakes, 3. bond over the Barbarians at the Gates, 4. Dial up the intimacy, 5. Dig deeper in the now. 6. Getting candid.

A good chapter on team selling at the end.

I like the poem given by the author at his dad’s funeral:
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breath easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Not much to learn from this book – just miscellaneous stories of foolishness and sexes due to drunkenness and raw male pleasure. I picked this book from the overdrive library just because it’s been on the best sellers list for a long time. It’s definitely not worth paying for the book. I honestly don’t know how anyone would pay for it.

Some of the stories have exact time stamps on the sequence of events. I doubt at his drunkenness state, he could keep track of the time so well. Suspicious. Also I wonder how lucky he has been alive without getting hurt or acquiring AIDS so far with his and his friends’ reckless behavior. Tucker Max’s lawyer background serves him right with the decent writing skill and his association with horny and yet literate friends (like SlingBlade) make the story reading a bit more tasteful and interesting. I guess this is unlike other books because it’s written by an almost lawyer doing reckless things against his “better” judgment. At least he knows he’s going to hell and he does it eloquently with his insults.

Some of the more memorable stories: vomit during a blow job, burping after swallowing, throwing her clothing out the windows after having sex purposely with a fat girl, being sexually assaulted by an Eurasian woman, Vega trip with Junior, oral sex with a bulimic girl, pepper-sprayed during sex at a stranger’s RV, leaving a long trace of shit in the Embassy Suite’s lobby, sex while taking a dump, being shitted diarrhea while having anal sex followed by vomits, getting a Chlamydia test as a revenge from a girl, peeing in bed and framing the girl, starting a fight with a mascot, being head-tricked by a gay guy about having sex with a post-op transsexual, hospital visit from appendicitis, relationship with a deaf woman, dancing with a mirror, dog’s diarrhea after eating his vomit, and 3-minute dating. The book tour stories are less interesting toward the end.

There are good advises given in the book how to leverage your brain to achieve successes in life. Having some neuroscience behind the reasons and recommendations help to make them sound more scientific but I don’t think they’re less credible purely based on empirical data than physical science. I did learn a few things so people should learn somethings from the book though they’re not earthshaking. Summary below:

The book started out with a quick tour of each brain elements’ function: cerebral cortex with four lobs: occipital (vision), temporal (hearing, language, memory and object and scene recognition), parietal (somatosensory processing, visuospatial processing, attention, visually guided actions), and frontal (motor processing, working memory, decision making). Left hemisphere (language and dealing with symbols) and right hemisphere (visual-spatial processing and recognizing faces) are connected by corpus callosum. Prefrontal cortex: mental multitasking, making predictions based on past experience, evaluating right form wrong. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC): cognitive and emotion-related functions – detecting errors, balancing emotions, making decision. Insula: perceiving and experiencing certain aspects of emotion, physical and psychological revulsion. Amygdala: associated with emotion, particularly emotionally charged memories that involve learning and responses, like touching a hot stove. Hippocampus: forming the long-term memories, also related to spatial navigation and memory. Basal Ganglia: reward and motivational systems.

Five essential elements of success:
1. Opportunity radar (e.g. Phyllis Diller, George de Mestral who invented Velcro)
2. Optimal risk gauge: Must be good at recognizing what the risks are, determine how much risk you can tolerate and whether or not you are willing and able to pay the consequences if you fail. Taking risks that are substantial enough that they have a personal stake in the outcome, yet more gratifying than if they sat on the sidelines playing it safe.
3. Goal Laser: helps you take aim at what you want out of life without allowing the static of distractions and stressors to interfere.
4. Effort accelerator: possess the self-directed energy inherent that keeps them chugging along.
5. Talent meter: excel at divining that most successful path to take. A finely tuned Talent Meter means being aware of weakness, too. But upon identification of the weaknesses, be fanatical about learning as much to minimize them.

