The Daily Stoic - The Professional — An Excerpt from Steven Pressfield’s “Turning Pro”

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

In this excerpt Steven talks about the difference between an amatuer and a professional, the qualities that a professional expresses, and he explains what it takes to become a professional at whatever you do. Published by Recorded Books on Brilliance Audio.📕 Grab a copy of “Turning Pro” at the Painted Porch Bookshop✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you for listening. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily, still a podcast I've or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holliday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've made no secret about my deep admiration for Stephen Pressfield. In fact, I'm not sure you would be listening to this podcast if Stephen's writings hadn't so influenced me over the years. Not just in the war against the resistance,

but the idea of turning pro, getting really good at a craft mastering it, dedicating oneself to it, all these ideas from Stephen's writings have changed me so, so much. And I ended up reaching out to Stephen to ask if he would let us excerpt some of that, and he did. He today's excerpt comes from Turning Pro, one of my absolute favorite books from Stephen. We have signed copies of it in the painted porch, which I will link to in today's episode. In this one, Steve is talking about the difference between an amateur and a professional,

and the qualities that one must have to be a pro at whatever it is that you're doing, not just a pro athlete or a pro writer, whatever, but a pro period. And I think you're really going to like this episode. This was published by Recorded Books on Brilliant's Audio, so thank you to their permission. I'll link to that. If you haven't listened to the audiobook of Turning Pro, it's a great motivational book. And I pick up either the War of Art or Turning Pro. Pretty much anytime I start a creative project, so hopefully this can be something that gets you going as well.

45. The amateur lives in the past. Because the amateur owns nothing of spirit in the present, she either looks forward to a hopeful future or backward to an idyllic past. But the past evoked by the amateurs' make-believe. It never existed. It's a highlight reel that she edited together from events that almost took place or should have occurred. In a way the amateurs re-imagined past is worse when it's true, because then it's really gone.

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present. 47. The amateur gives his power away to others. Have you ever followed a guru or a mentor? I have. I've given my power away to lovers and spouses. I've sat by the phone.

I've waited for permission. I've turned in work and awaited trembling the judgment of others. I've given away my power subtly with a glance that was perceptible to no one. And I've given away overtly and shamelessly for all the world to see.

Exile, failure, and banishment can be good things sometimes, because they force us to act from our own center and not from someone else's. I applaud your story of how you hit bottom, because at the bottom there's no one there but yourself. 48. The amateur is asleep. The force that can save the amateur is awareness, particularly self-awareness. But the amateur understands, however dimly, that if she truly achieved this knowledge, she would be compelled to act upon it.

To act upon this self-awareness would mean defining herself, i.e. differentiating herself from the tribe, and thus making herself vulnerable to rejection, expulsion, and all the other fears that self-definition elicits. Fear of self-definition is what keeps an amateur and amateur, and what keeps an addict and addict. 49. The Tribe doesn't give a shit. 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 shit, we're free. There is no tribe and there never was.

Our lives are entirely up to us. and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us. 50 part time pros. Sometimes we can be professionals in our shadow careers, but amateurs in our true calling. How many creative directors at Ad Agencies have unfinished novels and screenplays sitting in their office drawers? How many lawyers and doctors do you know who would make sensational SAS or novelists or

historians but beyond the odd op-ed submission never propel themselves past literary first base? I know producers who yearn to be directors, moms who are itching to launch startups, grad students who could solve climate change. Sometimes the reason we choose these careers, consciously or unconsciously, is to produce incapacity. Resistance is diabolical. It can harness our drive for greatness and our instinct for professionalism, and yoke them instead to a shadow profession whose demands will keep us from turning our energies toward their true course. Sometimes it's easier to be a professional in a shadow career than it is to turn pro in our real calling. Now

let's talk about turning pro. 52. How Your Life Changes When You Turn Pro. I said in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two sections before I turn pro and after. This is absolutely true. I didn't change after I turn pro. I did not achieve enlightenment. I'm the same person I always was with the same weaknesses and the same fallabilities. But everything is different since I turn pro. 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. Be brave, my heart, wrote the poet and mercenary, Archylicus. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man killing spears.

Hold your ground. When we turn pro, we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them. 53. How your day changes when you turn pro. When we turn pro, everything becomes simple. Our aim centers on the ordering of our days in such a way that we overcome the fears that have paralyzed us in the past. We now structure our hours not to flee from fear, but to confront it and overcome it. We plan our activities in order to accomplish an aim, and we bring our will to bear so that we stick to this resolution.

