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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.
If you're dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for. That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.
Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact the addiction instead of embracing the calling. Why? Because to follow a calling requires work. It's hard. It hurts. It demands entering the pain-zone of effort, risk, and exposure. So we take the amateur route instead. Instead of composing our symphony, we create a "shadow symphony," of which we ourselves are the orchestra, the conductor, the composer, and the audience. Our life becomes a shadow drama, a shadow start-up company, a shadow philanthropic venture.
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.
Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed.
The habits and addictions of the amateur are conscious or unconscious self-inflicted wounds. Their payoff is incapacity. When we take our M1903 Springfield and blow a hole in our foot, we no longer have to face the real fight of our lives, which is to become who we are and to realize our destiny and our calling.
Fear is the primary color of the amateur's interior world. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking foolish, fear of under-achieving and fear of over-achieving, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of death.
The amateur has a long list of fears. Near the top are two: Solitude and silence. The amateur fears solitude and silence because she needs to avoid, at all costs, the voice inside her head that would point her toward her calling and her destiny.
The amateur, the addict and the obsessive all want what they want now. The corollary is that, when they get it, it doesn't work. The restlessness doesn't abate, the pain doesn't go away, the fear comes back as soon as the buzz wears off.
THE AMATEUR WILL BE READY TOMORROW
When we turn pro, we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
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
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THE PROFESSIONAL WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED The amateur tweets. The pro works.
The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards. He will murder his darlings without hesitation, if that's what it takes to stay true to the goddess and to his own expectations of excellence.
Never train your animal to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more.
THE PROFESSIONAL LIVES IN THE PRESENT
INSPIRATION We're all nothing without the Muse. But the pro has learned that the goddess prizes labor and dedication beyond any theatrical seeking of her favors. 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 amateur is an acolyte, a groupie. The professional may seek instruction or wisdom from one who is further along in mastery than he, but he does so without surrendering his self-sovereignty.
The amateur hoards his knowledge and his reinforcement. He believes that if he shares what he possesses with others, he will lose it. The professional is happy to teach. He will gladly lend a hand or deliver a swift kick. But there's a caveat.
The professional refuses to be iconized. Not for selfish reasons, but because he knows how destructive the dynamic of iconization is to the iconizer. The pro will share his wisdom with other professionals — or with amateurs who are committed to becoming professionals. Like "Art" in Rosanne Cash's dream, he will not waste his time on dilettantes.
The best pages I've ever written are pages I can't remember writing.
When you and I struggle against Resistance (or seek to love or endure or give or sacrifice), we are engaged in a contest not only on the material, mental, and emotional planes, but on the spiritual as well. The struggle is not only to write our symphony or to raise our child or to lead our Special Forces team against the Taliban in Konar province. The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.