Win Factor #1: Self-awareness: Thinking about yourself to become a winner.
Pay attention to your immediate emotions, thoughts, and body sensations without passing judgment or jumping into action. Ask for advice from people you trust for why you’re unsuccessful at something.

Win Factor #2: Motivation: Cultivating the drive to win.
The critical role that emotional evaluations can play in motivating behavior; find the upside in the ordinary allows you to maximize your everyday life. It minimizes the lack of follow-through that often derails achievements. Feeling the reward in everyday activities is important. When you approach even the small, day-to-day issues with optimism and creativity, the journey is so much more enjoyable. People with an internal point of view tend to value what psychologists refer to as intrinsic rewards like personal satisfaction, better health or happier relationships. Intrinsic interest in a task – the sense that something worth doing for its own sake – typically diminishes when someone is reward for doing it – less enjoyable. To avoid procrastinating, concentrate on concrete rather than intangible aspects of your task. Start with something small; a series of small steps adds up to a whole staircase.

Win Factor #3 Focus: Locking on to what’s important.
A state of narrow focus is the mind’s version of blinkers. Focus reinvestment: in the middle of something that requires a lot of Focus, stop and consciously reorient yourself to critical details. Pay attention to minutiae like sounds, textures and colors you might not ordinarily notice. Avoid the distractions by meditation. It’s necessary to keep a wide focus in a life-or-death pressure situation. The more tasks you can automate and more information you can shift to implicit memory (via practices), the lighter the load on the attention systems and more control you gain over your power of focus and concentration. Try scaffolding, a technique where you practice the individual parts of a skill in a stepwise fashion. Toggling back and forth between narrow and wide focus at appropriate time can be helped by meditation. Winners continuously bring a situation factor to the top of the list, examine it, eliminate it if necessary, and then move the next item to the top of the list. Flow happens when there is balance between level of ability and challenge – seek out situations that are challenging.

Win Factor #4: Emotional Balance: making emotions work in your favor.
How you feel dictates how you react. Winner make a point of directing their emotions in productive ways. Performance increases with emotional arousal, but only to a point. The relation between emotional arousal and performance forms an inverted U. The more accurate we become at predicting and guiding our emotional responses in different situations, the more easily we find joy, happiness, and other positive emotions. Creating distraction (attentional deployment) – directing your attention away from a too-intense emotional event. Changing your perspective (reframing, reappraisal) by working through the issues beforehand until they view them as challenges rather than problems. Take a deep breath.

Win Factor #5: Memory: “Remembering” to have a winner’s brain
The gift of prediction is memory’s most crucial contribution to success. Capitalizes on ways to purposely strengthen memory traces for important information to ensure that it can be efficiently retrieved when it is most needed. “When new information is connected to existing knowledge or when you concentrate on the meaning of that information, you’re more likely to retain it in memory.” Practice allows your brain to expend less effort when it retrieves and processes critical information so it is able to do so more quickly and automatically. Use the Journey technique: mentally picturing a familiar journey, and placing pictures associated to the information you are trying to memorize along that route. A mentally simulated experience can sometimes serve the purpose just as well as a real one – a mental dress rehearsal. Memories can be made more durable by forming them under highly emotional circumstances.

Win Factor #6: Resilience: Bouncing back into success
Battling adversity is something you can intentionally practice and get better at. High-resilient brains were able to temper their emotional response following a potential threat and had the ability to quickly recover when everything turned out all right. When you practice anticipating and accepting failure without fear or judgment, you leave the door open for success. Successful people are able to slow down following an error, just enough to alter their behavior and avoid another mistake. Reframe a failure to find the benefit, even if it’s just a tiny nugget. Shifting your attention for a moment can also boost your Resilience because it seems to actively get your brain busy doing something else besides preparing for disaster.

Win Factor #7: Adaptability: Reshaping your brain to achieve.
Winners take control over plasticity by intentionally making the changes they want and they deliberately take the steps to think and act in ways that fine-tune their brains and help to achieve their goals. Regular yoga and meditation practice increases cortical thickness in as little as 8 weeks. If you find yourself in a slump with something you’re normally good at, try a reboot. Take a few lessons, read a book geared toward beginners, or practice some basic drills.