This changes our days completely. It changes what time we get up, and it changes what time we go to bed. It changes what we do and what we don't do. It changes the activities we engage in, and with what attitude we engage in them. It changes what we read and what we eat. we engage in them. It changes what we read and what we eat. It changes the shape of our bodies. When we were amateurs, our life was about drama, about denial, and about distraction. Our days were simultaneously full to the bursting point, and achingly, heart-breakingly empty. But we are not amateurs anymore. We are different, and everyone in our lives sees it. 54. How people change when you turn pro.

Turning pro changes how we spend our time, and with whom we spend it. It changes our friends, it changes our spouses and children, it changes who is drawn to us and who is repelled by us. Turning pro changes how people perceive us. Those who are still fleeing from their own fears will now try to sabotage us. They will tell us we've changed and try to undermine our efforts at further change. They will attempt to make us feel guilty for these changes. They will try to entice us to get stoned with them or fuck off with them or waste time with them

as we've done in the past, and when we refuse, they will turn against us and talk us down behind our backs. At the same time, new people will appear in our lives. They will be people who are facing their own fears and who are conquering them. These people will become our new friends. When we turn pro, we will be compelled to make painful decisions. There will be people who in the past had been colleagues and associates, even friends, whom we will no longer be able to spend time with if our intention is to grow and to evolve. We will have to choose between the life time with if our intention is to grow and to evolve. We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left

behind. 55. How your mind changes when you turn pro. Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision. Decision to which we must recommit 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 continue to master them. 56. What Makes Us Turn Pro Turning Pro is a decision, but it's such a monumental life-overturning decision, and one that is usually made only in the face of overwhelming fear, that the moment is frequently accompanied by powerful drama and emotion. Often it's something we've been avoiding for years, something we would never willingly

face unless overwhelming events compelled us to. Turning Pro is like Pearl Harbor or 9-11 or the assassination of President Kennedy. We never forget where we were when it happened. Here are two turning pro moments, both from female friends. 57. Ms. X. in Bakersfield. Ms. X. is an attorney who lives in Los Angeles. Here's her story. I was driving alone from San Francisco to LA. I took Interstate 5 because was faster than

the 101 and I had a meeting I had to get to. I got to Bakersfield around 5 and pulled off to find a gas station. I woke up the next morning in a motel room by myself, and the same clothes I had been wearing the night before, with an empty cord of Jim Beam on the bedstand beside me. Why that time was different from any of a hundred times before I don't know. But as I was staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I heard my own voice say, that's enough, darling. This shit has got to stop. 58. Rosanne Cash's Dream

The following is an excerpt from Rosanne Cash's memoir, Composed. Thanks, Rose, for sharing it. Cash's memoir composed. Thanks Rose for sharing it. A note here, Kings in the first sentence refers to King's Record Shop, the 1987 album that produced four number one singles. It was late in the making of Kings that I had a dream that changed my life. I had met Linda Ronstadt a few times.

In Los Angeles, while I was recording at Laney, when I opened for Bonnie Raid at the Greek Theatre in Linda had come to see the show, and on a number of other occasions, as we traveled in the same circles and worked with many of the same musicians. Her record, heart like a wheel, had profoundly affected me as a young girl, and I had said he did, as a great example of a feminine point of view concept record, the best one since Joni Mitchell's blue I thought, an equally important in the template I was creating for what I might do in my life. I especially admired her thoughtful song selection, which resulted

in a very well-balanced album, and I wanted to make a record with a similarly unified concept, but as a songwriter. Just as I was beginning to record Kings, I had read an interview with her in which she said that in committing to artistic growth, you had to, quote, refine your skills to support your instincts, unquote. This made such a deep impression on me that I clipped the article to save it. A short time after that, I dreamed I was at a party, sitting on a sofa with Linda and an elderly man who was between us. His name, I somehow knew, was art. He and Linda were talking animatedly, deeply engrossed in their conversation. I tried to enter the discussion and made a comment to the old man. He turned his head slowly from Linda to me and looked me up and down with obvious disdain

and an undisguised lack of interest. We don't respect dilatants, he spat out, and turned back to Linda. I felt utterly humiliated and woke from this dream shaken to the core. I had been growing uneasy in my role in the Nashville community and the music business as a whole. I thought of myself primarily as a songwriter, but I had written only three songs on kings. I was famous and successful, but it felt hollow, and the falsehoods were piling up. With more success it had come more pressure to be a certain way to tow a certain line

to start a fan club which I refused to do to participate in big splashy events and to act as if the country music scene were a religion to which I belonged. I resisted the push to conform, to buy into a certain narrow aesthetic and to become part of an established hierarchy. I didn't want a lofty perch. I wanted to be in the trenches where the inspiration was. My unease led me to that dream. Carl Jung said that a person might have five big dreams in her life, dreams that provoke a shift in consciousness, and this was my first. From that moment I changed the way I approach songwriting. I changed how I sang, I changed my work ethic, and I changed my life.

