Return-Path: Delivered-To: alvarochf@traceseis.com Received: from cs510.bluehost.com by cs510.bluehost.com with LMTP id GNmWDuta2WldpgQAWiBQxw (envelope-from ) for ; Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:17:47 -0600 Return-path: Envelope-to: alvarochf@traceseis.com Delivery-date: Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:17:47 -0600 Received: from v556.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net ([159.112.244.56]:52964) by cs510.bluehost.com with esmtps (TLS1.2) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (Exim 4.98.2) (envelope-from ) id 1wBIIU-00000001HfC-0yNf for alvarochf@traceseis.com; Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:17:47 -0600 DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha256; v=1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mg2.substack.com; q=dns/txt; s=mailo; t=1775852249; x=1775859449; h=List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe: List-Post: List-Id: List-Archive: List-Owner: Reply-To: In-Reply-To: References: Sender: Sender: Date: Message-Id: To: To: From: From: Subject: Subject: Content-Type: Mime-Version; bh=m7tKYolWXRFOTpi6Fu/kivG+huTFAL1xWS6GyNc7POY=; b=o6tXTXxFspEZSuuaQO+hufZRCKgFSvoxSwA5Sxv/ST3aeTzL03LDaAqO5HJ4CRPoBdhN+9sCNOx8eJ5yDUKAkBf8uOyotX0n11vZxR4tfvQ07gOw1bCpNyEe+7V+WpQ5p0WG5ITlw2p2jz2Om411kwgetOrXmweVKgIJf0ThcbM= X-Mailgun-Sid: WyI3MDdlYyIsImFsdmFyb2NoZkB0cmFjZXNlaXMuY29tIiwiNGQxODU4Il0= Received: by b7fcedd9bed04ceb234f7225f5bab0ecc60e13a96ef558b3bbf9edc189a1abb0 with HTTP id 69d95ad9f51869173ac61d56; Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:17:27 GMT X-Mailgun-Sending-Ip: 159.112.244.56 X-Mailgun-Batch-Id: 69d95ad8e9eab7228f01a5ff Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="c66f6c2071dea5d1c89ed9a97830499b6be0f071bc84f240cc1b26735346" Subject: On Dragging Ideas Into Reality From: Zack Holland To: alvarochf@traceseis.com X-Mailgun-Tag: post X-Mailgun-Track-Clicks: false Message-Id: <20260410201716.3.e9f6c15e997e2b5d@mg2.substack.com> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:17:16 +0000 Feedback-Id: post-193829126:cat-post:pub-7966316:substack Sender: Zack Holland References: In-Reply-To: Reply-To: Zack Holland List-Owner: List-Url: List-Archive: List-Id: List-Post: List-Unsubscribe: List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click X-Mailgun-Variables: {"category": "post", "email_generated_at": "1775852242907", "is_freemail": "true", "post_audience": "everyone", "post_id": "193829126", "post_type": "newsletter", "pub_community_enabled": "true", "publication_id": "7966316", "subdomain": "daydreamerventures", "user_id": "347258985"} X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.5 X-Spam-Score: -14 X-Spam-Bar: - X-Spam-Flag: NO --c66f6c2071dea5d1c89ed9a97830499b6be0f071bc84f240cc1b26735346 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable View this post on the web at https://daydreamerventures.substack.com/p/on-d= ragging-ideas-into-reality Hello friends - Zack here with the second installation in the Daydreamer Ve= ntures series, written to provide real and actionable tactics from ancient = wisdom and modern psychology as we all grow in our journeys to make our dre= ams a reality. Amazing how quickly time flies by. Has it already been a month since my fir= st post? In the spirit of transparency, when I set out to write a weekly newsletter,= I dramatically underestimated just how difficult it would be. It isn=E2=80= =99t about the time required, or discovering topics to cover - there is ple= nty of both. What I didn=E2=80=99t expect was just how much resistance I wo= uld face in the creative battle to write one of these each week. I actually wrote the first instance of Daydreamer Ventures a month before s= ending it, letting it sit on my desktop taunting me day after day. What if = people hated it? Does the world really need another Substack written by a m= id-thirties white guy? What if they read it? Is my writing style too honest= for the medium? Not honest enough? Is it too hot in here to write? etc=E2= =80=A6.etc=E2=80=A6etc=E2=80=A6 I finally tuned out the voices in my head and clicked send=E2=80=A6. and th= ings went quite well. Founders facing personal struggles with mental health= reached out, old friends revealed scars I wasn=E2=80=99t aware of. It was = shared a surprising number of times, and I=E2=80=99ve been very happy that = it was able to reach a few people right when they seemed to need it.=20 The overwhelming support and positive response after sending it should have= steeled my resolve to write the second, right? Now it will be easy from he= re on out, right? Wrong. So, so wrong. Now that the first piece was out, and things actually went well, following = it up became a gargantuan task. I created entire startup projects over the = past month in a surreal effort to avoid sitting in front of my computer and= writing this. Psychologists have a name for this - productive procrastinat= ion, where we substitute easier, lower-stakes tasks that still feel industr= ious to avoid the high-stakes task that actually matters. Piers Steel=E2=80=99s work on temporal motivation theory maps the pattern p= recisely: the more meaningful the goal, the more likely we are to busy ours= elves with everything but the goal itself. I cajoled myself, got angry, mad= e up excuses, picked up new hobbies - hell, I even started running. Running= ! I tell you all this for one singular reason - to let you know that, as you = face down your creative and entrepreneurial fears, conscious or below the s= urface, you are far from alone. I have publicly launched five businesses, w= ritten pieces read by hundreds of thousands, spoken in front of hundreds, a= nd launched advertising campaigns viewed by hundreds of millions - and none= of that makes this any easier. Appropriate, then, that the topic we=E2=80=99re going to dive into today is= just how to drag those stubborn and feisty ideas, kicking and screaming, f= rom your head and out into the world. In echo of the first post, we=E2=80= =99re going to consult with the sages of philosophical history, as well as = the academics pushing modern research forward, all for one sacred mission: = to arm you, the one reading these words at this exact moment, with as many = tools as possible so that you can bring those beautiful and unique ideas, t= hat only you can create, into the world of reality. It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important battlef= ields in the fight for today=E2=80=99s culture. In a world that would love = for you to stay sedated and scrolling, commenting instead of creating - mad= e even worse by rapidly increasing reliance on artificial thought-finishers= - you must produce original work. It does not matter what it is, and it do= es not matter if it reaches one person or one million.=20 If we do not exercise our natural right to pull our daydreams into the mort= al plane, we will lose much, much more than our ability to write. We will l= ose our ability to think for ourselves, to form unique opinions, and to sta= nd in opposition to forces that require our complacency and feed on our sil= ence. It may seem like a ridiculous concept that getting a group of people togeth= er to build that software idea you haven=E2=80=99t been able to get out of = your head, or finally sitting down at a cafe without distractions to start = your book, or opening the bakery of your dreams, or actually getting the pa= ints down from the shelf on a breezy Sunday afternoon, can save the world. = But it is the only way, that I know of, to begin to. It is what makes us hu= man, at the deepest level of our existence. It is vital. So - why is it so damn hard? What is this dark cloud that approaches when w= e innocently try to build, make and create?=20 It is impossible to write a piece like this without starting with Steven Pr= essfield and his discussion of Resistance in The War of Art. Pressfield wri= tes,=20 =E2=80=9CMost of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life = within us. Between the two stands Resistance.=E2=80=9D=20 That has always struck me as one of the cleanest possible descriptions of t= he problem. The obstacle is rarely a lack of dreams. It is the pressure tha= t rises up the moment we try to make them real. When shaped in this way, we can give that over-arching pressure against cre= ation a name, and by doing so, start to build systems to battle it. Resista= nce rears its ugly head in many forms - boredom, annoyance, busy-ness, lone= liness, anxiety, just to name a few. But make no mistake, no matter which f= orm it takes, resistance is the enemy. It is the single largest obstacle st= anding in between you and the life of your dreams. It has many names, but i= t is evil in every one of them. It will take from you, and never give anyth= ing in return. For those of us who are dreamers, it will be the battle of o= ur lifetimes. Each day you can defeat Resistance is a day well-lived, simpl= e as that. The first crucial step in taking down a complex and flexible enemy like thi= s is understanding how it works. So let=E2=80=99s review a few core princip= les that are immutable and transferable to any person and any creative act. 1. The scope and severity of the resistance is in direct proportion to how = important the work is. Understanding this is a major key in your fight to live a fulfilling life i= n alignment with your purpose. If doing something is easy, and you face no = resistance at all in the doing of it, it is simply not very important. If y= ou are terrified of it, or always too busy for it, pay close attention to t= hat project. Pressfield=E2=80=99s own formulation is worth keeping in mind here: =E2=80= =9CThe more important a call or action is to our soul=E2=80=99s evolution, = the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.=E2=80=9D=20 Modern psychology points in a remarkably similar direction. Researchers stu= dying perfectionism and fear of failure have found that procrastination is = often not laziness at all, but an approach-avoidance conflict: we want the = thing, but precisely because it matters so much, it becomes threatening. Th= e project matters, so failure feels loaded with shame, judgment, exposure, = and consequences for how we see ourselves. That is why the thing you care m= ost about so often acquires this strange force field around it. In this way, Resistance can be a blessing, and a natural compass in the mes= sy confusion of modern life. Once you train yourself to noticing Resistance= , and measuring the scope of it, you can naturally discover what is most im= portant to you - and, in doing so, progress towards the life that you spend= your days dreaming of. So instead of berating yourself, or losing the plot to anxious turmoil, try= seeing Resistance as a necessary map towards your goals. That single flip = in perspective can make all the difference. Kierkegaard had a beautiful lin= e for this sort of feeling. He called anxiety =E2=80=9Cthe dizziness of fre= edom.=E2=80=9D In other words, sometimes the panic is not proof that you ar= e weak or unserious. Sometimes it is proof that you are standing in front o= f a real possibility. Rollo May, the psychologist who may have done more than anyone to bridge ph= ilosophy and clinical practice, arrived at essentially the same conclusion = a century later. In The Courage to Create, he argued that anxiety and creat= ivity are inseparable - that the encounter with genuine creative possibilit= y always produces anxiety, because it requires destroying the old pattern t= o make room for the new one. He called it =E2=80=9Cthe anxiety of creating.= =E2=80=9D If Kierkegaard gave us the diagnosis, May gave us permission to s= top treating it as a disease. 2. Building an environment, and a process, that works for you specifically = makes all the difference. When finding your own way through the minefield of Resistance in your pursu= it of creation, no idea is too silly. I bought an old laptop for $100 that = has nothing but WordPad and Spotify installed to help remove distractions. That instinct, as ridiculous as it may sound, is actually well supported by= behavioral research. One of the clearest findings in modern psychology is = that intention alone is a very poor predictor of behavior. We mean to do th= ings all the time and still fail to do them.