Win Factor #8: Brain Care: maintaining, protecting, and enhancing your winner’s brain
4 brain-care habits: physical activity, providing your brain with rich and meaningful experiences, eating a brain-healthy diet, and getting plenty of sleep. Omega-3 and -6 are essential fatty acids (EFA). Fish is high in vitamin D. Apples, full of antioxidants help guard against the oxidative damage to brain cells. Blueberries are bursting with flavinoids. Sleep is vital for optimal brain function. A good night’s sleep restores the balance of communication between the prefrontal cortex, and amygdala, and other emotion-related centers. Caffeine provides emotional and cognitive advantages such as improved moon, better memory, and alertness for most people.

This is a great follow-on book to the “Influence” book by Cialdini. It offers more practical solutions to merely identifying the subtleties in influencing others. The key concepts are: social proofing, loss aversion, perceptual contrast, choice reduction, reciprocation, emotional effects on decision making, and etc. The summary for each of the 50 proven ways are below:

1. Social proofing (following herds): “Operators are waiting, please call now.” => “If operators are busy, please call again.”
2. “The more similar that person giving the testimonial is to the new target audience, the more persuasive the message becomes.”
3. Focus the audience on all people who engage in positive behavior instead of negative one.
4. To prevent “magnetic middle” (norm), show appreciation (add a “smiley” face) or praise those whose behavior is desirable (e.g. consumers less electricity, arrives work on time).
5. Too many choices may be overwhelming. Reducing the choices may help.
6. The perceived value and desirability of the bonus gift as a standalone product can sharply decline, when consumers are offered a bonus gift. Show them the value of the gift.
7. When consumers must make a decision between two products, they often compromise by opting for the less-expensive version. Adding a higher-end products satisfy two purposes: meet the high-end needs of a small group of current and future customers and the next-highest-priced model will most likely be considered attractively priced, as a compromise.
8. Ad campaigns that inform potential customers of threats that a company’s goods or services can alleviate should be accompanied by clear, specific, effective steps that can take to reduce the danger.
9. You’ve offered a favor for a person, that person is going to feel obligated to return the favor. But follow through with your promise.
10. An ounce of personalized extra effort (like a hand-written post-it note) is worth a pound of persuasion.
11. Give a significant gift that is unexpected and personalized.
12. When we’re trying to solicit cooperation from other people, we should offer help to them in a way that’s unconditional and no-strings-attached. This ensures the cooperation you do receive is built o a solid foundation of trust and mutual appreciation.
13. What can be done to maximize the value of a favor we provide if its value might diminish in the eyes of the receiver over time? Gentle reminder like “How useful did you find the report I sent you?”
14. Start with a small step and gradually increase the request. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
15. Labeling technique: assigning a trait, attitude, belief, or other label to a person, and then making a request of the person consistent with that label.
16. Ask for a prediction (“Will you please call if you have to cancel?”) whether they’ll engage in a socially desirable behavior in the future. They’ll most likely behave consistently.
17. Writing down the commitment helps to increase the probability that it will be fulfilled.
18. Focus your message on how purchasing and using your products consistent with the audience’s pre-existing values, beliefs and practices. Point out that previous choices they made were the right ones “given the evidence and information they had at that time.”
19. Benjamin Franklin’s “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” People are motivated to change their attitudes in ways that are consistent with their behavior. Ask for a favor from a person who may not like you. You have nothing to lose.
20. Ask for donation, “even a penny will help.” Get the first little step.
21. On bidding, lower starting prices can actually lead to a higher final sale prices for 3 reasons: 1. more participants. 2. social proof for new bidders. 3. The early low bidders are more committed.
22. Get someone else to introduce you and your credentials to avoid self-promotion. Have the receptionist introduce the experience of the people he/she will be forwarding the call to. Have the credentials on the wall of the waiting room helps.
23. Leaders should seek input from all disciplines and make the final decisions but assures the team that each view will be considered in the process.
24. Pseudo dissenters (devil’s advocates) are not as effective as authentic dissenters. When coworkers and subordinates are not only feel welcome but are also encouraged to openly disagree with the majority viewpoint, the leaders create and sustain the best working environment for decision making. Have a little humility.
25. Training based on past errors is better than avoid negative consequences through good decision-making. Experience through simulation is better than just being lectured.
26. Turning weaknesses into strengths: Arguing against your self-interest (like Progressive Insurance, VW Beetle, Avis) create a perception of honesty and trustworthy. This puts you in a position to be more persuasive when promoting your genuine strengths. This works only if your weakness are genuinely minor ones.
27. Be sure to follow your discussion of a drawback with a positive aspect that’s related to, and that neutralizes, the drawback. When gate gives us lemons, we should try to make lemonade out it, not apple juice.
28. Organizations that attribute failures to internal causes (perceived to have greater control over its own resources and future) will come out ahead not only in public perception but in profits. Admit the mistake and come up with an action plan demonstrating that you can take control of the situation and rectify it.
