Turning Pro: Amateur Habits vs. Professional Habits
To experience success in your most important work, you must first commit to turning Pro. Keep reading to learn (1) the difference between an amateur and a pro (à la Steven Pressfield), (2) why it’s important to eat the sh*t sandwich (à la Mark Manson), and (3) my #1 trick for finding inspiration (it’s not what you think).
“‘Ah,’ I learned to say when I would inevitably begin to lose heart for a project just a few weeks after I’d enthusiastically begun it. ‘This is the part of the process where I wish I’d never engaged with this idea at all. I remember this. I always go through this stage.’”
here’s what you’ll learn from this article:
The difference between an amateur and a pro.
Why it’s important to eat the sh*t sandwich.
My #1 trick for finding inspiration—it’s not what you think!
Let’s get to it!
REWIND TO RESISTANCE
I briefly touched upon Steven Pressfield’s concept of Resistance a few weeks ago.
Let’s rewind it back to Resistance (yes, with a capital ‘R’) for a minute.
Resistance is one of the biggest barriers you’ll face in the journey to lighting up the world with your gifts and living the life you were born to live.
It’s an invisible, morphing energy whose primary goal is to keep you (and each + every human) from doing your most important, soul-evolving work.
Not a single soul on this planet is immune to Resistance.
Resistance is a force each of us is up against, no matter how much natural-born talent we have or how many decades of experience we bring to the table.
Resistance’s favorite time to show up is whenever you’re about to start something important to your soul’s evolution. It’s as if it can detect an imminent positive transformation.
We know that consistency of the brave, fear-facing type is one of the best ways to fight Resistance.
But there’s something more to clarify here.
To wage a successful war on Resistance, you must consistently engage the habits of a professional. You must also relinquish the habits of an amateur.
“Aspiring artists defeated by Resistance share one trait. They all think like amateurs. They have not yet turned pro.” — Steven Pressfield
MEET THE AMATEUR
Friends, meet the amateur.
In his brilliant book The War of Art*, Steven Pressfield describes the Amateur as someone who plays for fun not for keeps.
Playing for fun sounds innocent, right? It sounds like the pursuit of passion.
But as I mentioned last week, passion is overrated. And so are the shortsighted, fun-seeking gains of an amateur.
The amateur teeters indecisively between hobby and vocation. Teetering is exhausting. At some point, you’ve got to leap or you’re going to fall.
“The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning ‘to love.’ The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his ‘real’ vocation.” — Steven Pressfield
Think about someone you admire. Has your mind made the (false) assumption that this person always feels like doing her most important work?
If it has, bring awareness to that falsehood—and tell your mind to knock it. 🙅♀️ That’s a bunch of mind-made baloney.
The difference between an amateur and a pro isn’t the amount of motivation, passion, creativity, or inspiration they each experience.
The difference between them is that the pro takes action no matter how she feels, whereas the amateur is enslaved by her feelings/circumstances and only does her most important work when the stars align.
We’ll say this again, because it’s so important: An amateur only does her most important, soul-evolving work when she feels like doing it.
Specifically, the amateur...
Shows up when she feels like it.
Is noncommittal.
Has big dreams but only commits to them in her mind (easy), not in her day-to-day actions (hard).
Makes excuses.
Complains about circumstances.
Treats fear as a BEWARE: DO NOT ENTER sign rather than a guiding light.
Waits for inspiration.
Over-identifies with her work.
Seeks cheap thrills in her work instead of slow-burn fulfillment and progress.
Obeys the Instant Gratification Monkey.
Is the shriveled, shrunken balloon.
MEET THE PRO
Friends, meet the Pro.
A Pro does her most important, soul-evolving work no matter how she feels.
In The War of Art*, Steven Pressfield describes the Professional as someone who:
Shows up every day.
Is committed over the long haul.
Stays on the job all day.
Accepts no excuses.
Has high stakes.
Acts in the face of fear.
Doesn’t over-identify with her work.
Receives praise or blame in the real world—meaning, in the wise words of Brené Brown, she’s in the arena as opposed to shouting from the sidelines.
Is patient—she understands the fulfilling concept of delayed gratification.
Doesn’t show off or boast. There’s no need to because her work speaks for itself.
Doesn’t take failure (or success) personally.
Views her work as craft, not art. “She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique.”
Bottom line: If you want to win the war on Resistance, enact the habits of a Professional.
Turning Pro is the greatest threat to Resistance.
