The War of Art was the first secular mussar (ethic teaching?) book that I have ever seen. It goes through many traits that one can hope to achieve in life. Specifically, it focuses on the artist, a person who creatively advances something in the world, as the person who can overcome his vices and create. If you are someone who is working on a creative art now but are having trouble getting it done, I would highly advise looking into this. As I am in the middle of writing my own book now, I found that this book gave me a lot of motivation into understanding how to actually write it. The most important tip for me was that the hardest step is usually sitting down to write. Once you sit down and start working, ideas come and much will come out of it. So far I have found this to be very true. Rather than figuring everything out and then starting to write, when I have forced myself to just start things flowed. At the same time, I felt that much of the book was somewhat misplaced. Pressfield focuses much of the book (its only 160 pages total) on what he calls as Resistance and ways to combat it. Resistance is a vague idea that Pressfield never fully explains, but essentially it rules over all other vices that gets artists to stop working. While I found this simplistic, it was still powerful, as if you can beat Resistance you can do anything.
One way Pressfield talks about defeating Resistance is how you define your art. Resistance makes the artist worry that no one will like what he creates, that it wont be good enough, that he will fail. Pressfield has a way to combat it, which I found to be so thoughtful and true. Pressfield describes two ways of defining identity: hierarchical and territorial. When we are defining ourselves in a hierarchical fashion, we define ourselves based on where we fall in a group. High school is notoriously like this. People are sharply defined by how cool or smart they are. Wehn we define ourselves territorially we are doing something entirely different. It does not matter where we are in the pack, what matters is our territory. Defining yourself as a Jew, American, or artist accomplishes this. It doesn't matter what other people think, this is who you are. Pressfield argues that one can only achieve true greatness if his work is done territorially. You do it because you want to be the best you can be, because you value your work and define yourself by it. This idea has left an impact on me. We all find ourselves thinking about how well we are doing based on how others are doing, but that really should not be our thinking. We can look up to people to try and achieve more, but by only truly caring about doing the best work you can do allows you to be free of worry. I have found myself in numerous conversations over the years, where this has been the conversation. Complaints about others thinking they are better religiously because they do this or that happens every so often. If these complaints truly are the case then it is sad because a relationship with G-d is something each of us can own. We should not define our relationship with Him based on how other people are doing, but by how we are doing. This idea goes into every facet of our lives. To politics, where parties think they are better than others rather than just making the best platform that they can, to sports where players are defined not by how they played but by whether they beat the other team, and to jobs where you define yourself on your paycheck instead of how much you help society. When I look at myself now after reading this book I now have this new framework to work within. Am I doing things because they are good for me, or because I want to be better than someone else. I hope the answer is always the former.
