If you are ill get a treatment

If you are evil do good

But if you want to turn your back on acting like an amateur, you need to go pro.
What separates a Pro from an Amateur are their habits.

An Amateur replaces the work of being a Pro with an addiction and they work it for all it is worth. Busy living in the past or dreaming about the future. Anything to avoid doing the real work.
Ambition is critical. Embrace the unique calling of your soul. Silence and solitude are required to feel it and then act upon it.

Shadow Career. What is your current life a metaphor for? Shadow careers have plot, texture, and action and it can even be exciting but what it lacks is risk, exposure, and effort.

Distractions are displacement activities. An Amateur pursues a shadow career as a way of avoiding their demons.

Addiction/amateur.
Beautiful Losers. Colourful stories and boring lives. Think addiction.

The amateur draws attention to themselves, not their work. Character. Personality. Ego.

An Amateur is an egotist. They have characters, personalities, and stories of a life lived. Filling their lives with addiction, unhelpful habits, and other stuff.
Artist/PRO – effort, risk, and exposure.

A Pro is invisible. Pro goes unnoticed. With a focus on the work. No drama, just a simple life.

A Pro is bored of their own BS.

Calling: What is our unconsciousness trying to tell us?

An Amateur has talents that are unexplored, untried, and unrealised. Their life is full of repetition without progress. Incapacity is their payoff. The work gets left undone.

Addicted to Failure: Off the hook. Incapacitated. An avoidance of bringing dreams and visions to bear.

Self-inflicted wounds: Malingering. The sign of an Amateur.

As a writer, the cure is to type THE END. Know you have beaten resistance.

Depth and focus vs shallow and unfocused.
The Amateur lives in fear of being kicked out by the tribe. The Pro acts in the face of fear.

The Amateur identifies with his ego. He believes he is himself. That’s why he is terrified.
The Amateur desires 3rd part validation. They fear being themselves. Better to fit in than to stick out. Inauthentic.
The paradox: Self-inflation prevents acting.

The Pro seeks the silence and solitude required to listen to their calling. The voices inside their head. The alternative is to be busy.

If the Amateur had empathy for himself he could look in a mirror and love what he see’s. Compassion. The Amateur loathes themself and others. Lacks empathy.

The Amateur seeks permission. They give away their power. But when you hit rock bottom there is no one else but you. GOOD!

Define Self: Fear of self-definition is what keeps an Amateur an Amateur.

What a Pro is most afraid of is what we have to do. Rather than run away they turn and face their fear.
“Where the fear is there is the Task. Carl Jung.

An Amateur works within their known range.

The Pro has the desire to be in the trenches. Taking risks outside of their zone of comfort. The alternative is the morphine sleep of success.

The Pro drops their self-delusion. Acceptance of incompetence. Tired of their own BS.

“Refine your skills to support your instincts.” Linda Ronstadt.

The Pro has reality and humility. And has experienced a good dose of shame.

When a Pro falls short they are not afraid to reinvent their work to keep true to their expectations.

A Pro gets two salaries. The obvious materialistic shizzle and the benefit of having a practice.
A lack of material reward tests our rumble in our basement. If we don’t enjoy it and we are not getting paid. Why would we continue? This is the place from which our practice grows.

The epiphany moment. We gain respect for our craft. With no one to impress but ourselves our practice is full of intention, commitment, and dedication.

We have a right to our labours but to the fruits of our labours.

The Amateur lives between fear and hope. The Pro lives in the moment.
Beware of creating icons. We give away some of our power through validation and comparison when we make icons.

The Pro trusts the mystery. We no longer have to worry about “What’s in the box?” The muse always delivers.

The Pro elevates themself to a higher plain from Ego to Self.

By trusting their instinct the Pro works above their head often not knowing how they did what they did.

The Pro plays for Tomorrow. Process today. Progress tomorrow.

The Pro is prepared to play hurt and keep going.

The Pro identifies the sin and eliminates it.

The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns.