STOP Doing This and You'll Finally Succeed!

99% of people in this world fail because they can't conquer one thing. This book right here is one of my favorite books of all time. They teach you how to overcome resistance. Every single one of us feels resistance every single day. Most of us, multiple times throughout the day. Every time the alarm clock goes off, you feel resistance. Like I want to turn it off, right? You want to check your phone, you want to scroll one more time, you want to watch one more episode on Netflix. Like there's these things that keep holding us back. They think it's some external force. I don't have the time, the money, the energy. But the reality is all, all of us have the same resources. The thing that keeps you from being successful is learning how to control resistance. When you can control the internal resistance you're having, then externally you can achieve the things you want in life. This book, if you haven't read before, is called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors of all time. I'm going to walk through four different steps to help you to overcome resistance so you can get your goals, accomplish your dreams and change the world. Alright, with that said, I want to walk you guys through the four steps that you need to learn to be able to overcome resistance in your life. And over here, we got them. So these are the four steps to actually beat resistance. If it's been holding you back for any amount of time, today is the day it's going to be gone forever. I'm so excited for you to learn these things. Alright, so step number one is called Expose the Enemy. First thing you need to do is understand exactly what resistance is. A lot of people don't even know this. That internal force is the thing that's keeping them from success, is happening in every single day over and over and over and over again. So what is resistance? Well, inside of the book, the War of Art, in here, he's talking about people who are creating some type of art, right? So everyone's got different art. Some of you guys are writers or you're designers, or you're content creators, or you're an athlete. But everyone's got a different art, right? And so the war of art is this internal war we're having as we're trying to create our art. And obviously Stephen is the writer, so he's using a lot of these metaphors in terms of someone who's an author, who's writing. But it's true for anybody, right? So this is what he says. He says there's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't. And the secret is this. It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is called resistance. I could replace this with any type of art. Let's say, for example, you are a bodybuilder, you're trying to get in shape, right? Or maybe not a bodybuilder, you're just out of shape and you want to get in shape. So I might say the same sentence. Like the secret that people who are in shape know that the people who aren't in shape don't know is this. It's not the working out that's hard, right? It's the getting to the gym that's the hard part. What keeps you from getting to the gym is resistance. So I want you to think about this inside your life. What are all of the times that resistance is hitting you Now? I had some of my clients do this one time, we sat down and said for an entire 24 hour period of time, let's map out every time resistance hits. And I did the exercise with them. The craziest thing is my alarm goes off every morning at 4:50. Alarm goes off at 4:50. First thing is I turn it off and instantly, within a half a second waking up, resistance hits me and goes, roll back over, go back to bed. So I grabbed my pad of paper, I'm like, 4:50am Resistance wanted me to go back to bed, right? Then I get out of bed, it's cold. And my resistance is like, get back in bed, it's cold, hit it again. By the time it was like 5:00 in the morning, resistance already tried to stop me like 10 times. And what's crazy for me, as soon as I became aware of the enemy, as soon as I was able to understand this is who it is, then I was able to address it and figure out ways to protect myself from the enemy. That's why step number one is exposing the enemy. One thing Press Phil talks about here inside the book, he. He talks about what he calls the unlived life. He says it's the athlete who doesn't compete, or it's the writer who never writes, or it's the painter who never paints, or the entrepreneur who never actually starts his own business, right? And for most of us in parts of our life, like, we're not doing that. We're not living the life that we were called to actually live. So that is the very first thing to understand is to understand who the enemy is. Because when you're aware of it now, we can actually beat it. Which now brings me to step number two in beating resistance. Step number two, is this ready for. This is understanding the lies of resistance. Okay? Now resistance is going to give you a whole bunch of lies to keep you from being successful. Now I'm going to walk you through a couple of these lies that are. That most of us hit every single day. So the first lie is the lie of procrastination. Now, this is one of the worst lies that resistance uses. Because resistance is not going to tell you, oh, don't go to the gym, right? It's going to