The strong desire to become a better songwriter, Dovetail perfectly with my budding friendship with John Stewart, who had written Runaway Train for King's Record Shop. John encouraged me to expand the subject matter of my songs, as well as my choice of language in my mind. 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 sought out Marge Rivingston and New York to work on my voice, and I started training as if I were a runner in both technique and stamina.

Oddly, it turned out that Marge also worked with Linda, which I didn't know when I sought her out. I started paying attention to everything, both in the studio and out. If I found myself drifting off in a daydreams, an old and tranched 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 read books on writing by Natalie Goldberg and Carolyn Heilbrunne, and began to self-edit and refine more, and went deeper into every process involved with writing and musicianship. I realized I had earlier been working only within my known range, never pushing far outside the comfort zone to take any real risks. I started painting, so I could learn about the absence of words and sound and why I needed them. I took painting lessons from Sharon Orr, who had a series of classes at a studio called Art and Soul. I remained completely humbled by the dream, and it stayed with me through every waking hour of completing

King's record shop. I vowed the next record would reflect my new commitment. Rodney Carall, my then husband, was at the top of his game as a record producer, but I had come to feel curiously like a neophyte in the studio after the dream. Everything seemed new, frightening, and tremendously exciting. I had awakened from the morphine sleep of success into the life of an artist. The Bahamas.

What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game

as he graced the pages of Forbes in Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed.

Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. 59. My own moment of turning pro. The following is from a chapter called Resistance and Healing in the War of Art. I washed up in New York a couple of decades ago, making 20 bucks a night driving a cab and running away full-time from doing my work. One night, alone in my $110 a month sublet, I hit bottom in terms of having diverted myself and is so many phony channels, so many times, that I couldn't rationalize it for one more

evening. I dragged out my ancient Smith, Corona, dreading the experience as pointless, fruitless, meaningless, not to say the most painful exercise I could think of. For two hours I made myself sit there, torturing out some trash that I chucked immediately into the shith can. That was enough. I put the machine away, I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat ten days of dishes.

For some reason I had enough excess energy that I decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in the drying rack. To my amazement, I realized that I was whistling. It hit me that I had turned a corner. I was OK. I would be OK from here on.

Do you understand? I hadn't written anything good. It might be years before I would if I ever did at all. That didn't matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work. Sixty, the nature of epiphanies. We usually think of breakthroughs as ecstatic moments that elevate us from a lower level to a higher,

and they do, but there's a paradox. In the moment, an epiphany feels like hell. Like Rosé and Cash's dream, an epiphany feels like hell. Like Rosanne Cash's dream an epiphany trashes us, it exposes us and leaves us naked. We see ourselves plain and it's not a pretty picture. The essence of epiphany is the stripping away of self-delusion. We thought we were X, now suddenly we see we're minus X. We're X divided by infinity. There is great power in this moment. We've lost something, yes. A cherished self-delusion must be abandoned, and this hurts. But what we have gained is the truth. Our bullshit

falls away. The scales drop from our eyes. In that moment, we have two options. We can reconstitute our Bullshit or we can turn pro. 61. Shame is good. In the post epiphanal moment, we have two things going for us that we didn't have 90 seconds earlier. We have reality and going for us that we didn't have 90 seconds earlier. We have reality, and we have humility. These are powerful allies.

And we have a third force working in our favor, shame. Why shame good? Because shame can produce the final element we need to change our lives. Will. The piffinese hurt. There's no glory to them. They only make good stories at AA meetings or late at night among other foot soldiers in the trenches. These soldiers know each has his own story of that ghastly hideous, excruciating moment when it all turned around for him.

Book 3, the Professional Mindset. 62, Qualities of the Professional. 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. Three, the professional is committed over the long haul. Four, for the professional, the stakes are high and real. Further, the professional is patient.