=20 Peter Gollwitzer=E2=80=99s work on implementation intentions offers one of = the cleanest solutions: instead of saying =E2=80=9CI should work on my nove= l=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9CI need to build the prototype,=E2=80=9D you turn the= desire into a specific if-then plan.=20 If it is 7:30 tomorrow morning and I am at the kitchen table, then I open t= he document and write for twenty minutes. If it is 9 p.m. and I sit on the = couch, then I sketch the user flow instead of opening my phone. The specifi= city is not fluff. It is the mechanism. In a meta-analysis with Sheeran cov= ering nearly a hundred independent studies, implementation intentions showe= d a medium-to-large effect size - an unusually robust result for a psycholo= gical intervention that costs nothing and takes seconds to form. However, and this is a critical piece - do not allow the process of buildin= g the =E2=80=9Cperfect=E2=80=9D environment to create become a form of Resi= stance. Listen to yourself and your rhythms. Make your mind up about the ri= ght environment to pull your creativity into the world. And sit down and ge= t it done. You don=E2=80=99t need a new pen or a comfier desk chair or to a= djust the AC. Get started. 3. Creating, but never sharing, is the same as not creating at all. While it=E2=80=99s tempting to imagine yourself as a tortured artist whose = art will just never be appreciated by the world, so it isn=E2=80=99t worth = sharing - that is just, you guessed it, our old friend Resistance. To reall= y bring your daydreams into reality, they must be accessible by independent= thinkers. As frightening as it may be, they must be judged by the markets,= the algorithms, and experts of the field. This is one of the hardest truths for creative people, because the private = idea remains perfect for as long as it stays private. The instant you share= it, it becomes vulnerable to reality. But reality is the only place where = improvement lives. There is a reason the famous story from Art & Fear has s= tuck around for so long: the students graded on quantity ended up producing= the best work, while the students obsessed with making one perfect piece l= argely froze. The lesson is brutal and liberating at the same time. Volume = teaches. Exposure teaches. Reality teaches. Perfection, in isolation, teach= es almost nothing. In the same vein, Ira Glass once described what happens to many beginners i= n creative work: you start because you have good taste, but your ability do= es not yet match your taste. So your early work disappoints you. His prescr= iption was not to think harder, or wait for inspiration, or protect your se= lf-image. It was to do a huge volume of work. Finish things. Put yourself o= n deadlines. Let repetition close the gap. Simone de Beauvoir makes what is perhaps the deepest philosophical case for= why sharing matters. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, she argues that freedom o= nly becomes real through concrete projects - that an intention which stays = purely internal is not yet freedom but only the dream of it.=20 Your idea, sitting privately in your head, is not yet a creative act. It be= comes one the moment it enters reality and collides with other minds. De Be= auvoir understood that the completion of creation is not the finishing of t= he work. It is the releasing of it. In the same way as the measure of Resistance tells us the direction to walk= , feedback tells us how far we have yet to go. Wrote a book and it didn=E2= =80=99t receive any responses from publishers? Great, you learned how far y= ou have to go. Launched a new product to a lukewarm response? Perfect, now = you know the amount of work to be done. This is also where Epictetus becomes useful. You control your effort, your = intention, your craft. You do not control reception, timing, or how the wor= ld responds. If you confuse those categories, you will freeze. If you separ= ate them cleanly, the act of sharing becomes survivable. 4. Your ability to forgive yourself when you miss the mark is the single mo= st important determinant of long-term success. As we=E2=80=99ve seen with my newsletter consistency, we=E2=80=99re all goi= ng to mess up. We=E2=80=99re going to have times when Resistance was just t= oo cunning, and the tricks and hallucinations it cooked up succeeded in thr= owing us off our valiant path of creation. So what? You know who never misses the mark? Those who never try.=20 It is actually in the fact that you are battling Resistance that you know y= ou are on your way. It=E2=80=99s bringing out the big guns for you. It=E2= =80=99s worried. It should be - you may have lost your way for a moment the= re, but you=E2=80=99ve learned. You=E2=80=99ve evolved. Albert Bandura=E2=80=99s work on self-efficacy is helpful here. One of the = strongest predictors of whether someone will attempt a task is not merely w= hether they are capable of doing it, but whether they believe they can do i= t.=20 And that belief is built primarily through what Bandura called mastery expe= riences - small acts of actual follow-through. Not fantasies. Not self-este= em slogans. Not vibes. Real evidence.=20 Of the four sources of self-efficacy Bandura identified - mastery experienc= es, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states - mas= tery experiences are by far the strongest. Which means every time you retur= n to the work after drifting, every time you ship a draft after doubting yo= urself, every time you recover from a miss instead of turning it into a gra= nd identity crisis, you are building exactly the kind of evidence the mind = needs. There is an important distinction here that Kristin Neff=E2=80=99s research= on self-compassion helps clarify. Self-esteem, the thing most of us chase,= is contingent - it rises when you succeed and collapses when you fail. Sel= f-compassion holds regardless, because it does not require you to be except= ional. Neff=E2=80=99s studies found that self-compassion, not self-esteem, = predicted willingness to try again after failure. The person who can say = =E2=80=9Cthat didn=E2=80=99t work, and I=E2=80=99m still okay=E2=80=9D retu= rns to the work faster than the person whose entire identity was riding on = it. This is not softness. It is the foundation of durability. Dropping the pretext that it is ever going to be easy allows us to revel in= the battle, celebrate the wins, and forgive ourselves quickly for the miss= es. Aristotle said that we become what we do repeatedly. More precisely, in the= Nicomachean Ethics, he writes that =E2=80=9Cwe become just by performing j= ust actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing= brave actions.