Turning Pro

by Steven Pressfield

The thesis of this book is that what ails you and me has nothing to do with being sick or being wrong. What ails us is that we are living our lives as amateurs. The solution, this book suggests, is that we turn pro.

What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.

Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.

The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits.

The addict is the amateur; the artist is the professional.

When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling — meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.

Turning pro is an act of self-abnegation. Not Self with a capital-S, but little-s self. Ego. Distraction. Displacement. Addiction. When we turn pro, the energy that once went into the Shadow Novel goes into the real novel. What we once thought was real — "the world," including its epicenter, ourselves — turns out to be only a shadow. And what had seemed to be only a dream becomes, now, the reality of our lives.

All addictions share, among others, two primary qualities. 1. They embody repetition without progress. 2. They produce incapacity as a payoff.

Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed.

When you sit down to do your work, do you leave your web connection on?

I didn't talk to anybody during my year of turning pro. I didn't hang out. I just worked. I had a book in mind and I had decided I would finish it or kill myself. I could not run away again, or let people down again, or let myself down again. This was it, do or die. I had no TV, no radio, no music. No sex, no sports. I didn't read the newspaper. For breakfast I had liver and eggs. I was like Rocky.

The addict seeks to escape the pain of being human in one of two ways — by transcending it or by anesthetizing it.

The artist takes a different tack. She tries to reach the upper realm not by chemicals but by labor and love. (When I say "artist," I mean as well the lover, the holy man, the engineer, the mother, the warrior, the inventor, the singer, the sage, and the voyager. And remember, addict and artist can be one and the same and often are, moment to moment.)

The amateur prizes shallowness and shuns depth. The culture of Twitter and Facebook is paradise for the amateur.

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.

The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.

The amateur dreads becoming who she really is because she fears that this new person will be judged by others as "different." The tribe will declare us "weird" or "queer" or "crazy." The tribe will reject us. Here's the truth: the tribe doesn't give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified.

Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn't have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it. When we truly understand that the tribe doesn't give a damn, we're free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.

Before we turn pro, our life is dominated by fear and Resistance. We live in a state of denial. We're denying the voice in our heads.

We're denying our calling. We're denying who we really are. We're fleeing from our fear into an addiction or a shadow career. What changes when we turn pro is we stop fleeing.

When we turn pro, we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.

Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.

Twelve-step programs say "One Day at a Time." The professional says the same thing. Each day, the professional understands, he will wake up facing the same demons, the same Resistance, the same self-sabotage, the same tendencies to shadow activities and amateurism that he has always faced. The difference is that now he will not yield

to those temptations. He will have mastered them, and he will con...

in committing to artistic growth, you had to "refine your skills to support your instincts."

From that moment I changed the way I approached songwriting, I changed how I sang, I changed my work ethic, and I changed my life.

I played new songs for him and if he thought it was too "perfect," which was anathema to him, he would say, over and over, "but where's the MADNESS, Rose?" I started looking for the madness.

I started paying attention to everything, both in the studio and out. If I found myself drifting off into daydreams — an old, entrenched habit — I pulled myself awake and back into the present moment. Instead of toying with ideas, I examined them, and I tested the authenticity of my instincts musically. I stretched my attention span consciously.

I remained completely humbled by the dream, and it stayed with me through every waking hour of completing

In The War of Art, I listed the following as habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accepts no excuses 10. The professional plays it as it lays 11. The professional is prepared

12. The professional does not show off 13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique 14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help 15. The professional does not take failure or success personally 16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument 17. The professional endures adversity 18. The professional self-validates 19. The professional reinvents herself 20. The professional is recognized by other professionals

A PROFESSIONAL IS COURAGEOUS

THE PROFESSIONAL WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

THE PROFESSIONAL IS RUTHLESS WITH HIMSELF

THE PROFESSIONAL HAS COMPASSION FOR HERSELF

the trainer took pains to make the schooling feel like fun.

A horse that loves to run will beat a horse that's compelled, every day of the week. I want my horses to love the track. I want my exercise riders to have to hold them back in the morning because they're so excited to get out and run.

Never train your animal to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more.

THE PROFESSIONAL LIVES IN THE PRESENT

THE PROFESSIONAL DEFERS GRATIFICATION

Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows.

THE PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT WAIT FOR INSPIRATION

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.

He knows that when the Muse sees his butt in the chair, she will deliver.

THE PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT GIVE HIS POWER AWAY TO OTHERS

In my experience, when we project a quality or virtue onto another human being, we ourselves almost always already possess that quality, but we're afraid to embrace (and to live) that truth.

THE PROFESSIONAL HELPS OTHERS

The professional refuses to be iconized.

When we do the work for itself alone, our pursuit of a career (or a living or fame or wealth or notoriety) turns into something else, something loftier and nobler, which we may never even have thought about or aspired to at the beginning. It turns into a practice.