499 - Steven Pressfield: Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

0:00I'm so excited for today's show, but first, if you want a guaranteed way to make 2025 your best year ever, you need to be in Dreamclub. Go to join dreamclub.com to learn more and join us. Now, here's today's episode. Do you start projects and like never finish? If you're ready to overcome your mental barriers and shatter all that resistance, you are in the right place because in this episode, author Steven Pressfield gives some of the best advice I have ever heard for us entrepreneurs, artists, and creators. Let's dive in. Steven Pressfield is the bestselling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The Knowledge, as well as the cult classics on creativity, The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do the Work.

0:44His most recent book is Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, and his Wednesday column on stephenpressfield.com is among the most popular writing blogs on the web. Come on, another amazing book. Now, before we dive in, I just have to say this. When you reached out, A, that you had another book, but then B, I got to read the PDF, version. I literally read it in one sitting. This is so good. So for everybody watching, we're going to be talking about putting your ass where your heart wants it to be. So there's going to be a lot of ass in this conversation. If you need to have headphones on because you have little ones or anything like that, please go do this now.

1:23But Steve, congratulations. This is a beautiful, beautiful book. Well, thanks Marie. It's great to, thanks for having me on here. You know, it's great to see you again. It's always great to be, to be working with you on anything. Well, I want to start off with this baseline. You say that we can't control the level of talent we've been given. We have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self-motivation, our self-discipline, our self-validation, and our self-reinforcement. We can control how hard and how smart we work. So before we dive into all the details about what this book means and how we can embody it in our lives.

2:01Is the first step really to focus on what we can control and to let go of what we can't? I mean, I think that's so true of everything that we talk about today. You know, that stoic philosophy of, of, uh, if you can't control it, don't let it drive you crazy. I mean, it was sort of a breakthrough for me in my life when I've realized that I can't control anybody else. You know, I can't make anybody like me. I can't make them respect me. I can't make them help me. I can't make them love me or anything like that. But what I can do is I can control what I do, right? I can control how hard I'm going to work.

2:40I can control what I'm going to work, what time I'm going to work, that kind of thing. So that definitely is sort of the foundation of everything. I think if we have a goal and we're trying to achieve it, that it all comes down to us, like Stevie Nicks used to say. And in this world, I don't think I can hear that reminder enough. Even before we're diving into this conversation now, I was kind of peeling around my world and getting things into place. And we live in this time where people's comments, their opinions, their reflections, So many people, especially those who feel like they are digital entrepreneurs or online entrepreneurs, can spend so much time listening to the opinions of others or reaching for the opinions of others.

3:27And I know in my own life how much time and energy I've let that eat away in me. So I just love that baseline reminder. And it seems so simple and so obvious that I don't think that we can hear it enough. Yeah, it's definitely my business partner, Sean Coyne, has this phrase. And I know you've heard third party validation, you know, where you're looking for that other person, that review to come in. And it's really a pernicious mindset, a very destructive mindset. I think it's like Hemingway used to say, if you believe the critics when they tell you you're good, then you have to believe them when they tell you you're bad.

4:04Yes. Better not to even read them. Yes. Yes. And I, our friend Seth Godin, right. I mean, he, yeah, actually, that was a big thing that I learned from him that, you know, when he talks about, like, I just don't look at the comments. I don't look at the comments. And I remember when everything is figure outable came out, I made myself a promise. I was like, I'm not looking at the Amazon comments. Like there's the book is done. I have poured my heart and soul into it. And now it is time for me to go create what's next. But I want to dive into what does this notion mean? Put your ass where your heart wants to be.

4:39Tell me not only what does that phrase mean to you, but why you felt called to expand this idea, which I've heard you say before into a whole book on itself. Well, I realized, you know, I first sort of thought of this only in the superficial level, the first level of thinking when you say what it meant to me then when I said, put your ass where your heart wants to be, was if you're a writer and you want to write, sit down in front of this thing, you know, put your physical body or you're a dancer, Marie. If you want to be a dancer, go into the studio. If you want to be a painter, move your body into the studio and get up in front of an easel.