=E2=80=9D=20 Creative courage works exactly the same way. You do not become a creator by= feeling like one. You become a creator by creating, badly at first, incons= istently at first, imperfectly for a long while, and then better. 5. The antidote to anxiety is action. The response to Resistance is getting= started. There is a reason so many philosophical and psychological traditions arrive= at this same conclusion. You don=E2=80=99t need to know how your book is g= oing to end to sit down and start writing the opening paragraph. You don=E2= =80=99t need any more market research on your ideal customer for your start= up - you need to build a prototype and get it in front of real users. You d= on=E2=80=99t need another online course. You need to sit down, and start. William James made this argument in 1890 with a clarity that still hasn=E2= =80=99t been surpassed:=20 =E2=80=9CAction seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go t= ogether; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct contr= ol of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.=E2=80=9D More than a century later, clinical psychology arrived at essentially the s= ame place. Behavioral activation, a treatment originally developed for depr= ession, is based on the principle that most of us instinctively resist: act= ion precedes motivation, not the reverse.=20 We wait to feel inspired, clear, ready, confident. But in practice, those f= eelings so often arrive only after movement has begun. The original finding= by Jacobson and colleagues was striking - the behavioral activation compon= ent alone performed as well as full cognitive behavioral therapy, implying = that you don=E2=80=99t need to fix your thinking first. You just need to mo= ve. Exposure therapy offers another useful parallel. The fear stays powerful wh= en all you do is avoid the thing that scares you. The mind updates only whe= n you confront the feared act and discover that the catastrophe you predict= ed either does not happen, or does not destroy you. That is true in therapy= , and it is true in creative life. So yes - the antidote to anxiety is action. Not because action magically er= ases uncertainty, but because it gives uncertainty something real to collid= e with. We become brave by doing brave things. John Murray wrote, in a passage long= misattributed to Goethe, that =E2=80=9Cthe moment one definitely commits o= neself, then Providence moves too.=E2=80=9D=20 The line has been borrowed and mangled for centuries, but the spirit of it = survives every misquotation: commitment itself unlocks momentum. The decisi= on to begin is not merely the first step. It is the step that makes the res= t of them possible. There is another reason getting started matters so much. Bluma Zeigarnik an= d Maria Ovsiankina found, nearly a century ago, that once a task has been s= tarted, the mind has a much harder time letting it go.=20 Unfinished work lingers. It tugs at you. The original insight came from Zei= garnik=E2=80=99s teacher, Kurt Lewin, who noticed that waiters in a Viennes= e restaurant could recall every detail of open orders but forgot them entir= ely the moment the bill was paid. Student and teacher had stumbled onto something fundamental about how the m= ind treats unfinished business. More recent work has shown that uncompleted= goals can create intrusive thoughts, but that making a concrete plan for c= ompletion can reduce that cognitive load. So if the work feels impossible, there is good news: you do not need to her= oically finish it tonight. You just need to start it in a real enough way t= hat your brain begins to treat it as active. That=E2=80=99s it. Start. Do it now. Stop reading this and begin. And don= =E2=80=99t let anything distract you - work until you=E2=80=99ve put work o= ut into the world that is greeted with positive reactions from independent = critics and then start working on what is next. That=E2=80=99s the cycle. T= hat=E2=80=99s the holy war we have the incredible opportunity to wage. So - get out of here. Spend some time noticing where you have the most Resi= stance - that=E2=80=99s where to go. Quickly and efficiently build an envir= onment designed for creation. Start to send work to those who will provide = honest feedback - that=E2=80=99s how far you have to go. Forgive yourself w= hen it doesn=E2=80=99t go as planned - it never will. Don=E2=80=99t let any= thing keep you from doing the one thing that matters - just getting started= =2E I believe in you. My inbox is always open to be a sounding board or honest = critic for your creative work. It isn=E2=80=99t easy, bringing dreams into = reality - Resistance will put up a fight. Good. That means we=E2=80=99re on= the right track. Daydreamer Ventures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts= and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Unsubscribe https://substack.com/redirect/2/eyJlIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9kYXlkcmVhbWV= ydmVudHVyZXMuc3Vic3RhY2suY29tL2FjdGlvbi9kaXNhYmxlX2VtYWlsP3Rva2VuPWV5SjFjMl= Z5WDJsa0lqb3pORGN5TlRnNU9EVXNJbkJ2YzNSZmFXUWlPakU1TXpneU9URXlOaXdpYVdGMElqb= 3hOemMxT0RVeU1qUXlMQ0psZUhBaU9qRTRNRGN6T0RneU5ESXNJbWx6Y3lJNkluQjFZaTAzT1RZ= Mk16RTJJaXdpYzNWaUlqb2laR2x6WVdKc1pWOWxiV0ZwYkNKOS5NQkRqbk9WVy1UQ3d0QjRIS2t= TTU5QMXdHSFRaQi1YRTZGNTY2NU05T1ZBIiwicCI6MTkzODI5MTI2LCJzIjo3OTY2MzE2LCJmIj= p0cnVlLCJ1IjozNDcyNTg5ODUsImlhdCI6MTc3NTg1MjI0MiwiZXhwIjoyMDkxNDI4MjQyLCJpc= 3MiOiJwdWItMCIsInN1YiI6ImxpbmstcmVkaXJlY3QifQ.CKJWHLwZVnlim6enc580wuruOTrao= sRAGeBaoHhUExg? --c66f6c2071dea5d1c89ed9a97830499b6be0f071bc84f240cc1b26735346 Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable = On Dragging Ideas Into Reality
How to approach Resistance and bring your da= ydreams into the land of the living.
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= = =
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here f= or more