29. We tend to feel especially positive toward subtle things that we associate with ourselves, such as our names. If you do share genuine similarities with someone, bring those to the surface in your discussions with that person before making your request of presentation.
30. If you’re designing a program, initiative, or product that being tailored for a specific client, you can harness the power pf people’s natural tendency to be attracted to things that remind them of themselves in the name, title, or label that you give it.
31. Mirroring the exact verbalization should result in better outcome for you both.
32. Authentic smile/attitudes result in better customer satisfaction. Following Benjamin Franklin’s “search others for their virtues” will help to make us like the customers/boss better.
33. People show a greater desire for an object (like Oldsmobile) or opportunity when they learn that it is unique, available in limited quantities, or obtainable for only a limited time. If you pass along information that is uniquely known by you, but fail to point out the exclusivity of the information, you could be losing an excellent opportunity to use an effective and ethical influence technique.
34. People tend to sensitive to possible losses than to possible gains – loss aversion. Point out what they will stand to gain in terms of opportunities and experience but also that they stand lose out on those very same factors. Instead of presenting an idea as a saving, you’re likely to be more persuasive if you frame the initiative in terms of losing the same amount of if it fails to get adopted.
35. “Because” is the magic word. Be sure to accompany your requests with a strong rationale, even when you think the reasons might be fairly clear. Ask your customers why they continue to use your business (saying “because to you), helps to strengthen the relationship.
36. Name one instead of 10 reasons to choose a BMW works better. Because the ease of difficulty of experiencing something as the “fluency” of that experience. Or oppositely, you can ask your audience to generate many reasons in favor of your rival’s offerings. The ease or difficulty of merely imagining using a product will also affect consumer’s decisions. Concrete images that affect the the target audience’s ability to visualize themselves using the featured product work better than abstract ones.
37. The power of simplicity in the naming of your product, your project, or even your company help you boost your performance and exceed your own earnings expectations.
38. Consider using rhymes in slogans, mottoes, trademarks, and jingles only not increase the likability of the message, but also its perceived truthfulness.
39. Prior experience colors perception – perceptual contrast. Be sure to discuss the merits of that better-fitting product at length after you’ve spent a much shorter period of time discussing another product, e.g. hot tubs vs. adding another room.
40. Customer royalty program: start with 2 stamps out of 10 possible stamps for a free one vs. 0 out of 8 stamps. One that has been started but not completed rather than one that has not yet begun meant that people felt more compelled to complete it. The closer people get to completing a goal, the more effort they exert to achieve that goal. People will more likely to stick with programs and tasks if you can first offer them some evidence of how they’ve already made progress toward completing them.
41. Products with unexpected descriptive (e.g. Kermit green) and ambiguous names (e.g. millennium orange) are regarded as more desirable than the common or common descriptive name.
42. Integrate the essential images, characters, or slogans of the ads into the in-store product displays and product packaging to avoid the Energizer/Duracell bunny confusion. Strengthen the message by placing the campaign’s logo on objects native to those settings (e.g. LED light ice cubes acts as a reminder of police car).
43. Use mirrors (or asking for name or picture of an eye) to persuade others in the most subtle manner to behave in more socially desirable ways.
44. Sadness activates the motivation in people to alter their circumstance, which might help them change their mood and get them out of their funk. Emotion lead people to become less sensitive to differences in the magnitude of numbers, but only the simple presence of absence of an event as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the event. Take breaks if you experience emotionally charged. Offer to postpone negotiations with someone who has just had a negative emotional experience; you’ll strengthen your relationship by making yourself seem noble, caring and wise.
45. You’ll likely to make more accurate evaluations of others’ statements and will be generally more resistant to deceptive persuasion tactics if you minimize your distractions. Reduce multitasking when the stakes are high for these decisions and interactions with others are high.
46. You should make your presentations (with genuine, thoughtful, and well seasoned arguments) when people are most alert – shortly after they’ve had their morning coffee fix, and never right after lunch. But it takes 40 minutes for the full effect of caffeine to kick in.
47. Take time to disclose something personal about yourself and to learn something personal about your on-line counterpart, you’ll likely be able to benefit mutually in a negotiation. It’s okay to use a computer to persuade. Just don’t act like one when you do.
48. Individualism (US and other Western countries) vs. collectivism (Asian countries), affects the persuasion process. Campaigns should be tailored to fit the particular cultural orientation of the societies in which they take place.
49. People from individual cultures tend to give greater weight to their own personal experiences. People from collectivistic cultures tend to give greater weight to the experiences of close others.
50. Individualistic cultures place a greater emphasis on the informational function of communication, whereas collectivistic cultures place a greater emphasis on the relational function.

