I mentioned Steven Pressfield and his model of ‘Resistance’ — as a force/’personality’ and ever-changing foe to overcome in your own creative endeavour or ‘life-work’ — in a reply to Graeme yesterday.

I highly recommend Pressfield’s book The War of Art for anyone seeking to move forward … in anything. He writes a ‘Writing Wednesdays’ blog series which, as he says, is ‘in the style of The War of Art‘ and which I read from time to time — it’s always good.

Here’s a link to his recent blog on the ‘uses’ of shame, in which he refers to ‘our hero’ Joseph Welch, dragon-slayer, from a slightly different angle to my post The power of an appeal to decency but hammers the same wonderful, now almost timeless shout:

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

The Uses of Shame

By STEVEN PRESSFIELD | Published: March 17, 2010

Shame is good. Shame is a tremendous weapon against Resistance. Along with habit, momentum, aspiration, anger, eros and joy, shame can be a mighty ally in the never-ending guerrilla campaign against self-sabotage.

What is shame? Shame is the emotion we feel when we are guilty of acts that are unworthy of us.

Resistance hates shame. Because Resistance knows that once we feel shame, we are likely (goaded by this extremely unpleasant sensation) to take action. We are likely to gird our loins, put some starch in our backbone, kick ourselves in the ass–and actually start doing our work….

Do read the whole post at blog.stevenpressfield.com. Very good stuff.