The following are my favorite quotes from Steven Pressfield's Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be.
- The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best? If I've done that, then I've put my butt where my heart wants to be. I can't ask anything of myself more than that.
- "How much do we want it?" "What sacrifices are we willing to make to see this project succeed?" "Have we 'moved'--lock, stock, and barrel--to our inner Paris?"
- It is not an idle or airy-fairy proposition to declare that the universe responds to the hero or heroine who takes action and commits. It responds positively. It comes to the hero's aid.
- Work--day-in, day-out exertion and concentration--produces progress and order. That's a law of the universe.
- Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
- At some point the practice of our vocation moves from being a challenge that we must will ourselves into accepting and enacting to becoming simply...our life. Like a mother raising her children or a farmer tending his crops. This is our calling. This is who we are. This is what we do.
- Commit to a time. The goddess doesn't just want to know where we are. She 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?
- Leave your ego, leave your greed, leave your competitiveness with your comrades, leave your lust for glory and your fear and your self-doubt and your lack of belief in yourself. Leave everything but your will to victory.
- Here's my frame of mind as I sit down to work: This is the day. There is no other day. This is the day.
- This is the job. There is no other job. This is the job.
- The primary emotion of the ego is fear; the primary emotion of the Self is love.
