I highly recommend to you Steven Pressfield’s short but powerful book, The War of Art. You could read in an hour to two, but don’t. Savor it. Better yet, ponder it. Let it sink in.

Pressfield begins by noting Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

He is speaking of creativity, since he himself is a writer, he often using writing as the example. But he does not exclude the seemingly non-creative. He also considers the plumbing supply store, because there is no reason the plumber or the business owner should not consider their work creative. Whatever your work is, you can make it art. So don’t pass over this book because you aren’t “artistic” or you don’t have a “creative” job.

In the first section, he introduces the concept of Resistance. Many of us name this Procrastination or Laziness. Whatever you call it, Pressfield defines the symptoms and consequences of Resistance, which so many of us let block the very creativity we yearns to explore and develop. He then covers the antidote to Resistance: being a “pro” and taking the work seriously, whether it’s how you earn a living or it’s a hobby you enjoy.

The War of Art is easy to read, often amusing, pithy, with down-to-earth examples. It’s a pep talk, not a how-to manual (we all need to hear from Knute Rockne now and then).  Pressfield is, at the least, a theist. He speaks about God and the divine spark in all of us, but he covers the pantheon, urging us to  accept guidance from the angels and the Muses.

This book is not just about the problems of procrastination or about silencing the inner critic. Pressfield makes the case that the world of mystery and genius is not beyond our world of physicality and linear time. It’s a world that we can inhabit, must inhabit, because it’s where we find and enjoy that which is, for each of us, creative. And when we enjoy it and develop it, we can share it with others for the betterment of their world, and ours.