What is the metaphor for my current life? Comfortable and all over the place...trying to figure out things and doing multiple things...Trishanku is the metaphor...doing many things but headed no where..
1. The professional shows up every day
2. The professional stays on the job all day
3. The professional is committed over the long haul
4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real
Further:
5. The professional is patient
6. The professional seeks order
7. The professional demystifies
8. The professional acts in the face of fear
9. The professional accepts no excuses
10. The professional plays it as it lays
11. The professional is prepared
12. The professional does not show off
13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique
14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help
15. The professional does not take failure or success personally
16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument
17. The professional endures adversity
18. The professional self-validates
19. The professional reinvents herself
20. The professional is recognized by other professionals
Here are a few additional qualities, before we move on to the higher expression of
professionalism:
21.The Professional is courageous.
22.The Professional will not be distracted.
23. The Professional is ruthless with himself
24. The Professional has compassion for himself. Horse willingly running story than forcing..
25. The Professional lives in the present.
26. The Professional defers gratification. Krishna 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 barre, and the movieola.
27. The Professional does not wait for inspiration.
28. The Professional does not give away jos power to others.
The Magic :
You dont have to go to Himalayas to find god. You can meditate on get enlightenment during the process itself. So you dont have to wait for some ideas to come to you, rather keep taking action till you see a path being made ready for yourself.
The marine gets two salaries :
Remember, Krishna told Arjuna that he had the right to his labor, but not to the fruits of his labor.
What he meant was conventional fruits. Does the monk meditate only to achieve enlightenment? What
if that never happens?
The Professional mindset as a practice :
A practice implies engagement in a ritual. A practice may be defined as the dedicated, daily
exercise of commitment, will, and focused intention aimed, on one level, at the achievement of
mastery in a field but, on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than
ourselves—call it whatever you like: God, mind, soul, Self, the Muse, the superconscious.
The practice has a space :
Order
Commitment
Passion
Love
Intensity
Beauty
Humility
A PRACTICE HAS A TIME
The monks in their saffron robes mount the steps to the zendo at the same hour each morning. When
the abbot strikes the chime, the monks place their palms together and sit.
You and I may have to operate in a more chaotic universe. But the object remains the same: to
approach the mystery via order, commitment and passionate intention.
When we convene day upon day in the same space at the same time, a powerful energy builds up
around us. This is the energy of our intention, of our dedication, of our commitment.
The goddess sees this energy and she rewards it.
PRACTICE HAS AN INTENTION
When Stevie Wonder sits down in his studio at the piano, he’s not there to mess around.
Stevie has come to work.
The 10,000 Hour Rule, made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book,Outliers, postulates that
the achievement of mastery in any field, be it brain surgery or throwing a split-finger fastball,
requires approximately 10,000 hours of practice. But the key, according to Mr. Gladwell, is that that
practice be focused.
It must possess intention.
Our intention as artists is to get better, to go deeper, to work closer and closer to the bone.
WE COME TO A PRACTICE AS WARRIORS
The sword master stepping onto the fighting floor knows he will be facing powerful opponents. Not
the physical adversaries whom he will fight (though those indeed serve as stand-ins for the enemy).
The real enemy is inside himself.
The monk in meditation knows this. So does the yogi. So do the film editor and the video-game
creator and the software writer.
Each day we, as professionals, face the same monsters and chimeras as did Perseus or
Bellerophon or St. George.
The sword master advancing into ritual combat has inwardly made peace with his own
extinction. He is prepared to leave everything, including his life, there on the fighting floor.
Practicing Humility:
We may bring intention and intensity to our practice (in fact we must), but not ego. Dedication, even
ferocity, yes. But never arrogance.
The space of the practice is sacred. It belongs to the goddess. We take our shoes off before we
enter. We press our palms together and we bow.
Do you understand how the mystery can be approached via order?
A PRACTICE IS LIFELONG
The Spartan king Agesilaus was still fighting in armor when he was eighty-two. Picasso was
painting past ninety, and Henry Miller was chasing women (I’m sure Picasso was too) at eighty-nine.
Once we turn pro, we’re like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed
the face of God. For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the
hunt. When our hearts burst…then we ‘ll go out, and no sooner.
ROSANNE CASH ‘S DREAM, PART TWO
The specific details of acquiring professionalism evolve naturally. They’re self-evident. When
Rosanne Cash had her dream, she got the message.
