Writing Wednesdays
The Free-Agent Mindset
By Steven Pressfield
Published: May 15, 2013
What is the Macro Change that’s going on in the world today? As fish never realize they’re swimming in water, is there something happening all around us that’s so apparent that we can’t see it?
Shaq of Orlando, L.A., Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, Boston. We're all free agents now.
I think there is, and here’s how I’d define it:
We—meaning anybody now living in the globalized/digital/satellite-linked/worldwide-web world—are faced with the challenge and obligation to make a primal shift in consciousness. This shift is as cosmic, I believe, as the transition from illiteracy to literacy in the Gutenberg era, from farm to factory in the days of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the post-Industrial Age changeovers since.
I’m not talking about external changes. Those are obvious. What’s perilous and critical and what we all need to become conscious of is the stuff inside. How have we had to change our minds and our ways of thinking about the world and about ourselves?
Shawn has a concept he calls 3PV. Third Party Validation. What he means is the mind-set in which one’s sense of emotional security and self-worth is dependent upon the opinions of others. In other words, we don’t go forward with any action unless we think other people will approve.
Seth Godin talks about this a lot too. Seth decries the internal paralysis that stops people from acting until they have been “picked,” i.e. taken note of by Higher Authority and given permission to go forward.
“Pick” yourself, Seth urges. Give yourself permission to act. Don’t wait for some Third Party to tell you it’s okay or to provide a structure of incentive, punishment, and reward.
There’s a key insight here into the Macro Change we’re all going through.
We’re all having to adopt the Free-Agent mentality.
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SUBSCRIBE to "Writing Wednesdays."Turning Pro
The follow-up to the bestseller The War of Art, Turning Pro navigates the passage from the amateur life to a professional practice.
You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.
Turning Pro is the first official book released by Mr. Pressfield on his own publishing company, together with Shawn Coyne, Black Irish Books.
TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT’S NOT EASY.
When we turn pro, we give up a life that we may have become extremely comfortable with. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own.
TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT DEMANDS SACRIFICE.
The passage from amateur to professional is often achieved via an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It’s messy and it’s scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro.
WHAT WE GET WHEN WE TURN PRO.
What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
[The following are the first two chapters of Turning Pro:]
TURNING PRO
BOOK ONE THE AMATEUR LIFE
1. THE HUMAN CONDITION
The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror.
“When the robot learns to hate what it sees,” said Jon Stewart, “it will have achieved full humanity.”
2. THREE MODELS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION
When we hate our lives and ourselves, two models present themselves as modes of salvation.
The first is the therapeutic model. In the therapeutic model, we are told (or we tell ourselves) that we are “sick.” What ails us is a “condition” or a “disease.”
A condition or a disease may be remedied by “treatment.”
Right now we are “ill.” After treatment, we will be “well.” Then we will be happy and will be able to function productively in society and in the world.
That’s one way of looking at our troubles.
The second way is the moralistic model. The moralistic model is about good and evil. The reason we are unhappy, we are told (or tell ourselves) is that we have done something “wrong.” We have committed a “crime” or a “sin.”
In some versions of the moralistic model, we don’t even have to have done anything wrong. The human being, we are told, was born wrong.
The answer to the condition of wrongness is punishment and penance. When we have “served our sentence” and “atoned for our sins,” we will be “pardoned” and “released.” Then we will be happy and will be able to function productively in society and in the world.
This book proposes a third model.
The model this book proposes is the model of the amateur and the professional.
The thesis of this book is that what ails you and me has nothing to do with being sick or being wrong. What ails us is that we are living our lives as amateurs.
The solution, this book suggests, is that we turn pro.
Turning pro is free, but it’s not easy. You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.
Turning pro is free, but it’s not without cost. When we turn pro, we give up a life with which we may have become extremely comfortable. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own. We may have to give up friends, lovers, even spouses.
Turning pro is free, but it demands sacrifice. The passage is often accompanied by an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It hurts. It’s messy and it’s scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro.
Turning pro is not for everyone. We have to be a little crazy to do it, or even to want to. In many ways the passage chooses us; we don’t choose it. We simply have no alternative.
What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.
Do you remember where you were on 9/11? You’ll remember where you were when you turn pro.