The voices on this audio seminar was too muffled to be a pleasant listening experience. And the British accent didn’t help.

Yes, Churchill was a great leader in planning and executing the plan in defending UK from German’s attack during World War II. He placed the big bet and invest on air force as the area needs the most focus due to the separation by the channel from the main European continent. He also invested in the secret gathering and deploy the civilian industries to complement that military might. Having a good PR with US helped to solidify the relationship with US and eventually pulling US to the war.

All these make good lessons for the business sector if business is like war, defending the invasion of another competitor. But it’s no better than Chinese Art of War by Shintzi.

This is an excellent, inspirational book for those talented artists. The author, Steven Pressfield, dives deep into Resistance: the definition, manifestation, and symptoms. Then he goes into the next step: overcoming Resistance and turning pro: what being pro is all about. Finally, he touts the opposing force of Resistance, Muse/Angeles that allows each artist to breakthrough, persevere and succeed. I saw many of “bad” habits and behavior in the “Resistance” and I’m hopeful that that the Muse/Angels will guide me through in the rest of my life. An aspiring artist should read this book at least once a year.

Below if a brief summary of the book.

Resistance: Defining the Enemy
Book 1 is on “Resistance, ” defined by author as the self-sabotage force that prevents us from living to our full potential.

Resistance is invisible, internal (arise from within – self-generated and self-perpetuated, the enemy within), insidious (protean, has no conscience), implacable (“an engine of destruction”), impersonal (acts objectively), infallible (like a compass), universal (everyone has it), never sleeps (doesn’t go away), plays for keeps (means business), fueled by fear, opposes in one direction (obstructs movement from a lower sphere to a higher one), most powerful at the finish line, recruits allies.

Symptoms of Resistance: procrastination (habit-forming), sex (preoccupation of, also drugs, shopping, TV, and etc.), getting in troubles, self dramatization (“evil twin to Santa Claus”), self-medication, victimhood (a form of passive aggression), choice of a mate (who has overcome his/her Resistance).