say, go to the gym tomorrow. Resistance is not going to say, don't write the book. It's going to say, I'm going to write the book tomorrow. Right? It's trying to get us to procrastinate the thing. And this is what's fascinating for most people. I don't know about you, but if we procrastinate something until tomorrow, till manana. When manana comes, what happens? They get procrastinate the next day and the next day till we never actually get things done. It happens for all of us in every single area of our life, right? So understand that the very first lie that resistance is going to tell to you is procrastination. Not that you're not going to do the thing, but you're going to do it later when you understand that, right? And I know my enemy. I know when procrastination is coming. I'm saying that's resistance. I got to stop that. I. I cannot procrastinate. I gotta take action today. The second lie is what's called the shadow calling. This is where resistance will allow you to do a version of what you're called to do, but not actually the thing that you were called to do. Okay, for example, with Steven Pressfield, in this book, he talks about for a long time he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write books, he wanted to write screenplays for movies, all sorts of stuff. And eventually he actually did. If you know this, he's the one that wrote the screenplay for the movie Bagger Vance, right? With Will Smith, like one of the best movies of all time, he wrote that. But it took him like 40 years of writing before he redid this. Okay, first he was writing copy for advertising companies, Then he was writing scripts for these projects he didn't like. He never actually did the thing he wanted. He was doing a shadow version of it. His calling Was to write books, to write screenplays, and he was doing a version of it, right? He was writing copy for clients. He was doing things, these other projects where he was writing, but he wasn't pulling into his calling. Now, shadow calling is a metaphor for your real calling. It looks very, very similar. The difference is there's no risk if you fail inside the shadow calling. That's why resistance allows you to do that. Right? If you're writing for somebody else and it doesn't work, it doesn't really matter for you to put yourself out there and to write something and put it out into the world, right? There's consequences if it doesn't work. It's scary, it's fearful. So resistance is always trying to push you to a shadow calling. So that's lie number two is that the shadow calling is your actual real calling. Lie number three is what we call pleasure, not fulfillment. Okay? Resistance is always trying to get you a cheaper form of the thing you actually desire the most, is trying to give you the dopamine hit. We get the reward without the actual effort. Okay? Nothing good comes in life when you're getting just the reward without the effort that goes into it. And this is true in all sorts of things. A couple examples I wrote down, number one is having an actual relationship with somebody you love versus pornography. Right? One, you get the reward without the risk. Number two, you get actual fulfillment reading about something all day long, but not actually doing it. How many of us are reading and listening to podcasts and like going through the motions, but we're never actually doing the thing that we're called to do. Okay, another one. I have so many friends who get in this trap where they go to school and they keep going to school and they keep going to school and they're so scared to get out of the school system because they don't want to actually do the work. And then lie number four, this is one step deeper than a shadow calling. You're kind of in the thing. Step number four. Lie number four is literally full sedation. When you're just sedated, you're trying to like, not even focus on the dream. You're getting into drugs and alcohol, anything to get your brain away from the pain of knowing that you're not living in trouble. Your calling. So these are the lies the resistance is giving you to keep you from stepping into your actual calling. Alright, you guys ready for step number three on how to beat resistance? This one is one of my favorites of all time. This one is really cool. It is Called the bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. Now, I hear people say all the time, they come to me like, hey, Russell, I want to do this thing. But, man, there were so many obstacles, so many things that were happening that, like, there must be a sign this is not something for me to actually do, right? Like, if I was supposed to do this, it would be easier. And so they step away from their calling because of the trials and the headaches and the heartaches that come when they're trying to pursue the thing, right? And this is the reality that's not true. The opposite is actually true. Now, I was lucky enough, after reading this book and freaking out because it's one of my favorites of all time, I messaged the author, Steven Prescott. I said, can I interview you for a few minutes? I want to find out some more stuff about resistance, how I can beat it inside my own life. And luckily for me and for you, he said yes. And so I actually have a clip over here of Steven Pressfield from my interview.