5:20And as dumb as that sounds, and as obvious as that sounds, I know you know this, Marie, this is like your whole career sort of based on this, is getting in there with both feet, you know, not, you know, letting it just be only something in your mind. But as I started to think about this more, I thought there are a lot of deeper levels to this. And in fact, I hope we get time to do this. I think that this phrase, even though it sounds kind of glib and superficial, and it has the word ass in it, right? Put your ass where your heart wants to be. It's really the same thing that all the great religions say.

5:56Well, by the time we get to that point, if we do in this conversation, it's really true. It's meaning taking your, your ass, your material concept of the world and moving it to the soul level to where your heart wants to be. And that's really, that's the deepest level of it. So in any event, I just found that this phrase that seems sort of glib really has many, many levels. Once you, once you get into it, that was why I wanted to write a book about it. Yeah, it's super deep. And I love that you also talk about in the beginning, you obviously there's the physical aspect of it, of showing up in front of the easel, of getting in front of the keyboard, of putting yourself in the recording room if you're a musician, of, you know, getting out and running if you want to be a marathoner.

6:38But there's also that metaphoric level, your emotional and psychological commitment to put your ass where your heart wants to be. You know, when you talk about in the book, this notion of moving to the Paris or the London or than New York in your mind. And I feel like something that's helped me so much, and I feel like you articulate it so well, you know, we can do that even if for whatever reason at this moment, we can't physically be in Paris or New York or London. Like, can you play that music? Whether, you know, can you put on that outfit? Can you light that candle? Can you set yourself up to embody that emotional, mental, spiritual place.

7:22Is that what you mean by that level? Yeah. When you like, for me, I asked myself as I'm thinking about this, what does ass mean beyond the physical? Yes. And what it means, I think is commitment in the sense of your ass is on the line, or if she screws this up, it'll be her ass type of thing. So if you think about somebody like Stephen King, who's working away in his office up in Maine somewhere, he doesn't need to go to Paris like Hemingway went to Paris or anything like that, because he's got sort of he's so committed to his, you know, that any room that he's in is like the center of the universe as far as he's concerned.

8:05Right. It's like he's got his personal hotspot. And it's the same with you, Marie, wherever you are, you know, you're bringing that energy and that commitment to it. So put your ass where your heart wants to be also means commit, you know, heart and soul, the more you'll burn the boats, that whole that whole concept. have no plan B is a very important thing. And, and, uh, you know, as we get into this more, uh, what happens when you do commit is a certain magic happens in, in the universe. Um, and I'll, uh, you know, I'll leave it at that for the moment, but we'll get to that. I hope. Yeah. Oh, I want to go all the different places and I'm really good on time.

8:47I mean, this could not be a more important conversation. Um, one of the things that I've seen in my life so often, you know, we're talking now on Zoom and it's virtual and I'm excited to be able to see you and hug you again in person when that time comes, because I know there's going to be more projects. But after we gave up our old studio, which you've been to before during the pandemic, and I could feel in my body, I'm like, oh, it's time for our next space. That's the thing. I'm like, well, I don't know any commercial real estate brokers. And when, you know, I start picking up the phone and conspiring to bring all of the forces into play.

9:22And just yesterday, Steve, I got the keys to my new place, which we are going to be building out. And it's just that notion. I was like, okay, put your ass where your heart wants to be. It's like, pick up the phone, go do the things, walking the streets of New York, feeling like, okay, where is this next creative space for us? And I also want to just point out too, I love how you broaden this notion, right. Of all the different levels of what that could look like. And you also mentioned in the book, and I think this is important, you know, for some of us, we have to trust that feeling in our body that says it is time to move physically.

9:57You know, like if you do want to be a part of a particular creative community, I mean, I think the internet's awesome. It's great that it has allowed so many people to connect virtually. And I think we're all recognizing too, how important sometimes it is to go live in the city that you want to live in or to go put yourself in proximity, right? To the communities that you want to be a part of. And I know in my career and from all the beautiful stories that you tell, it feels like this has been somewhat true for you too, is when you have that calling in your soul, if you got to pack up and move the kids, the dog, the family, yourself, if you got to pare down, you got to do whatever you need to do to go put yourself at the epicenter of the thing that you want to do.

