Quotes About Professionalism

There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still. The

The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.

The professional blows critics off. He doesn't even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. They can articulate in their reviews the same toxic venom that Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.

That year made me a pro. It gave me, for the first time in my life, an uninterrupted stretch of month after month that was mine alone, that nobody knew about but me, when I was truly productive, truly facing my demons, and truly working my shit. That year has stuck with me.

Why have I stressed professionalism so heavily in the preceding chapters? Because the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.   Why is this so important?   Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.

The professional gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow. But she never forgets that Resistance is using criticism against her on a far more diabolical level.

A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul. The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.

What I call Professionalism someone else might call the Artist's Code or the Warrior's Way. It's an attitude of egolessness and service. The Knights of the Round Table were chaste and self-effacing. Yet they dueled dragons.

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. Each day, the professional understands, he will wake up facing the same demons, the same Resistance, the same self-sabotage…The difference is that now he will not yield to those temptations. He will have mastered them, and he will continue to master them.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment.

The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

This doesn't mean that the professional doesn't throw down a 360 tomahawk jam from time to time, just to let the boys know he's still in business.

The amateur prizes shallowness and shuns depth. The culture of Twitter and Facebook is paradise for the amateur.

The amateur hoards his knowledge and his reinforcement. He believes that if he 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.

what ails you and me has nothing to do with being sick…What ails us is that we are living our lives as amateurs. The solution…is that we turn pro.

The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

I worked in the Bush campaign, and some of us would darkly joke, "Anybody can become president when you get more votes. To lose by half a million and become president takes professionals." It seemed funny at the time. Less so now.

Conservatives have managed to turn the phrase "mainstream media," or "lame stream media," as that noted arbiter of intellectual rigor, Sarah Palin, called it, into a pejorative. But what is mainstream media? It's the journalism that believes in standards, strives to report facts, and has a professional standard to correct errors. It's the news the majority of Americans consume.

Now that psychiatrists are defrocked weekly in New Yorker cartoons, it's difficult to recall what this once meant, how seriously men like him were taken.

Almost no one understood the fundamental idea behind writing a job application letter. They would write sentences such as I have no job and would like a job or I am bored and want a job. The entire concept of making oneself marketable in the eyes of a prospective employer did not exist.

If you are supposed to telephone the client, remember that your relationship starts when she answers the phone. Be professional and concerned but remember that the purpose of the call is not to do therapy over the telephone but to arrange a mutually convenient time when you can meet face-to-face. The client may be anxious; however, do not assume that you know what that anxiety is about. Also remember that asking for help is not an easy thing to do.