On Dragging Ideas Into Reality

How to approach Resistance and bring yo= ur daydreams into the land of the living.

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Zack = Holland
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R= EAD IN APP3D""
 
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The ideas deserve to become real. We must fight for them, for= their right to exist.

Hello friend= s - Zack here with the second installation in the Daydreamer Ventures serie= s, written to provide real and actionable tactics from ancient wisdom and m= odern psychology as we all grow in our journeys to make our dreams a realit= y.

Amazing how quickly time flies by. Has it already been a= month since my first post?

In the spirit of transpar= ency, when I set out to write a weekly newsletter, I dramati= cally underestimated just how difficult it would be. It isn&= #8217;t about the time required, or discovering topics to cover - there is = plenty of both. What I didn’t expect was just how much resistance I w= ould face in the creative battle to write one of these each week.

I actually wrote the first instance of Daydreamer Ventu= res a month before sending it, letting it sit on my desktop taunting me day= after day. What if people hated it? Does the world really need another Sub= stack written by a mid-thirties white guy? What if they read it? Is my writ= ing style too honest for the medium? Not honest enough? Is it too hot in he= re to write? etc….etc…etc…

The overwhelming support and positive response after sending it shou= ld have steeled my resolve to write the second, right? Now it will be easy = from here on out, right?

Wrong. So, so wrong.

Now that the first piece was out, and things actually w= ent well, following it up became a gargantuan task. I created entire startu= p projects over the past month in a surreal effort to avoid sitting in fron= t of my computer and writing this. Psychologists have a name for this - pro= ductive procrastination, where we substitute easier, lower-stakes tasks tha= t still feel industrious to avoid the high-stakes task that actually matter= s.

Piers Steel’s work on temporal motivation th= eory maps the pattern precisely: the more meaningful the= goal, the more likely we are to busy ourselves with everything but the goa= l itself.¹ I cajoled myself, got angry, made up excuses, picked up new hobbies= - hell, I even started running. Running!

<= p style=3D"margin: 0 0 20px 0;color: rgb(54,55,55);line-height: 26px;font-s= ize: 16px;">I tell you all this for one singular reason - to let you know t= hat, as you face down your creative and entrepreneurial fears, conscious or= below the surface, you are far from alone. I have publicly launched five b= usinesses, written pieces read by hundreds of thousands, spoken in front of= hundreds, and launched advertising campaigns viewed by hundreds of million= s - and none of that makes this any easier.

Appropria= te, then, that the topic we’re going to dive into today is just how to drag those stubborn and feisty ideas, kicking and screamin= g, from your head and out into the world. In echo of the fir= st post, we’re going to consult with the sages of philosophical histo= ry, as well as the academics pushing modern research forward, all for one s= acred mission: to arm you, the one reading these words at this exact moment= , with as many tools as possible so that you can bring those beautiful and = unique ideas, that only you can create, into the world of reality.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most im= portant battlefields in the fight for today’s culture. In a world tha= t would love for you to stay sedated and scrolling, commenting instead of c= reating - made even worse by rapidly increasing reliance on artificial thou= ght-finishers - you must produce original work. It does not matter what it = is, and it does not matter if it reaches one person or one million.

If we do not exercise our natural right to pull our daydreams int= o the mortal plane, we will lose much, much more than our ability to write.= We will lose our ability to think for ourselves, to form unique opinions, = and to stand in opposition to forces that require our complacency and feed = on our silence.

It may seem like a ridiculous concept= that getting a group of people together to build that software idea you ha= ven’t been able to get out of your head, or finally sitting down at a= cafe without distractions to start your book, or opening the bakery of you= r dreams, or actually getting the paints down from the shelf on a breezy Su= nday afternoon, can save the world. But it is the only way, that I know of,= to begin to. It is what makes us human, at the deepest level of our existe= nce. It is vital.

So - why is it so damn hard? What is this dark cloud that approa= ches when we innocently try to build, make and create?