The epiphany is everything. When we see the gaping holes in our practice (or discover that we
have no practice at all), no one has to school us in time management or resource allocation.
We know what we have to do.
The other thing about the changes Rosanne made after her dream is that she didn’t make those
changes to earn more money, or achieve greater fame, or to sell more records. She made those
changes out of respect for her craft. She made them to become a better artist and a more powerful
musician.
When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.
The professional trusts the mystery
Patricia Ryan Madson taught improv at Stanford for years to standing-room-only classes. (Her book
Improv Wisdom is on my short list of indispensables.) Patricia has an exercise that she calls “What’s
in the Box?”
She asks her students to imagine a small white box. Imagine a lid on this box. Now lift the lid.
What do you find inside?
Sometimes students say a diamond. Sometimes a frog. Sometimes a pomegranate.
The trick is, there is always something inside the box.
With this exercise, Patricia was addressing her students’ seminal terror: that they would get up
on stage and draw a blank.
The professional trusts the mystery. He knows that the Muse always delivers. She may surprise
us. She may give us something we never expected.
But she will always put something inside the box.
The following are five axioms, derived from this principle, that I work by every day:
1.WORK OVER YOUR HEAD
Writers of fiction learn early that it is possible to write a character who is smarter than they are.
How can that be?
The answer lies in the Mystery.
That place that we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper
than our petty personal egos. That place is beyond intellect. It is deeper than rational thought.
It is instinct.
It is intuition.
It is imagination.
If you and I cast Meryl Streep as Queen Boudica in our next Hollywood blockbuster, will we
have any doubts that she can pull it off (even though she has never heard of, and knows nothing about,
Queen Boudica)?
Ms. Streep will go wherever it is that she goes, and she ‘ll come back with Queen Boudica. She
will have become Queen Boudica.
You and I can do it, too. We can work over our heads. Not only can we, but we must.
The best pages I’ve ever written are pages I can’t remember writing.
2.WRITE WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
Years ago, in New York, I had hit the wall as a failed novelist. My next day’s to-do list had been
reduced to two options: Kill myself by hanging. Kill myself by jumping off the roof. Instead I decided
to write a screenplay.
The story I wrote was about prison. I have never been to prison. I didn’t know the first thing
about prison. But I was so desperate that I plunged in, slinging bullshit with both hands and not
looking back. When I was done, I showed the script to a few writers I knew.
More than one tugged me aside and asked in a whisper, “Steve, where did you do time?”
Good things happen when we trust the Mystery.
There is always something in the box.
TAKE WHAT THE DEFENSE GIVES YOU
Every book I write has at least one giant section that’s as tough as a knot in a plank of lumber. I can’t
crack it head-on. Attacking from the flank doesn’t work. The damn thing is just too stubborn.
When you’re up against that kind of Resistance, there’s no shame in taking what the defense will
give you. In football terms, we shut that part of the playbook that contains the deep “go” routes and the
55-yard bombs. We turn instead to that section that has the short slants and the three-yard dinks into
the flat.
Two key tenets for days when Resistance is really strong:
1. Take what you can get and stay patient.
The defense may crack late in the game.
2. Play for tomorrow.
Our role on tough-nut days is to maintain our composure and keep chipping away. We’re pros.
We’re not amateurs. We have patience. We can handle adversity.
Tomorrow the defense will give us more, and tomorrow we’ll take it.
There’s a third tenet that underlies the first two:
3. We’re in this for the long haul.
Our work is a practice. One bad day is nothing to us. Ten bad days are nothing.
In the scheme of our lifelong practice, twenty-four hours when we can’t gain yardage is only a
speed bump. We’ll forget it by breakfast tomorrow and be back again, ready to hurl our bodies into
the fray.
PLAY HURT
The amateur believes that she must have all her ducks in a row before she can launch her start-up or
compose her symphony or design her iPhone app. The professional knows better.
Has your husband just walked out on you? Has your El Dorado been repossessed?
Keep writing.
Keep composing.
Keep shooting film.
Athletes play hurt. Warriors fight scared.
The professional takes two aspirin and keeps on truckin’.
SIT CHILLY
Sue Sally Hale was a famous equestrienne and teacher of horsemanship. She had a phrase that she
drilled into her students’ heads:
“Sit chilly.”
