The Shadow Life Most Of Us Live Daily

• Amateurs are terrified
• Amateurs are egoists
• Amateurs live by the opinions of others
• Amateurs permit fear to stop them from trying
• Amateurs are easily distracted
• Amateurs seek instant gratification
• Amateurs are jealous
• Amateurs lack comp...

• The defining trait of the amateur is the fear of being who she is and getting rejected for it.
• A central obstacle for the amateur is that he always chases some guru or authority.
• When you do your work for the sake of its practice and nothing else, that’s when you turn pro.

Professionals follow a practice, which is “a rigorous, prescribed regimen with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a higher level.” This is true for writers, yogis, bankers, and directors.

A practice has a few elements:

• A space: a unique place to work on your cr...

Turning pro is a decision. It’s a decision to pursue your calling in the face of overwhelming fear. It’s a decision to structure your life to confront that fear day after day. It’s a decision to develop the habits that your professional craft requires. It’s a decision to wake up....

The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.

Sometimes it’s easier to be a professional in a shadow career...

Every addiction shares two qualities:

• They embody repetition without progress.
• They produce incapacity as a payoff.

Amateurs are addicts; professionals are artists.

Amateurs use addiction (distractions, displacement activities, drugs, etc.) to...

• Life gets very simple when you turn pro.
• We finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads.
• 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 denyi...

• Do you remember where you were on 9/11? You’ll remember where you were when you turn pro.
• When we’re afraid to embrace our true calling, we pursue a shadow calling instead.
• The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits....

• Patient
• Seeks order
• Demystifies
• Acts in the face of fear
• Accepts no excuses
• Plays it as it lays
• Does not show off
• Dedicates himself to mastering technique
• Does not hesitate to ask for help
• Does not take failure or succes...

Fear is the primary color of the amateur’s interior world. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking foolish, fear of under-achieving and fear of over-achieving, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of death. 

Most importantly, the fear of being excluded from the tribe, i.e., t...

There are many different ways to frame the fundamental struggle of what it means to be human: trying to fulfill our potential. Science has the therapeutic model, in which some disease or condition must be cured and religion has the moral model, which says we must pay for our sins. However, there’...