10:44It's like, that's a part of putting your ass where your heart wants to be too. Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things that I talk about in the book. That's sort of the second level of the physical part of this. It's not just getting in front of the keyboard in your house, but it's going to the place where your dreams can come true. Like if you, if you want to be in fashion, you know, you can stay in, you know, Bogalusa or wherever you are, but if you can go to New York, if you can go to Paris, if you can go to Milan, then suddenly you're at the epicenter of your dream. If you want to be in the movies, you got to come to LA, you know, if you want to be in country music, people will say, well, gee, can't I just do it at home?

11:23Can I send in my demo? But you really have to be in Nashville or something like that. And one of the reasons is that the people that you meet, like a story that I tell is like when I made up my mind at some point years ago that I wanted to write for the movies. And I was living in New York at the time. So I packed up my cat, my van, and I moved to LA. And it took me quite a while. But I was there for like five years. I had a wonderful agent. I was getting nowhere. My agent took me out one day to lunch and he said, what what if I paired you up with an older writer? You became a part of a writing team, an established writer, and you'd have to work your butt off, but you'll be working.

12:05So in any event, the short version is I did. He did team me up with a guy named Ron Chousette, who did the original Alien. And we worked together for about five years. And the short version of that is that I learned so much from him as a mentor, you know, and not only writing stuff, but the people that we met, the things that we were exposed to the movie sets we were on that when i finally went out on my own after that i really felt like i had a phd in movie making just from that experience and the bottom line is i would never have had that experience if i hadn't packed up and moved to that what was for me the epicenter you know that's where you meet people because the way and let me go back for a second and read what you're talking about about moving to and finding your new studio, finding your new space.

12:54Yeah. Because if we get into that sort of a little deeper, what really happened in your soul, on the soul level, on the vibration level, was you made a commitment, whether you realized it or not, you said, it's time to move, things have changed, I've got to go beyond. And what happens in some crazy way, those vibes go out into the universe, and things start to happen, you start to attract things to you. And also, So people will help you, right? I'm sure the story you probably met various people you never had met before. And they said, Hey, I know a place or whatever. So that again, when we say, if we define putting your ass as commitment, there's a kind of a magical element to that, that brings things in once you do that.

13:41And somehow in some crazy way, the universe knows if you've really committed or not. And if you're sort of faking it, it's not going to bring in the things that you need. But as soon as you do really commit, the good stuff starts to happen. I could not agree more. And I don't think it's crazy. I think it's the way that the world works. We've just never really been taught it. Most of us as kids, it's not necessarily, it certainly wasn't necessarily the language that we used in my household, but I've seen it again and again. And anytime in my own career and my own life that I'm a little wishy-washy internally, even if I verbally say, this is the thing I want.

14:25If it's not ringing true inside, if my commitment is not there a hundred percent, it's like I started to get wishy-washy results or it's kind of flim-flam. But the moment I stick my flag in the sand and say, come hell or high water, I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to figure it out. You're a hundred percent right. And the other thing, this is, I don't know how unique this is to me, but I'm curious if you have this too. I think we're all built in very unique ways, but for me, I get emotional clarity through my body. So even if things kind of look good on paper and, you know, with this looking for a new studio, I probably saw, I don't know, dozens and dozens of places.

15:05So I even had the thought in my mind that I'm working these brokers too hard. They're like, no, no, no, it's okay. You know, it's a big commitment. And I was like, it's just not, it's not right until it's not right. But the moment I stepped into the place that we said yes to, it was like, oh, this is it. And so I think that there is some magic there as well, that when you commit, it may not happen overnight and that's okay. It's like showing up for the muse, which you talk about gods and goddesses and the other beings on the spiritual plane who are helping us usher our soul's calling into this material plane, they're checking it out and they're seeing, are you going to show up for the long haul?

15:46I think it's absolutely true. Even though, like you say, Marie, they don't teach you that, you know, you don't learn that in school or when you do learn it, you learn it in sort of an airy fairy way that you don't really believe it. But let me tell you one story that I told on video that is an absolute concrete example of that for me. When I first wrote the manuscript of Gates of Fire, which was kind of a million seller for me, it was 800 pages long. And my agent, Sterling Lord, at the time said to me, Steve, I can't sell this. It's a monster. It's too big. You got to cut 300 pages out of this book.