It is impossible to write = a piece like this without starting with Steven Pressfield and his discussio= n of Resistance in The War of Art. Pressfield writes,

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and = the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

<= /blockquote>

That has always struck me as one of the cleanest p= ossible descriptions of the problem. The obstacle is rarely a lack of dream= s. It is the pressure that rises up the moment we try to make them real.

When shaped in this way, we can give that over-arching pressu= re against creation a name, and by doing so, start to build systems to batt= le it. Resistance rears its ugly head in many forms - boredom, annoyance, b= usy-ness, loneliness, anxiety, just to name a few. But make no mistake, no = matter which form it takes, resistance is the enemy. It is the single large= st obstacle standing in between you and the life of your dreams. It has man= y names, but it is evil in every one of them. It will take from you, and ne= ver give anything in return. For those of us who are dreamers, it will be t= he battle of our lifetimes. Each day you can defeat Resistance is a day wel= l-lived, simple as that.

The first crucial step in taking d= own a complex and flexible enemy like this is understanding how it works. S= o let’s review a few core principles that are immutable and transfera= ble to any person and any creative act.

1. The scop= e and severity of the resistance is in direct proportion to how important t= he work is.

Understanding this is a major key in y= our fight to live a fulfilling life in alignment with your purpose. If doin= g something is easy, and you face no resistance at all in the doing of it, = it is simply not very important. If you are terrified of it, or always too = busy for it, pay close attention to that project.

<= em>Pressfield’s own formulation is worth keeping in mind here: “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evol= ution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” <= /p>

Modern psychology points in a remarkably simila= r direction. Researchers studying perfectionism and fear of failure have fo= und that procrastination is often not laziness at all, but an approach-avoi= dance conflict: we want the thing, but precisely because it matters so much= , it becomes threatening.= 78; The project matters, so failure feels loaded with shame, j= udgment, exposure, and consequences for how we see ourselves. Th= at is why the thing you care most about so often acquires this s= trange force field around it.

In this way, Resistanc= e can be a blessing, and a natural compass in the messy confusion of modern= life. Once you train yourself to noticing Resistance, and measuring the sc= ope of it, you can naturally discover what is most important to you - and, = in doing so, progress towards the life that you spend your days dreaming of= =2E

So instead of berating yourself, or losing the plot= to anxious turmoil, try seeing Resistance as a necessary map towards your = goals. That single flip in perspective can make all the difference. Kierkeg= aard had a beautiful line for this sort of feeling. He called anxiety ̶= 0;the dizziness of freedom.”³ In other words, sometimes the panic is not proof = that you are weak or unserious. Sometimes it is proof that you are standing= in front of a real possibility.

Rollo May, th= e psychologist who may have done more than anyone to bridge philosophy and = clinical practice, arrived at essentially the same conclusion a century lat= er. In The Courage to Create, he argued that anxiety and creativity are ins= eparable - that the encounter with genuine creative possibility always prod= uces anxiety, because it requires destroying the old pattern to make room f= or the new one. He called it “the anxiety of creating.”<= span class=3D"footnote-anchor-email" data-component-name=3D"FootnoteAnchorT= oDOMStatic" style=3D"font-size: 20px;">⁴ If Kierkegaard = gave us the diagnosis, May gave us permission to stop treating it as a dise= ase.

2. Building an environment, and a proce= ss, that works for you specifically makes all the difference.

<= p style=3D"margin: 0 0 20px 0;color: rgb(54,55,55);line-height: 26px;font-s= ize: 16px;">When finding your own way through the minefield of Resistance i= n your pursuit of creation, no idea is too silly. I bought an old laptop fo= r $100 that has nothing but WordPad and Spotify installed to help remove di= stractions.

That instinct, as ridiculous as it may sound, i= s actually well supported by behavioral research. One of the clearest findi= ngs in modern psychology is that intention alone is a very poor predictor o= f behavior. We mean to do things all the time and still fail to do them.

Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation inte= ntions offers one of the cleanest solutions: instead of saying “I sho= uld work on my novel” or “I need to build the prototype,”= you turn the desire into a specific if-then plan.

<= span>If it is 7:30 tomorrow morning and I am at the kitchen table, then I o= pen the document and write for twenty minutes. If it is 9 p.m. and I sit on= the couch, then I sketch the user flow instead of opening my phone.= ⁵ The specificit= y is not fluff. It is the mechanism. In a meta-analysis with Sheeran coveri= ng nearly a hundred independent studies, implementation intentions showed a= medium-to-large effect size - an unusually robust result for a psychologic= al intervention that costs nothing and takes seconds to form.⁶

However, an= d this is a critical piece - do not allow the process of building the ̶= 0;perfect” environment to create become a form of Resistance. Listen = to yourself and your rhythms. Make your mind up about the right environment= to pull your creativity into the world. And sit down and get it done. You = don’t need a new pen or a comfier desk chair or to adjust the AC. Get= started.

3. Creating, but never sharing, is the sa= me as not creating at all.

While it’s tempti= ng to imagine yourself as a tortured artist whose art will just never be ap= preciated by the world, so it isn’t worth sharing - that is just, you= guessed it, our old friend Resistance. To really bring your daydreams into= reality, they must be accessible by independent thinkers. As frightening a= s it may be, they must be judged by the markets, the algorithms, and expert= s of the field.