If you and I are riding in a steeplechase, we may find ourselves at the gallop atop our thousand-
pound or twelve-hundred-pound hunter-jumper, approaching a stone wall that looks like it’s fifteen
feet high. Dire thoughts may enter our heads at that moment.
Trickier still, the rider’s “seat”—meaning the way we sit in the saddle—is how our intentions
are communicated to the ultra-sensitive mount beneath us. If fear and uncertainty enter our minds, our
horse will know instantly. At that point, anything can happen.
Sue Sally said, “Sit chilly.”
She meant not just “be cool” or “stay composed.” She meant maintain your seat.
The professional knows that, in the course of her pursuit, she will inevitably experience
moments of terror, even panic. She knows she can’t choke that panic back or wish it away. It’s there,
and it’s for real.
The pro sits chilly.
She focuses on the horse and the wall. She keeps her seat.
THE PROFESSIONAL AND THE PRIMITIVE
Acouple of years ago I got the chance to travel to Africa. Among the places I visited was a Masai
camp. The site was so far out in the boonies that we had to fly to it. There were no roads. We had two
city Masai with us, a young man and a young woman, who did the translating.
When we landed, a commotion was going on. Our guides explained to us, after speaking with
several of the camp elders, that the shaman had just determined that the place where the village had
set up camp was “unwholesome.” So everyone was packing up to move.
The population of the camp was about five hundred—warriors, kids, old folks, plus all the
tribe’s livestock. The ceremony of moving camp required that the procession be led by the white
cattle, so these were being rounded up. This was no simple operation, as the individual cows were
owned by different families and were scattered all over the valley. We watched for more than an hour
while the elders, under the direction of the shaman, collected the white cattle and herded them to the
front of the procession. The whole tribe had packed up now. The warriors—the tall, slimmorans—
were singing a ritual song and jumping up and down, surrounded by the pretty young maidens,
contributing their own chorus.
Finally the village moved.
About two hundred yards up the hill.
“That’s it?” one of the visitors asked.
We were watching the shaman. Yep, that was it. He had solved the problem. The new campsite
was much better.
At the time I didn’t think much about this. It all seemed perfectly natural and in keeping with
Africa and tribal life. But when I got home, I began to wonder about the assumptions, as imperfectly
as I could grasp them, that underpinned this whole extravaganza:
1. Some invisible force threatened the first camp. Ghosts? Restive ancestors? Free-floating evil?
Would wicked things befall the tribespeople if they remained in the first camp?
2. This invisible evil could be warded off by moving the camp—even though that move was only
a few hundred feet. How did that make sense? Couldn’t the evil force simply follow the tribe up the
hill and work its malice in the new camp? Why did such a simple fix solve the problem?
3. One individual, the shaman, was capable of perceiving this evil force, of divining its malign
intent, and of remedying this by a specific course of action.
4. The tribe followed the shaman’s instructions without a murmur of protest. No matriarch
complained about having to pack up her stuff, which for each family was considerable and which
involved a serious amount of labor and sweat. No warrior resisted. One and all, the people fell into
line and participated freely and cheerfully.
(I must observe, of myself, that I too accepted the shaman’s wisdom. When we got uphill to the
new camp, I confess, it felt better. I was glad we had moved.)
5. Lastly, I considered the Masai culture itself. These were no benighted primitives being
exploited by some canny hoo-doo man. The Masai were and are one of the great warrior cultures of
all time. They have been in East Africa since the 1500s (longer than the existence of the U.S. of A.)
and they’ve thrived and dominated in a harsh land peopled by proud, strong, and aggressive
adversaries.
Beyond that, the culture of the Masai is brilliant—their dress, their rituals, their social
organization. They are tall, strong, and beautiful. Their young men stand up to lions single-handedly
and slay the beasts with only a spear. They must be doing something right.
What if, I asked myself, the Masai view of the world is correct? What if there really was an evil
force threatening the lower camp? What if the shaman really saw it and concocted exactly the right
remedy? Maybe if we had stayed in the lower camp, one of the pregnant young wives would have
miscarried. Maybe a fight would have broken out between two braves and one of them would have
hurt the other. Maybe the whole village would have been seized by collective evil.
What does all this have to do with the professional and the idea of turning pro? Here’s what I
think:
My worldview is pretty much that of the Masai. I believe in the shaman. I wish I had a shaman. If
I had a shaman, I would have breakfast with him every morning, and whatever he told me to do that
day, I would do it.
