Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

When we say, “Put your ass where your heart wants to be,” we’re proposing a mindset that is designed to outfox Fear of the Unknown. It says: Don’t try to overcome your fear. Fear cannot be overcome. Instead simply move your body into the physical space you fear . . . and see what happens.

For writers and artists, the ability to self-reinforce is more important than talent.

Seat your identity not in the ego, but in the Self.

Commitment over time. Commitment in the face of adversity. When a movie director like Frank Oz takes on a project, he’s projecting a two- or three-year commitment. He knows talent alone will not carry a collaborator that far. He wants troupers on his crew who will hang in, no matter what and no matter how long.

When you move your material ass to the geographic site of your dream, your peers and potential mentors think at once, This person is serious. She has committed. She has burned the boats. She is one of us.

there is no substitute for being there, at the heart of the action. And to get there, you have to leave “here.”

That’s killer instinct. What, exactly, are we “killing”? We’re killing Resistance. We’re sinking our dagger into the insidious, pernicious, rotten, sneaky, evil force of our own self-sabotage. Our own hesitation. Our own fear of success (or failure).

The primary emotion of the Self is love.

Self-reinforcement is a superpower.