63: Summoning The Muses

Pressfield, Steven.  The War of Art: Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.  New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2012.  Print.

• Go Pro
• Continually make decisions to beat The Resistance
• Commit to and finish projects – especially when it requires exerting will power
• Believe that sustained good efforts will yield good fruit
• Believe that hard work can unveil hidden talents and hone visible ones
• Believe in and celebrate Your Own Saga
• Believe that committing to growth yields growth
• Self revisions and self corrections naturally arise from sustained and reflective effort
• Listen to one’s dreams and hunches
• Live like you’re dying
• Believe that our connections to our True Selves are Sacred
• Do not fear success
• Know that time limits our ability to do everything.  But there is Time enough to claim Our Destiny.
• Favor territorial over hierarchical orientations:
  • Hierarchical orientations:
    • Value based on rank
    • Leads to competitive behavior
    • Believe in zero-sum game
  • Territorial orientations:
    • Can provide sustenance
    • One’s territory is claimed by hard work
    • Involves committing to and valuing the work one would do at the world’s end
• Contempt for failure, can’t fail when one’s successes are determined by our commitment to the work and its demands
• Do work for its own sake, not for its rewards
• Be a vehicle of The Gifts, not a Hoarder
• Be a Warrior

• Reflect on on the times when one experienced positive unexpected consequences as a result of Going Pro.  Store up those stories as exemplars for sharing with students.
• Research scaffolds that teach oneself and students how to build up the 4 resiliences (weapons against the Resistance).  See  Agency articles for ideas.
• Build up reflection prompts that get students to reflect upon ways they have succeeded in summoning their Muses.

• Acknowledge when a student has succeeded in summoning his or her Muses and praise and celebrate the efforts that resulted in that state.
• Teach students to acknowledge when they are being lifted by Their Muses and to be aware of the strategies and rituals they use to achieve that state
• Ask students to reflect upon and share experiences of times when they successfully summoned their uses.  Use these stories to extract general principles and strategies that can be practiced by teachers and students.

• Let students listen to or read helpful excerpts from The War of Art for inspiration and generative reflections.
• Have students reflection on classroom conditions & strategies that can be improved to help them summon their Muses.  Trial, test, and refine these strategies.

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• Agency articles