From Steven Pressfield – best known for “The War of Art”  –  Turning Pro is an inspiring instruction manual that’ll help you create the work you were meant to do by dividing your life into two phases, the amateur and the professional, and getting you from one into the other.    Want to earn a living by doing your ‘life’s work’ on something creative?  Or just become truly great at your profession?   Time to look into Turning Pro.

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The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits.  Amateurs have amateur habits.  Professionals have professional habits.

When we are living as amateurs, we are running away from our calling.  Our destiny.  The obligation to be our truest and highest selves.

Addiction is the evil twin of our calling to service – to art.  That’s why addicts are so interesting and so boring at the same time.  Because they are so called to SOMETHING.  Something new.   Something UNIQUE.  Something that those watching can’t wait to see them bring into manifestation.  But they are boring because they never do the work.

Just like someone who doesn’t do the work to go pro.

You have to answer Stanislavski’s 3 Questions

  1. Who am I ?
  2. Why am I here?
  3. What do I want?

Your Resistance to going pro hates 2 qualities above all else:  Concentration and Depth.  Because when we work with concentration, and we work deep, we succeed.

To become an Artist – or a Pro – you generally have to face some sort of exile.  You don’t socialize as much.  You miss things.  Because you have a passion and a mission.  It’s more important.   Pressfield had a year with no radio, tv, booze, sex to write his first book.

The Pro tries to reach The Upper Realm through Labor and Love.   The Upper Realm – as Plato suggested is a sphere of perfect love, truth, justice and beauty .  Then the Artist/Pro seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create – by labor and luck – the closest to sublime simulation of this realm.   And produces the closest thing to Peace of Mind.