Resistances feel like unhappiness (bored, restless, unloved, unlovable, disgusted, hate our lives/ourselves).
The fundamentalist cannot stand freedom, experiences Resistance. It and art are mutually exclusive. When it wins, the world enters a dark age. “The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.”

Manifestation of Resistance:
Criticism out of Resistance: “Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others.”
Self-doubt as an ally: “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”

Fear as an indicator, tells us what we have to do. Rule of thumb: “The more scare we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

Love, direct proportional to: The opposite of love is indifference. The more Resistance you experience, the “more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.”

Grandiose fantasies – symptom of Resistance and sign of an amateur.

Isolation – fear of being alone. Like a child at play, an artist is not aware of time or solitude.

Resistance loves “healing” – “the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have do our work.”

Support and rationalization (spin doctor) as Resistance. “It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.”

Combating Resistance – Turning Pro
The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation. The pro loves it so much that he dedicates his life to it. The artist must be like a Marine. He has to know how to be miserable and love it.

Defining Pro: 1) show up every day. 2) show up no matter what, 3. stay on the job all day, 4, committed over the long haul, 5. the states are high and real. 6. accept remuneration for our labor, 7. do not over-identify with our jobs. 8. master the technique of our jobs, 9. have a sensor of humor about our jobs, 10. receive praise or blame in the real world.

The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you’ll fear it and experience Resistance.

Aspects of a pro:
Patience: keep him from flaming out. Steels himself at the start of the project.
Seeks order: eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.
Demystifies: views his work as craft, not art. Masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. The pro shuts up and doesn’t talk about it.
Acts in the face of fear – fear can never be overcome.
Accepts no excuses and plays it in the real world with adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls.
Is prepared at a deeper level, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage. The goal is not victory but to handle himself.
Does not show off and dedicates himself to mastering technique. “By toiling beside the front door of technique, he leave room for genius to enter by the back.”
Does not hesitate to ask for help.
Distance herself from her instrument “Madonna does not identify with ‘Madonna.’ Madonna employs ‘Madonna.”
Does not take failure (or success) personally. “The professional self-validates and is tough-minded. In the face of indifference or adulation, she assesses her stuff coldly and objectively. Where it fell short, she’ll improve it. Where it triumphed, she’ll make it better still.”
Endures adversity: cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Blows critics off.
Recognizes her limitations: brings in other pros and treats them with respect.
Reinvents himself: does not allow himself to become comfortable or successful.
Recognized by other professionals.
Distanced from ourselves with a corporation, Me, Inc.

Beyond Resistance: The Higher Realm
Muses and angels: the forces we can call our allies
“When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.”
“Eternity is in love with the creations of time.” – William Blake.
“Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits; rivers make their way to the sea.”
The ego and the self: angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two. Ego believes in material existence, takes care of business in the real world. Believes in 1) death is real, 2) time and space are real, 3) Every individual is different and separate from every other. 4) the predominant impulse of life is self-preservation. 5) there is no God. But Self believes in 1) death is an illusion, 2) time and space are illusions, 3) all things are one. 4) the supreme emotion is love, 5) God is all there is.

Fear: Resistance feeds on fear. The mother of all fears: Fear that we will succeed. We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. We lose friends but we find friends too. They’re truer, better friends.

The authentic self: we’re not born with unlimited choices. We come to this world with a specific, personal destiny. Our job is to find out who we already are and become it.

Territory vs. Hierarchy: Hierarchy breaks down when the numbers get too big. The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake. “To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.”

Being a Hack: condescends and panders to his audience, writes hierarchically.
Qualities of a territory: 1) provides sustenance. 2) sustains us without any external input, 3) can only be claimed alone. 4) can only be calimed by work, 5) returns exactly what you put in.

Difference between territory and hierarchy: ask yourself: If I were the last person on earthy, would I still do it? If yes, you’re doing it territorially. The supreme virtue for an artist: contempt for failure.

Portrait of the artist: “They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. The are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddess they serve.”

Very inspiration last chapter:
“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”