Better yet, I wish I was a shaman.
In truth, I practice my own form of shamanism every day. As an artist, I seek to access unseen
powers. Evil forces are out there—Resistance, self-doubt, self-sabotage. How many other malign
entities are hovering each morning over me and my huevos rancheros?
Then there are the good forces. Inspiration, enthusiasm, courage. New ideas, brilliant
breakthroughs, insights, intuitions. Where do these come from? I don’t know. How can I access them?
I have no clue.
Yet this is my business. This is my life.
Damn right I want that shaman. He is my man! I love the guy!
In lieu of the shaman, I have…what?
I have a code of professionalism. I have virtues that I seek to strengthen and vices that I labor to
eradicate.
I serve the goddess. Where she tells me to go, I go.
I wish I knew that shaman. I would love to sit down with him. I’d ask him what he saw that
morning. How did he see it? What course of initiation had he undergone to acquire his knowledge?
Does he serve the gods like I do? Does he regard his gifts as a blessing or a curse?
A MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE
I was having breakfast with my friend Rabbi Mordecai Finley of Ohr HaTorah congregation in Los
Angeles. I wanted to ask him about the subject of Resistance. Is there a parallel in Kabbalistic studies
or Jewish mysticism? Here’s part (I tape-recorded it) of what he said:
“There is a second self inside you—an inner, shadow Self. This self doesn’t care about
you. It doesn’t love you. It has its own agenda, and it will kill you. It will kill you like cancer. It
will kill you to achieve its agenda, which is to prevent you from actualizing your Self, from
becoming who you really are. This shadow self is called, in the Kabbalistic lexicon, the yetzer
hara. The yetzer hara, Steve, is what you would call Resistance.”
In the Kabbalistic view of the world, the soul (neshama in Hebrew) is the source of all wisdom
and goodness. The neshama seeks constantly to communicate to us—to our consciousness on the
physical plane. The soul is trying to guide us, sustain us, restore us.
But there is a force operating in opposition to the neshama. This entity, the yetzer hara, is a self-
sustaining and cunning intelligence whose sole aim is to block us from accessing the neshama and to
block the neshama from communicating to us.
The Gnostics and the neo-Platonists believed something very much like this. In both models of
the universe, there was an upper realm (in Plato’s conception, the realm of the Forms—of perfect
beauty, justice, truth, and so forth) and a lower sphere where we mortals dwelt.
In Jewish mysticism, there is a positive force that opposes the yetzer hara. Above every blade of
grass, says the Kabbalah, hovers an angel, exhorting “Grow! Grow!”
What program did these ancients put forward as a means of allying with the positive forces and
overcoming the negative? According to Rabbi Finley, it was a code called Mussar.
MUSSAR
Mussar (pronounced moo-SAHR) was a code of ethical discipline. It was not far from what we see
today in twelve-step programs. Its first tenet was “identify the sin.” The second was “eliminate it.” In
AA terms, this would mean:
1. Acknowledge the condition of being an alcoholic
2. Stop drinking
The Kabbalists believed that the higher realm could be approached through a disciplined,
humble, and open application of the mind and will. They recognized that they were approaching a
mystery. They knew that an enemy was seeking to block them.
What they called mussar, I call turning pro.
Our job, as souls on this mortal journey, is to shift the seat of our identity from the lower realm
to the upper, from the ego to the Self.
Art (or, more exactly, the struggle to produce art) teaches us that.
When you and I struggle against Resistance (or seek to love or endure or give or sacrifice), we
are engaged in a contest not only on the material, mental, and emotional planes, but on the spiritual as
well. The struggle is not only to write our symphony or to raise our child or to lead our Special
Forces team against the Taliban in Konar province. The clash is epic and internal, between the ego
and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.
WHO IS ALL THIS FOR?
In the end, the enterprise and the sacrifice are all about the audience. They’re about the readers, the
moviegoers, the site visitors, the listeners, the concertgoers, the gamers, the gallerygoers—a group
which, by the way, includes you and me.
We’re the audience.
In the hero’s journey, the wanderer returns home after years of exile, struggle, and suffering. He brings a gift for the people. That gift arises from what the hero has seen, what he has endured, what he has learned. But the gift is not that raw material alone. It is the ore refined into gold by the hero/wanderer/artist’s skilled and loving hands.
You are that artist.
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.
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