#1901 - Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

Good to see you, man.

Steven Pressfield (0:14)

It's good to see you, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

With a nice stack of books here, what do we got here? Govt Cheese, a memoir, is this your memoir?

Steven Pressfield (0:20)

This is my memoir, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

Ah, exciting.

Steven Pressfield (0:24)

Of my 27 years in the wilderness.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

And Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be.

Steven Pressfield (0:32)

That's sort of like a War of Art type of book, as you can tell from the size of it and everything.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

After writing The War of Art, because you also wrote Turning Pro, right?

Steven Pressfield (0:42)

Yeah, and a few others.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Yeah, but on the same, along the same vein. Do you just felt like you have more to squeeze out of that? It's such an important subject for artists and for creative people. I mean, that book, The War of Art, changed so many people.

Steven Pressfield (0:59)

Let me ask you, Joe, what, why did that resonate with you?

Joe Rogan (1:03)

Well, there was some stuff that you talked about that it was almost like unspoken. And one of them is the concept of resistance.

And that the fact that you treated the muse as if it was like a real living entity. Like you.

Steven Pressfield (1:21)

Which I think it is. Yeah, she is. She is.

Joe Rogan (1:24)

Whatever it is, that thing where if you show up and you put in the work, creativity just sort of gives birth. It sort of erupts. It comes out. It manifests. There's something to it. And just I kind of always had this like inkling that that was a thing or this thought that that was a thing. But until I read your book, it was like you had, you made it real. You just like you laid it out and like, here's the problem. This is what's going on. And this is what you got to do. You just got to show up every day and put in the work and be a damn professional.

And so many people that I gave that book to, I used to have a stack of them in my old studio. And I would just hand them to people, dude, just read this, trust me.

And it wasn't a hard read, it wasn't a giant book, but it was so valuable because it just like, I guarantee you, there's so many people, there were so many days where people sat in front of their computer or a notepad where they wouldn't have because of that book. Like it got people to where they needed to go. Whether they stayed there, I don't know whether they kept up the, no, that's not your-

Steven Pressfield (2:40)

Did you yourself, let me ask you, like as a comic, did you experience resistance to getting say up on front of people or in the writing of the material or? Or was that an area where you could relate to it?

Joe Rogan (2:55)

Yes, all the above.

You could, you know, you experience resistance and like, oh, I want to take a day off. You know, like, oh, I don't feel like going up today. Like I know a lot of comics are really good comics and they're always canceling, like there's work and then there's spots, okay? So the spots are important because the spots are what get you better, tighten your material and how you create new material.

Steven Pressfield (3:21)

They keep you sharp. Now are spots when you actually perform? Is that what a spot is?

Joe Rogan (3:25)

So this is what I mean.

A spot is, say, if you're gonna go to the comedy store and on a regular night in the comedy store, there might be 15 comedians and each one of them is doing 15 minutes.

So there's just, it's a long running show. It starts from 8 p.m. it goes on all night.

When you're doing that, that's a spot. Doesn't pay very well, I think it pays like $50. So you just go down there and it's really, there's a lot of camaraderie, we're all hanging around with each other and joking around in the parking lot and in the hallway. And you're really just trying to stay sharp and work on new material. And the comedy store has three rooms. There's the belly room that seats about 70 to 90 people. There's the main room that seats about 400 plus people. And then there's the original room that seats, I think it seats about 170

And you do shows in each room. Like people do spots. Like sometimes people do three spots a night. So those don't pay well, but those are the ones people cancel. So like a lot of comedians, they're like, oh, I don't feel like going up. And they'll call in the store, I'm canceling. I'm gonna cancel. I'm not feeling well, I'll cancel. And it's really just resistance. It's this thing that keeps you from showing up. But the resistance for writing is way stronger. That's really strong.