When you decide to turn pro, Resistance knows it’s doomed. It’ll still show up, yes, but it knows it doesn’t stand a chance now that you’ve leveled-up.
THE SH*T SANDWICH
To blend the musings of Mark Manson, Liz Gilbert*, and Steven Pressfield*:
When you turn pro, it means you love something enough that you don’t really mind eating the inevitable sh*t sandwich that comes along with it.
“Everything sucks, some of the time.” — Mark Manson
Sounds negative, but what Mark is saying here 👆 is that the things we most want to achieve—dreams included—involve sacrifices.
No soul-fulfilling endeavor is fueled by passion or inspiration all the time or even most of the time.
“So, the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days.” — Mark Manson
Mark suggests that we all consider what unpleasant experiences we’re able to handle when it comes to our most important work.
For instance…
If you want to be a comedian, are you able to have people laugh you off the stage repeatedly until you get it right?
If you want to be a published author, are you able to endure negative public reviews along with praise? You can’t please everyone when your aim is to make big, meaningful waves.
Every dream-manifestor there ever was has made her dream a reality because of a humbled willingness to eat the sh*t sandwich that came along with it.
This doesn’t mean the dreamer enjoyed eating the sh*t sandwich. Rather that she ate it because she recognized it as being entwined with the dream.
There’s not a dream out there that doesn’t come with a sh*t sandwich. The key isn’t to avoid the sh*t sandwich—that’s impossible. The key is recognizing it’s a tradeoff.
Find the work that is so fulfilling, so soul-evolving that you can tolerate the sh*t sandwich that comes with it.
The amateur sees the sh*t sandwich and runs. The professional sees the sh*t sandwich and says, “Got any mustard?”
THE STALE SPAM SANDWICH
Through the years, I’ve noticed that the sh*t sandwich has a slightly less icky friend.
When it comes to our most important work, there’s another sandwich of the more edible—and yet still entirely undesirable—variety that every Professional must eat…
The stale spam sandwich.
When you turn Pro, sh*t sandwiches are eaten on occasion, stale spam sandwiches are eaten daily.
The stale spam sandwich represents Resistance, boredom, lack of motivation, etc. All the mind baggage you, as a Professional, must overcome on a regular basis in order to make real, game-changing progress.
The Pro accepts that the stale spam sandwich is part of the professional game. It must be eaten. Best to get it over with.
The Amateur, on the other hand, avoids the stale spam sandwich like the plague.
In fact, the Amateur’s biggest mistake is chasing down new and tasty sandwiches that have little or nothing to do with her most important work.
In doing so, she spreads herself thin by chasing down cheap thrills disguised as “work” (think IGM here).
Instead of hunkering down with the stale spam sandwich, the Amateur says, “Nah, I don’t feel like eating that today.”
And then she seeks out any sandwich (whether it moves the needle forward on her dreams or not) that feels more exciting than the spam sandwich.
This is the amateur’s greatest weakness, her Achilles' heel.
What the amateur doesn’t realize is that everything she’s always wanted—all the good stuff, the fulfilling stuff, the rewarding stuff—is on the other side of that stale spam sandwich.
She’d find soul-expanding fulfillment if only she could stop chasing instantly gratifying sandwiches and just eat the stale one in front of her.
IF YOU CONSISTENTLY (ATTEMPT TO) BUILD IT, INSPIRATION WILL COME
“I wrote every day throughout my twenties… On bad days, when I felt no inspiration at all, I would set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and make myself sit there and scribble something, anything.” — Liz Gilbert, Big Magic
The professional doesn’t wait for inspiration to strike. The professional takes herself too seriously for that.
Experience has taught the professional that if she shows up for her most important work, inspiration and creativity will show up for her.
She knows that inspiration is fickle. It can’t be relied upon to move her to action.
Instead, the professional embraces the Universal truth that inspiration seeks those who consistently show up to do their most important work.
Inspiration isn’t a mystery. It’s an energy. And it’s magnetized to those who show up in spite of its absence.
If you trust in its magic and consistently enact the habits of a Pro, inspiration will find you, grab you excitedly by the hand, and lead you through doors you didn’t know existed.
INTENTION
I embody the habits of a professional. I do my most important work regardless of my feelings or circumstances.
3 RESOURCES
Article: 7 Strange Questions that Help You Find Your Life Purpose by Mark Manson
Book: Big Magic* by Liz Gilbert
Book:Turning Pro* by Steven Pressfield
*This is an affiliate link. Purchasing through affiliate links helps fund us at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!