16:22And at the time, I just, this was my second book. And I thought, I was paralyzed. I thought, how am I going to cut half? out of this book and make it work. And I was really ready to just utterly give up. And I got a card in the mail, which I have around here somewhere, from a guy named Tom Ginsberg, who at the time was the head of Viking Press, which was a very prestigious thing. And it was a handwritten card that he had sent me that said he had read the book through Sterling being a friend of my agent. And he said, there's a really good novel in here, and I know you're going to bring it out. And I took that card, I pinned it up on my computer.

17:00And it was it was what kept me going through the whole long thing. But this is an example of the universe is the universe coming to your aid, you know, in the real in the real world. People respond to you. Like I'm sure people when you were looking for a place, Marie, they they met you and they said, you know, this woman is the real deal. She needs something. Let me give a call to Charlie, my uncle, see if he knows something, you know, and people will come to your aid. It's not just the gods and goddesses. They do too. But real people will come to your aid or people will lend you money or something like that once they see that you're really in it with both feet.

17:39Interrupting this episode with something that's guaranteed to change your life, Dream Club. Think of it as your ultimate cheat code for more money, success, and a life you love. Inside, you're going to get the tools, strategies, and support to make 2025 your best year ever. Head over to joindreamclub.com now. Don't wait. Doors close January 16th. Let's talk for a moment about practicalities. I loved this. And my team, when we read this part, we were all cheering up and down. You write, and it's a great question. Can we put our ass where our heart wants to be if we've got a family or a job or a mortgage?

18:16And the answer is yes. And you right. The muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be 100 % committed 10 % of the time. The goddess understands. I'm going to go a little bit further and then we can unpack this because the math here, y 'all really is important. One hour a day is seven hours a week, 30 hours a month, 365 hours a year. 360 hours is 940 hour weeks. 940 hour weeks is a novel. It's two screenplays, maybe three in 10 years. That's 10 novels or 20 movie scripts. You can be a full-time writer one hour a day. That was a mic drop moment, Steve. And I love one of the things we've done and everything is figured out.

19:06What I try to do is always help people do the simple math because simple math can change our lives, but most of us don't do a lot of simple math. It's not what we do. So talk to me about this notion. I know you've met so many creatives and writers over the years of just being able to carve out that little amount of time every day and the power of kind of compounding creative interest that can happen. Yeah, the power of compounding. It's true. But like, there's a famous story about James Patterson, the novelist, who has now sold like 3 billion books or something like that. He used to be the head of an ad agency, J.

19:41Walter Thompson. And what he would do was he would come in at like 5 or 6 in the morning, go into his office, lock the door. And for an hour and a half, he'd work on his fiction. And then when the working day started, he opened the door and he became, you know, an admin. And that's how he did it. And here's another really interesting thing on this, Marie. Like right now, I am a full-time writer. This is a true revelation, right? So you would think, oh, this guy's got 24 hours a day. This is probably true for you too, Marie, that if I actually boil it down to how much time I actually have in the day to really work on the blank page, it's maybe two hours, no more than three hours.

20:23So it's, I'm really sort of at the same place I was when I was working a 40 hour a week job. So because of other commitments and things like that, that you have to do. So we may look at somebody like Stephen King and think, oh, this guy's got the world widest ring, but he only has a couple of hours a day to work. So that compounding interest, like I say, one hour a day equals this equals this. Like we have a clip on, if you look this up on YouTube, look up Steven Soderbergh, the great director. Yes. When he won the Best Director Oscar for Traffic in 2000, he held up the thing, the Oscar, and he said, this is for everybody who spends part of their day doing something creative.

21:12whether it's a book, a play, a movie. And he says, I wouldn't, you know, I couldn't live in a world without art. So God bless everybody that's out there doing that. And he's absolutely right that it really does. If you can get in, you can be a full-time anything on an hour, two hours a day. Think about the gym. People who go to the gym as like super bodybuilders or whatever, they're not there eight hours a day. They're there an hour, hour and a half at the most. And that's enough. Hey, real quick. If you love this kind of conversation, then I know you're going to go bananas for my free audio coaching program called How to Get Anything You Want.

