Turning Pro - The fight to become a Professional

In this newsletter:
- A Daily Fight
- Turning Pro
- Characteristics of an Amateur
- Becoming a Professional
- Qualities of a Professional
- The pro mindset to overcome Resistance 

A Daily Fight 

Every day, I get out of bed ready to fight.

It's always the same fight, against the same goddamn opponent. 

You’d think at my age I wouldn’t have to deal with this crap. But I do. 

I prepare for the fight with the same morning ritual – make the bed, cold shower, hydration routine, drink coffee, use the restroom, eat some protein. Then I do some light morning stretches to loosen up before the battle.

Before I enter the ring, I put my phone on silence mode, walk into the other room and leave it there, out of reach.

Then I climb the stairs up to the stage. I enter the cage, the ring where I will confront my enemy. He is always there waiting for me.

I take a seat at my desk, fire up my computer, and the fight starts. The hardest part is over. I begin to write.

You, however, wouldn’t recognize this as a fight. Rather, you’d see me sitting there alone. All by myself.

But I’m not alone. I’m there with my enemy, my own Resistance, the stupid nonsense in my head.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Resistance, from Steven Pressfield's book, The War of Art.

All of us face Resistance. Sometimes we prevail.

We can feel Resistance whenever we try to accomplish anything:

- Eat less sugar
- Write the business plan
- No more gluten
- Update the daily journal
- Cut carbs, add protein
- Talk to investors
- Go to yoga
- Write the screenplay, you know in your heart it’s a good one
- Go heavier in the gym
- Cut back drinking, or quit
- Sit at the piano…and play
- Stop gambling
- Quit porn, read inspirational books instead
- Stop negative self-talk
- Quit smoking, this time for good
- Ignoring everyone else's dramas, addictions, etc...be honest with yourself, you can't change them
- Ignoring the inbox, texting, social media, etc...be honest with yourself, it detracts from your goals

The list goes on.

Every day, we have to fight against our own Resistance.

But now, as I’m typing, my fear subsides. I become calmer. I enter the zone.

There’s peace and serenity. It feels good, like I’m in the right place. I'm now in my flow state. 

After about three hours, I’ve had enough.

I don’t review what I wrote. It doesn’t matter. The fact that I sat there, at my desk, committed to my work, completely focused, means I have prevailed.

I overcame Resistance. 

The fight is over. I beat the son of a bitch again. It’s time for the gym or a long walk, and a jump in the ocean. 

Overcoming Resistance is what Steven Pressfield calls “Turning Pro.”

The fact that I have overcome Resistance is a telltale sign that I am becoming a Professional.

Consistently beating Resistance builds self-confidence. It's the path of the Professional.

Beating Resistance makes me proud of myself. And I'm the only one who knows how hard I worked for it. 

In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield talks about the process of becoming a Professional, of Turning Pro.

Turning Pro

Pressfield writes:
“Turning pro is free, buy it’s not easy. You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.”

“Turning pro is free, but it’s not without cost. When we turn pro, we give up a life with which we may have become extremely comfortable. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own. We may have to give up friends, lovers, even spouses.”

“Turning pro is free, but it demands sacrifice. The passage is often accompanied by an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It hurts. It’s messy and it’s scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro.”

“Turning pro is not for everyone. We have to be a little crazy to do it, or even to want to. In many ways the passage chooses us; we don’t choose it. We simply have no alternative.”

“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.”

The Halfway House

Pressfield’s journey is an interesting one. In his twenties, he lived in a halfway house in Durham, NC.

“In the halfway house, the dominant emotion was fear. No one ever spoke of it, but fear pervaded every centimeter of that space. Everyone in the house had, in his or her own way, experienced the disintegration of their personality. Everyone had fallen a long way, fallen hard, and fallen alone.”

After much introspection, he realized he was different from those in the halfway house. After a big dream, he woke up and thought, “I’m ambitious! I have ambition!”
“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.”

Shadow Careers

Regarding “shadow careers,” he says they are a metaphor for our real career, yet entail no real risk.
“Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies that you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk becoming an innovator yourself?”

Pressfield has had more than one shadow career. Driving tractor-trailers was one of them. He said driving trucks was a shadow version of writing. He said it made him feel “powerful and manly” like what he thought being a writer would be. But, he admits, what he was really doing was running away from writing.
“Every mile I traveled only carried me farther away from where I needed to go and from who I need to become.”

The shadow life he says is the life of the amateur and the addict.

Amateur Habits versus Professional Habits 

Turning Pro, Pressfield says, is about habits. 
“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.”

