Steven Pressfield Quotes

Finding your passion isn't just about careers and money. It's about finding your authentic self. The one you've buried beneath other people's needs.

The real rub is finding that authentic self and it's not something that's going to come to you overnight.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself, 'What makes me come alive?' Because what the world - a wife, a child - needs is men who have come alive.

Never think you can separate who you are from what you're doing.

Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are.

I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.

It's important to be self-aware about what people are saying about you, but even more so, be very aware of who you actually are, and to have that be the main priority.

Did you get so caught up in the preoccupancy of a relationship that you lost who you were or were busy in life or career that you, like Adam and Eve, got lost in the garden putting fig leaf after fig leaf title, relationship, this accolade, this saying over you that you forgot who you were and what's life's about? So getting back to the core of that and building life by design, that is authentic.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

Many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be. Getting 'things' simply will not fulfill you. Only living and doing what you believe is 'the right thing' will give you that sense of inner strength that we all deserve.

We talk about self-expression but need to pause and remember that self-expression requires a self to express.

We are meant to discover our authentic nature-the state of being in which we are inspired by ourselves, turned on, lit up, and excited about who we are.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of 'how do we find our authentic selves?' And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?

You have to be someone.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.

I've been through so much of my own self-search that I'm not as consumed with who I am as I used to be.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who you want to be.

I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.

Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.