This is one of the hardest truths for= creative people, because the private idea remains perfect for as long as i= t stays private. The instant you share it, it becomes vulnerable to reality= =2E But reality is the only place where= improvement lives. There is a reason=20= the famous story from Art & Fear has stuck around for so long: the stud= ents graded on quantity ended up producing the best work, while the student= s obsessed with making one perfect piece largely froze. The lesson is bruta= l and liberating at the same time. Volume teaches. Exposure teaches. Realit= y teaches. Perfection, in isolation, teaches almost nothing.⁷

In the= same vein, Ira Glass once described what happens to many beginners in crea= tive work: you start because you have good taste, but your ability does not= yet match your taste. So your early work disappoints you. His prescription= was not to think harder, or wait for inspiration, or protect your self-ima= ge. It was to do a huge volume of work. Finish things. Put yourself on dead= lines. Let repetition close the gap.⁸

Simone de Beauvoir makes what = is perhaps the deepest philosophical case for why sharing matters. In The E= thics of Ambiguity, she argues that freedom only becomes rea= l through concrete projects - that an intention which stays purely internal= is not yet freedom but only the dream of it.⁹

In the same way as the measure of Resistance tells us the dir= ection to walk, feedback tells us how far we have yet to go. Wrote a book a= nd it didn’t receive any responses from publishers? Great, you learne= d how far you have to go. Launched a new product to a lukewarm response? Pe= rfect, now you know the amount of work to be done.

Th= is is also where Epictetus becomes useful. You control your effort, your in= tention, your craft. You do not control reception, timing, or how the world= responds.¹⁰ If you confuse those categories, you will freeze. If you separate= them cleanly, the act of sharing becomes survivable.

As we’ve seen with my newsletter consistency, we’re all = going to mess up. We’re going to have times when Resistance was just = too cunning, and the tricks and hallucinations it cooked up succeeded in th= rowing us off our valiant path of creation. So what?

You kn= ow who never misses the mark? Those who never try.

It is actually in the fact that you are battling Resistance that you know = you are on your way. It’s bringing out the big guns for you. It’= ;s worried. It should be - you may have lost your way for a moment there, b= ut you’ve learned. You’ve evolved.

= Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy is helpful here. One of the st= rongest predictors of whether someone will attempt a task is not merely whe= ther they are capable of doing it, but whether they believe they can do it.= ¹¹

And that belief is built primarily through what Bandu= ra called mastery experiences - small acts of actual follow-through. Not fa= ntasies. Not self-esteem slogans. Not vibes. Real evidence.

<= td class=3D"content" align=3D"left" width=3D"1024" style=3D"text-align: cen= ter;">=

There is an importan= t distinction here that Kristin Neff’s research on self-compassion he= lps clarify. Self-esteem, the thing most of us chase, is contingent - it ri= ses when you succeed and collapses when you fail. Self-compassio= n holds regardless, because it does not require you to be exceptional.= Neff’s studies found that self-compassion, not self-esteem, pr= edicted willingness to try again after failure.¹² The person who can say “= that didn’t work, and I’m still okay” returns to the work= faster than the person whose entire identity was riding on it. This is not= softness. It is the foundation of durability.

Dropp= ing the pretext that it is ever going to be easy allows us to revel in the = battle, celebrate the wins, and forgive ourselves quickly for the misses.

Aristotle said that we become what we do repeatedly. M= ore precisely, in the Nicomachean Ethics, he writes that “we become j= ust by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, = brave by performing brave actions.”¹³

Creative cou= rage works exactly the same way. You do not become a creator by feeling lik= e one. You become a creator by creating, badly at first, inconsistently at = first, imperfectly for a long while, and then better.

5. The antidote to anxiety is action. The response to Resistance is gett= ing started.

There is a reason so many philosophic= al and psychological traditions arrive at this same conclusion. You donR= 17;t need to know how your book is going to end to sit down and start writi= ng the opening paragraph. You don’t need any more market research on = your ideal customer for your startup - you need to build a prototype and ge= t it in front of real users. You don’t need another online course. Yo= u need to sit down, and start.

William James made this argu= ment in 1890 with a clarity that still hasn’t been surpassed:

“Action seems to follow feelin= g, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action,= which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regu= late the feeling.”= 5;⁴

More than a century lat= er, clinical psychology arrived at essentially the same place. Behavioral a= ctivation, a treatment originally developed for depression, is based on the= principle that most of us instinctively resist: action = precedes motivation, not the reverse.¹⁵

We wait = to feel inspired, clear, ready, confident. But in practice, those feelings = so often arrive only after movement has begun. The original finding by Jaco= bson and colleagues was striking - the behavioral activation component alon= e performed as well as full cognitive behavioral therapy, implying that you= don’t need to fix your thinking first. You just need to move.

Exposure therapy offers another useful parallel. The fear s= tays powerful when all you do is avoid the thing that scares you. The mind = updates only when you confront the feared act and discover that the catastr= ophe you predicted either does not happen, or does not destroy you.<= span class=3D"footnote-anchor-email" data-component-name=3D"FootnoteAnchorT= oDOMStatic" style=3D"font-size: 20px;">¹⁶ That is t= rue in therapy, and it is true in creative life.