The professional seeks order. The professional demystifies. The professional acts in the face of fear. The professional accepts no excuses. The professional plays it as it lays. The professional is prepared. The professional does not show off. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help. The professional does not take failure or success personally. The professional

does not identify with his or her instrument. The professional endures adversity. The professional self validates, the professional reinvents herself, the professional is recognized by other professionals. Here are a few additional qualities before we move on to the higher expression of professionalism. 63. A professional is courageous. The professional displays courage, not only in the role she embraces, which inevitably scare the hell out of her, or the sacrifices she makes of time, love, family, or even in the enduring of criticism, blame, envy, and lack of understanding, but above all in the confronting of her own doubts and demons. The linebacker 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. 64. The professional will not be distracted. The amateur tweets the pro works. 65. The professional is ruthless with himself. Picasso was in his Paris studio. This is a true story, with the owner of the gallery where his paintings were displayed and sold. The Spaniard was showing off his latest series of portraits,

which he had labored for months to produce. The gallery owner was ecstatic. He couldn't wait to get these brilliant new works into the gallery and start selling them. Suddenly Picasso seized a palette knife and strode to the first painting. To the gallery owner's horror, Picasso slashed the canvas from end to end. Pablo, adret, Pablo!

But Picasso didn't stop. Blade in hand, he marched down the line of paintings, reducing each one to ribbons. 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. 66. The professional has compassion for herself. I got the chance a few years ago to watch a famous trainer work with his thoroughbreds. I had imagined that the process would be something hard, core-like, Navy SEAL training. To my surprise, the sessions were more like play.

The work was serious as in teaching the two-year-olds to enter the starting gate, and the horses were definitely learning, but the trainer took pains to make the schooling feel like fun. When a horse got tired, the trainer took him off the track. If a mount got bored or restive, the trainer never forced him to continue or drove him, quote, unquote, through the pain. He explained, A horse is a flight animal. Even a stallion, if he can, will choose flight over confrontation. Picture the most sensitive person you've ever known. A horse is ten times more sensitive. A horse is a naked nervous system, particularly a thoroughbred. He's a child. A three-year-old, big and fast as he is, is a baby. Horses understand the whip, but I don't want a racer that runs that way. A horse

that loves to run will be the 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 there and run. Never train your horse to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more. Sixty-seven the professional lives in the present. The amateur spends his time in the past and the future. He permits himself to fear and to hope. The professional has taught himself to banish these distractions. When Steven Sondheim makes a hat, he is thinking of nothing else,

he is immersed, he loses himself in the work and in the moment. 68. The professional deferred gratification. I'm guilty of checking my email. Are you? We're crazy. What do we imagine we're going to find in our inbox? The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox watching. Christian 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 bar, and the movieola.

Fuck the marshmallows. 69. The professional does not wait for inspiration. We are all nothing without the muse, but the pro is 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.

Seventy, the professional does not give his power away to others. The dictionary defines icon as an article, a relic say that once belonged to a saint or a holy man that serves as an object of worship. A person can be an icon. When we make someone into an icon, we give away our power. We say to ourselves, unconsciously, this person possesses qualities I wish I possessed. Therefore, I will worship this person in the hope that that quality will wear off on me, or I will acquire that quality by virtue of my proximity to this mentor, sensei, lover, teacher, hero. In my experience, when we project a quality or virtue onto another human being, we ourselves almost always already

possess that quality, but we are afraid to embrace and to live that truth. The amateur is an acolyte, a groupie. The professional may seek instructional wisdom from one who is further along in mastery than he, but he does so without surrendering his self-sovereignty. 71. The professional helps others. Self-Soveringy. 71. The Professional Helps Others When I first finished the manuscript for Gates of Fire, it was 800 pages long. My agent Sterling Lord, though he loved it, said he couldn't submit it to publishers

unless I cut at least 300 pages. That was like telling me to amputate not one limb, but two. I was devastated. One of the people Sterling had shown the manuscript to was Tom Ginsburg, who had been head of Viking press for years. It was a hell of a thing for someone of Tom Statcher simply to glance at an unknown writer's work. But Tom did more. He sent me a note. I still have it. The central sentence said, there's something great in here, Steve. I have confidence that you will find it and bring it out. I barely knew Tom and he barely knew me. But if you saw the thumbprints I put on that note,

from the dozens of times I picked it up and hung onto its words for inspiration, you would think we were the best of buds from way back. The amateur hoards his knowledge and his reinforcement. He believes to be 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 delitants. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stove Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you.

It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years. We've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.