21:46It's going to help you turn any dream into reality. All you need to do is go to marieforleo.com slash subscribe and download it now. That's marieforleo.com slash subscribe. I'll see you there. Do you know something? We created this program called Time Genius because time has been something that I've been obsessed with for most of my career, trying to understand the science and also my own control issues and my own neurosis and obsession and, you know, trying to figure all that out. And, uh, there's at least one study that shows that working beyond four hours a day in terms of that kind of intense focus work where everything else doesn't exist and you are just pouring forth or creating or solving.

22:28It's like our brains aren't necessarily, at least mine isn't, it's not built to go further than that. Like I'm toast. I need to do other kinds of activities, handle other responsibilities, give my subconscious an opportunity to do some of the work on its own. So I just love this conversation because you're right. And the truth of the matter is, you know, for me, there's sometimes where it's like, it's an hour or two. If I get in two hours a day of the really good stuff, man, I'm running around like a winner, running around like a winner because the rest of the life needs handling and taking care of in the meetings or whatever.

23:05But I love the realization of that because it puts it in a zone of being achievable for the everyday person. And they don't necessarily, that's right. And you don't necessarily have to not have your full-time job or your part-time job or all of your family commitments or your kids or your wife or your husband or all the things that we have as beautiful, complex, messy humans. And you can still carve this out. Um, another thing I want to talk about some of the kind of practical laws and tools you wrote. One of the first is to commit to a time and place. The goddess doesn't just want to know where we are.

23:44She wants to know what time we start and at what hour we finish. How can she come to our aid if she doesn't know where and when to find us? So I want to hear about for you, because I always think that this is interesting and I'll say this up front. I remember earlier on, I was so interested in hearing about people's processes, frankly, because I was so desperate to find something that worked in the thought that it would take away my own terror and insecurity. And that wasn't true. And I still think it's fascinating to hear about how other people work, because I think it just fires up the imagination and gives us frames for like, oh, when you've talked about your process, I actually see you in my mind's eye.

24:25And it makes me smile. So can you tell us about what your time and place looks like and what that, yeah, how that unfolds for you? I'm definitely a believer in time and space. I think of writing or any form of art as a practice, like a yoga practice. If you have a yoga practice, you say, okay, one hour a day, two hours a day, I'm going to go into the dojo and I'm going to do my yoga thing, or if it's martial arts or whatever it is. And of course, that's the best thing in the world, meditation, whatever it is. but for some crazy reason again we're talking about the gods and the goddesses they like it i think if we do it at the same place and the same time just so they know that we're always there but also i think just for our own soul and our own our own you know self it's good to know i'm going into that room over the which for me is this room right here i'm and i'm going in at this particular time and also as you said marie i can't go longer than three or four hours you know i'm toast after that too.

25:24And I think that anybody is, if you were training for the triathlon, you can't run for four hours every day. You know, you can't swim four hours every day. So all I want to do in my practice, you know, I say, I say that when I sit down to work each day, I don't have any expectations for myself for quality or for quantity. I don't say to myself, I'm going to write 500 words or a thousand words. And at the end of the day, I don't look it over. and I don't say, well, gee, is this good or is this bad? Is this terrible? All I say is that I put my ass in front of this screen for two plus hours and try as hard as I can.

26:03And if I do that, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with my day, just like you. My day is golden after that. The office is closed and I go on to the rest of my life. But I think that's all any of us can ask is just to get down there, sit down, shut up and do it. Can I tell you, I just want to reveal and Josh, my partner, you know, we've been together 20 years. Thank God. He's like a source of, of sanity and support for me. Cause he knows just how tricky this thing can be and how much I can torture myself. I tried, there were years where I was like, but I have to hit a certain word count. I have to do this.

26:44He's like, will you stop this? He's like, stop it. You're torturing yourself. He's like, just be that. It's like, I can't like, it's like, it wants to control so much. So I appreciate you sharing that, that it's just about, Hey, if I can be in the chair for at least two hours. And the other thing that you talked about, and this was important, especially in this day and age is like no distractions, right? It's like, it has to be that safer place. Just like going into a yoga studio or going into a meditation studio. It's like, you're not bringing your laptop, you're not bringing your cell phone.