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And I wanted to show this clip specifically because he's talking about this concept of the bigger the dream you have, the bigger resistance is going to be. So with that said, let's check out this clip from the man himself, Steven Pressfield.

Imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The minute the tree appears, a shadow appears. And the shadow is equal to the tree, right? If it's a big tree, it's a big shadow. So in the terms of resistance, the tree is the dream that you have, the book you want to write, the venture you want to do, whatever. And resistance is the shadow. So there would never. There would not. What I want to say is resistance always comes second. There would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream, if there wasn't a calling that was inside you. So the good news of that is, when you're feeling big resistance, that big shadow that shows that there's a big tree there or something, there's a big dream. Because resistance always comes, like Newton's third law of motion, equal and opposite reaction. It's a reaction to. To an aspiration, to a book you want to write or movie you want, whatever it is. So don't be freaked out. I would say to anybody, buy that dark cloud. That dark shadow is an indication that the dream is for real and it's big.

Okay? So that is the key for you guys to understand, right? The bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. If you have a big dream, you start pursuing and it gets hard. It doesn't mean? Oh, it's not meant to be? No, it means that it is meant to be. The greatest things in life don't come from simplicity. It comes through the pain, through the hard work, right? It's going through the effort, the risk, the trials. And from the other side of that is when the greatest things come out. So understanding step number three here is that the bigger the dream, the bigger the resistance. And that's okay for me now in my life, I'm going after somebody big. I'm like, man, the resistance is huge here. I get doubled down, even more excited knowing that it means that this calling, this thing that I'm chasing, the thing I'm pursuing, is something that's gonna change a lot of people's lives. And the same thing is true for you. So when you're in your own personal war of art, when you're trying to create your art, whatever that thing is for you, and you feel the big resistance, don't step away from it. Lean into it. Knowing that means you're on the right track. That brings me to step number four. So how do we actually beat this thing? Right? Obviously, we gotta become aware of it. Number two, we gotta understand the lies it's using to beat us. Number number three, we have to understand that even if the resistance feels so heavy and so big that we can't pursue it, knowing that, that is a sign that you are on the right path. The last step here is then how do we beat it? And this is one of my favorite ones. And the reality is, the way we beat it is through action. And you've heard people talk about this before, but this is the key to actually beating resistance. Okay? Now, in life, there's different types of motion, right? There's circular motion, okay? And most people get stuck in a circular motion where they're just kind of spinning their wheels. They're going around these ruts over and over, and they're never progressing. They're never moving forward. Okay? How many of you guys feel like that sometimes? Maybe you feel like that right now. Napoleon Hill calls that drifting. So we drift into this hypnotic rhythm where we're just like. Nothing's changing our life. We keep succumbing to resistance, and so nothing ever progresses. The second type of motion is forward is taking action. You're actually moving forward right now. The problem with direction is when you decide to move forward, there's always a cost. Sitting here and drifting, there's no cost. You're just kind of bouncing off the walls, doing the same thing over and over again. When you decide to move forward into momentum and actually take action, there's a cost, which is why it's scary. It's why it's hard. It's why the resistance starts coming every time you decide to move forward. When you are creating your art and you decide to move forward, there's always going to be that resistance. And the reason why is that our brains are programmed naturally to do a couple things. One thing our brain is naturally built and coded, hard coded in our brain to do is to avoid pain at all costs, right? You feel pain. It's like, I don't want to go there. I don't want to do that. Okay? So our brain tries to avoid pain, number one. Number two, our brain is trained to seek pleasure. Let me go find the fastest hit of pleasure possible, how to get my dopamine hit as quick as possible right on my phone through my, like, whatever we can do, we try to seek pleasure. Number three is our brain wants us to conserve energy, conserve calories so you don't run out of the calories we need to survive. And number four is our brain wants to prove itself right? We call this confirmation bias. So those are four things. Our brain wants to avoid pain, seek pleasure, conserve energy, and prove itself. Right. Now, to be successful and to beat resistance, you literally have to do the exact opposite of what your brain has been trained to do. Number one, instead of avoiding pain, we have to move out