Here are some of my highlights from the book Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. I listened to it on audio, read by the author, which I highly recommend. My favorites are in bold.
“The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.”
“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. 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.”
“Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.”
“The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.”
“I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or 99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We're struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, that wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon — I want it. Put me down for it.”
“The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns. You are that hero.”
“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.”
Jump. Build, Fly.
F.C. Shultz