“Both addict and artist are dealing with the same material, which is the pain of being human and the struggle against self-sabotage. But the addict/amateur and the artist/professional deal with these elements in fundamentally different ways. When I say ‘addiction,’ by the way, I’m not referring only to the serious, clinical maladies of alcoholism, drug dependence, domestic abuse and so forth. Web-surfing counts too. So do compulsive texting, sexting, twittering, and Facebooking.”

Thank you, Steve. I appreciate the reminder. And I couldn’t agree more.

“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. 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.”

“The amateur is an egotist. He takes the material of his personal pain and uses it to draw attention to himself. The artist and professional, on the other hand, have turned a corner in their minds. They have succeeded in stepping back from themselves. They have grown so bored with themselves and so sick of their petty bullshit.”

“Turning pro is an act of self-abnegation [self-denial, self-sacrifice]. Not Self with a capital-S, but a little-s self. Ego. Distraction. Displacement. Addiction.”

When we are younger, we have an aspiration for a higher calling, a “realized self we might become.” But because we are human, this calling is followed by Resistance in the form of fear, self-doubt, self-sabotage.

“Most of us are unconscious of both our aspirations and our Resistance. We’re asleep. We know only that something is wrong, and we don’t know how to fix it. We’re restless. We’re bored. We’re angry. We burn to accomplish something great, but we don’t know where to begin and, even if we did, we’d be so terrified that we still couldn’t take a step.
Enter: a drink, a lover, a habit.
Addiction replaces aspiration.
The quick fix wins over the long, slow haul.” 

Characteristics of an Amateur

Pressfield discusses the qualities that characterize the amateur:

Note: I use “he” or “his” throughout here for simplicity, but it refers to anyone, man, woman, male, female, they, them, etc.

- The amateur is terrified – Fear fills his interior world. Fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness…

- The biggest fear is being excluded from the tribe (the gang, the posse, mother and father, family, nation, race, religion).

- He fears becoming himself – Because that means being different from others and, possibly, violating the expectations of the tribe.

- About the tribe – “The tribe doesn’t give a shit. There is no tribe.”

- The amateur compares himself to others - He competes with others and believes he can’t rise unless a competitor falls.

- He sees himself as the hero - Not only of his own movie, but the movie of others.

- He lives by the opinions of others – He allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. He craves third-party validation.

- He is imprisoned – Imprisoned by what he believes he should think, look like, do and be, in order to fit in.

- He is inauthentic – Because he remains someone other than who he really is.

- He fears solitude and silence – Because he needs to avoid the voice in his head pointing to his calling and destiny. That’s why he seeks distraction.

- He seeks instant gratification – He wants it all now.

- He gets jealous – Often unkind and insensitive to others.

- The amateur seeks permission – From a lover, spouse, parent, boss or some omnipotent other.

- He lives in the past or the future – That way he avoids having to do his work in the present.

- He will be ready tomorrow – He has a million plans, and they all start tomorrow.  

Becoming a Professional

- The voice in our head - We turn pro when we finally listen to that little voice in our head. At last, we have the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we know is our passion, our calling, our destiny.

- Before we turn pro – Our life is dominated by fear and Resistance. We’re in denial. We’re denying the voice in our heads. We’re denying our calling, who we really are.

- After we turn pro – We stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.

- Our day changes when we turn pro – The time we get up, the time we go to bed, how we spend our time.

- The people we are with change when we turn pro – Our friends change, new people are drawn to us, some old friends are repelled by us.

Qualities of a Professional

In Turning Pro, Pressfield highlights these qualities of a professional:

1. Shows up every day
2. Stays on the job all day
3. Is committed over the long haul
4. Knows the stakes are high
5. Is patient
6. Seeks order
7. Demystifies
8. Acts in the face of fear
9. Accepts no excuses
10. Plays it as it lays
11. Is prepared
12. Does not show off
13. Dedicated to mastery
14. Asks for help
15. Does not take failure or success personally
16. Does not identify with his instrument
17. Endures adversity
18. Self-validates
19. Reinvents himself
20. Is recognized by other professionals

Here are a few more noteworthy points Pressfield mentions:

-A professional is courageous – Above all, courageous in confronting his own doubts and demons.
“The linebacker [in football] and the Army Ranger go into action as part of a team. But the artist and the entrepreneur enter combat alone. I take my hat off to every man or woman who does this.”

-The professional will not be distracted – "The amateur tweets. The pro works."

-The professional will 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 pro mindset is a discipline – We use it to overcome Resistance.

“To defeat the self-sabotaging habits of procrastination, self-doubt, susceptibility to distraction, perfectionism, and shallowness, we enlist the self-strengthening habits of order, regularity, discipline, and a constant striving after excellence.”

Turning Pro means overcoming Resistance. 

Thank you for reading! 

Be well,

Peter Pavlina