of our comfort zone over and over and over again, right? Creating art is not gonna be simple. Writing books, not simple. So not only do we can't avoid pain, we have to step into the pain. Number two, instead of seeking pleasure at any cost, we can. To be successful in any area of life, you have to actually delay gratification. You have to allow that to build up before you get the reward. Number three, instead of conserving energy, to be successful, you have to take massive action. That's the opposite of conserving energy, right? It's waking up early, it's working hard, it's doing the things that your brain does not want to do. And then number four, to be successful, you can't just try to prove yourself, right? To be successful in anything in life, you have to question your beliefs, question your assumptions, and. And become teachable and becoming a student. So those are the steps for how you can beat resistance. Now, I want to give you guys one more key to being successful with this. Every single time you do something, you start moving forward, you're into a direction instantly, just like Steven, pressfield talked about as soon as you do that, resistance is going to show up. And our default, our brain quickly wants to go back to drifting to the simpler version of it. Right? So what's our job? There's a quote from, from Viktor Frankl is one of my favorites. He says, between the stimulus and the response, there's a space. And in that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and freedom. So as soon as resistance hits us, there's a space, right? Most people hit resistance, they give up. For all of you guys, as soon as you hit resistance, there's this little gap of space where you actually have the ability to choose and say, no, I'm going to move forward. No, I'm not going to believe that lie. No, I'm not going to procrastinate. And that's where all success and growth and happiness comes. So that is what resistance is. That's why the War of Art is literally one of my favorite books of all time. This is one I say about once a month I read it or listen to the audiobook. The nice thing is it's really short. It is the key to help you to overcome resistance in your life. Because the reality is, like you being successful, not successful, is almost never about the external circumstances. It's not about your resources, about the money you don't have, the time you don't have. I guess almost always an internal thing. It's the fight and the battle you're having with your brain every single day. Resistance is that thing that's trying to keep you back from being successful. So if you have art that you know, you are called to create, right, to change people's lives again. It could be a business you're launching, it could be a video on YouTube you want to make, it could be a podcast, it could be anything. Whatever your art is, if you want to learn how to win this war of art, right, to beat resistance, to be successful. This book is one of my favorites. I hope. Hope you guys love it. Now, a couple really cool things. Number one, I did this entire interview with Steven Pressfield. It is insane. We had so much fun going deep into this book, talking about resistance, how to beat resistance, how to go pro, and a whole bunch of other things. Unfortunately, I'm not going to attach that on to the end of this video because it's about an hour long, but if you go and search for the podcast, I'm going to have the entire long form version that's on the podcast. Just go to your favorite podcast app and search in Russell Brunson or selling online or marketing secrets and you'll probably find the Steven Pressfield interview. It'll be the entire thing and you are going to love it. So check that out. Number two is if you are enjoying videos like this or I'm going deep into my favorite books, let me know in the comments down below. I'm really enjoying making these videos and I hope that you love them. And if you do love them again, let me know in the comments down below. But on top of that, please share these videos with other people. The more people that watch these videos, the more I know you like them and the more likely I am to make a whole bunch more of them. I've got so many books that I want to break down and share with you. In the last two years I bought over 18,000 books. I haven't read them all yet, but I'm trying to and I would love once a week to share my favorite books to you guys and that way you don't have to go read all the books. My goal is for me to go take the coolest parts out of them and share them with you. And then the ones that you're like, I want to go deep on this. You have the ability to do that. So let me know. And then also down below in the description, we're going to give you guys some really cool things. We're working on some study guides that go with each of the books, outlines and other things that'll all be in the description down below. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. That's how you can find out when the next video is going to drop as we go deeper into the next book. With that said, thank you guys so much. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I love sharing these things with you. And if you haven't yet, go read the War of Art. There's a link in the description as well where you can get a copy of this book. And this is one of those books that changed my life and it'll change your life as well.