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Gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store
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@Stan Prokopenko @Marshall Vandruff Like you guys I don't agree with that author's assessment that everybody who feels they are a victim needs to just suck it up and then they'll magically be fine but I think I can see the wisdom he was getting at.
Being a victim doesn't mean you have to think like one. The difference between a victim and a victor is largely in how we see ourselves. If we think like a winner, we're more apt to behave like one, and if we behave like one we could very well become one.
I've faced terrible persecution in the last year and I've seen the difference it makes to go from viewing myself as a helpless rowboat tossed in the sea to becoming a fighter in my own battle for freedom.
It doesn't mean I'm aggressive--far from it--but I don't back down anymore when my persecuters try to tear me down.
I've totally shifted my perspective. All the sticks and stones they throw at me... I see them as challenges. As a training ground for becoming strong and not letting anybody else tell me how I can live my life.
There was a Ted Talk I watched last year that really had an impact on me. It completely changed the way I look at myself. It's called "How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are."
The speaker is a man named Andrew Solomon who for much of his life was terrorized for being gay. He was severely depressed for a long time. But then he started meeting people who had been through far worse than him yet were sill happy and holding their heads high. He was intrigued and started asking them about that.
He realized from their stories that, while we can't control what happens to us, we get to choose how we react to it. It's up to us if it breaks us or makes us into something way better than we ever thought we could be. Instead of being ashamed, we can incorporate this stuff into our identities and build meaning out of it. We can find light in the darkest places.
One thing Mr. Solomon said was, "We don't seek the painful experiences that que our identities but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences."
And he also said, "Forging meaning and building identity does not make what was wrong right. It only makes what was wrong... precious."
So I did exactly that. I decided to use the horrible treatment I was receiving as free confidence lessons. Every time they tried to scare me, I forced myself to act brave and be my normal friendly self even if I wasn't feeling it.
And you know what happened? Turns out I was way stronger than I thought I was. My brain saw me holding my ground as these people tried to take away everything good in my life and... the world didn't end!! Confidence boost!
Sometimes they retreated... sometimes they didn't... but regardless I started actually FEELING like a winner. Because if they can't get to me and hurt me, I win.
The more time that passes, the harder I am to hurt. And I'm getting used to basically all of their scare tactics.
And I kept going with writing my fanfic even though they tried so hard to get me to stop. Even though it's just a story and it isn't real, a lot of my identity is wrapped up in it and I get a lot of meaning out of it. It's a place to act out the world I wish I lived in.
Another thing Mr. Solomon said was, "There is always someone that wants to confiscate our humanity. And there are always stories that restore it."
This is true. My story is based around a character who was fighting to free his people from ruthless oppression. We have a lot in common. In that story we work together fighting against the demons in our own lives and we ultimately prevail.
Anyway, probably my favorite quote in the whole Ted Talk was "Oppression breeds the power to oppose it."
When somebody pushes into you, you can either let yourself be pushed down or you can push back. I chose the latter and thus that quote has become my mantra.
This is the TedTalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiM5a-vaNkg
LESSON NOTES
Drill Sergeant Stan and Major Marshall review the book “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. The book was written to help artists tackle some of the mental challenges that get in the way of creating. Using war as a metaphor, the author offers solutions to get things done by defeating ‘resistance’ - the difficult obstacles artists face. Both Marshall and Stan have caveats with Pressfield’s advice though, and like everything else, it depends on how you apply it.
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References and books
(some contain affiliate links)
War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Fantastic Beasts with Vance Kovacs
The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin
Raging Bull
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
COMMENTS![]()
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The War of Art is a book that will kick your butt and motivate you to create! Marshall and I review it on our podcast and talk about the benefits artists can gain from it while also discussing the dangers that come from misinterpreting it.
Timestamp 24:00 I've literally lost track of all the times that Marshall says something that resonates with me so strongly that I feel we are kindred spirits. Here is another example of it. At this point Marshall points out the advantage of owning a physical copy of a book so that you can take notes in it and make it a dialogue rather than a passive read. There's no better way to internalize valuable knowledge out of a book. He's a smart man.