So = yes - the antidote to anxiety is action. Not because action magically erase= s uncertainty, but because it gives uncertainty something real to collide w= ith.

We become brave by doing brave things. J= ohn Murray wrote, in a passage long misattributed to Goethe, that “th= e moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.”<= /span>¹⁷

The line has been borrowed and mangled for cent= uries, but the spirit of it survives every misquotation: commitment itself = unlocks momentum. The decision to begin is not merely the first step. It is= the step that makes the rest of them possible.

There= is another reason getting started matters so much. Bluma Zeigarnik and Mar= ia Ovsiankina found, nearly a century ago, that once a task has been starte= d, the mind has a much harder time letting it go.¹⁸

Un= finished work lingers. It tugs at you. The original insight came from Zeiga= rnik’s teacher, Kurt Lewin, who noticed that waiters in a Viennese re= staurant could recall every detail of open orders but forgot them entirely = the moment the bill was paid.

Student and teacher had= stumbled onto something fundamental about how the mind treats unfinished b= usiness. More recent work has shown that uncompleted goals can create intru= sive thoughts, but that making a concrete plan for completion can reduce th= at cognitive load.¹S= 13;

So if the work feels impossible, there is good n= ews: you do not need to heroically finish it tonight. You just need to star= t it in a real enough way that your brain begins to treat it as active.

=

That’s it. Start. Do it now. Stop reading this and begin. And don’t let anything distract= you - work until you’ve put work out into the world that is greeted = with positive reactions from independent critics and then start working on = what is next. That’s the cycle. That’s the holy war we have the= incredible opportunity to wage.

So - get out of her= e. Spend some time noticing where you have the most Resistance - that’= ;s where to go. Quickly and efficiently build an environment designed for c= reation. Start to send work to those who will provide honest feedback - tha= t’s how far you have to go. Forgive yourself when it doesn’t go= as planned - it never will. Don’t let anything keep you from doing t= he one thing that matters - just getting started.

I b= elieve in you. My inbox is always open to be a sounding board or honest cri= tic for your creative work. It isn’t easy, bringing dreams into reali= ty - Resistance will put up a fight. Good. That means weR= 17;re on the right track.

Daydreamer Ve= ntures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support = my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Upgrade to paid
1

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic a= nd theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychologi= cal Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. See also Steel, P. (2011). The Procrasti= nation Equation.

2

Covington, M. V. (2000). Goal theory, motivation, and school achievement= =2E Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 17= 1–200. See also Conroy, D. E., W= illow, J. P., & Metzler, J. N. (2002). Multidimensional fear of failure= measurement: The Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory.

<= div class=3D"footnote" data-component-name=3D"FootnoteToDOMStatic" style=3D= "line-height: 26px;display: flex;font-size: 90%;flex-direction: row;align-i= tems: baseline;border-top: none;padding-top: 0;">3<= div class=3D"footnote-content" style=3D"font-size: 16px;line-height: 26px;d= isplay: block;">

Kierkegaard, S. (1844). The Co= ncept of Anxiety (published under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis). =

4

May, R. (197= 5). The Courage to Create. W. W. Norton & Company.

5

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implemen= tation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 5= 4(7), 493–503.

6

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intent= ions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advanc= es in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. Reported medium-to-= large effect size (d =3D .65) across 94 independent studies.

7

Bayles, D., & Orland, T= =2E (1993). Art & Fear: Observation= s on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artma= king. Note: the ceramics-class story is an illustrative anecdote from the b= ook, not a formal study.

8

Glass, I. (2009). On storytelling and creative work. Interview, = Current TV. Commonly referenced as “The Gap.”

9

De Beauvoir, S. (1947). The Eth= ics of Ambiguity (Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté). Translat= ed by Bernard Frechtman, Philosophical Library, 1948.

10

Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1–2.= See also Discourses, 2.5.

11

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory o= f behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. See also B= andura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W. H. Freeman.

12

Neff, K. D. (2= 011). Self-compassion, self-esteem, and well-being. Social and Personality = Psychology Compass, 5(1), 1–12. See also Neff, K. D., Hsieh, Y., &= ; Dejitterat, K. (2005). Self-compassion, achievement goals, and coping wit= h academic failure. Self and Identity, 4(3), 263–287.

=
13

Aristotle, Nicomachean Eth= ics, Book II, 1103a–1103b.

14

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Chapte= r XXV: “The Emotions.”

15

Jacobson, N. S., Martell, C. R., & Dimidjian, S. = (2001). Behavioral activation treatment for depression: Returning to contex= tual roots. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 8(3), 255–270.= See also Dimidjian, S. et al. (2006) for the component analysis trial demo= nstrating BA matched full CBT.

16

Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., Zbozinek, T., = & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learn= ing approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10–23.

17

Murray, W. H. (1951). The= Scottish Himalayan Expedition. J. M. Dent & Sons. The passage beginnin= g “Until one is committed” is Murray’s own; the couplet o= ften appended (”Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it”= ;) is a loose translation from Goethe’s Faust, popularized but not or= iginated by Murray.

18

Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Über das Behalten erledigter und unerle= digter Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1–85. See also Ovsian= kina, M. (1928). Die Wiederaufnahme unterbrochener Handlungen.

19

Masicamp= o, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can= eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personali= ty and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.

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