Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work Author: Visit Amazon's Steven Pressfield Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1936891034 | Format: PDF
Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work Description
About the Author
Steven Pressfield is the author of Gates of Fire, Tides of War, The Afghan Campaign, The Profession, The Warrior Ethos, Do the Work, and The War of Art among others. He lives in Los Angeles. In 2008, he was made an honorary citizen by the city of Sparta in Greece.
- Paperback: 146 pages
- Publisher: Black Irish Entertainment LLC (May 31, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1936891034
- ISBN-13: 978-1936891030
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Let me offer an executive summary of "Turning Pro," before I give my detailed response. I consider "Turning Pro" to be a simple to read yet powerful self-help book. It contains a lot of practical wisdom that applies to almost every area of life. In particular, "Turning Pro" diagnoses the problem many of us have of being an amateur who settles for the lower things in life, out of fear and distraction. Pressfield then provides a remedy by defining what it means to Turn Pro and get serious about life and offers some wisdom on how to Turn Pro.
What made "Turning Pro" most useful for me was that it provided the motivation for an extended self-examination. When you understand what Pressfield means by "Turning Pro" you'll be compelled to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and habits of your life to see if they're leading you where you want to go and be.
Pressfield presents his wisdom in easy to read, small chunks. He whets your appetite for becoming a pro and clearly diagnoses the problem. However, even though the final section deals with how to become a pro, I left the book feeling as if there must be more. Maybe I'll need to go back and study the many brief points Pressfield makes: it may be all there, but somehow I felt like something is missing, so I'm giving the book 4 stars. Also, I feel like Pressfield beats a dead horse some times and begins repeating himself.
The book needs a Table of Contents, especially since there are so many small sections. It didn't work on my Kindle version of the book.
Now for the longer review.
For a few years now, I've profited from the works of Stephen Pressfield (as well as Seth Godin, with whom he has now partnered). But this book has a particular appeal to me.
If you enjoyed "The War of Art" but thought that "Do the Work" was utter crap you'll end up wondering if your fourteen bucks couldn't have been better spent elsewhere when you are finished with this book. Being published ten years after "The War of Art" and having been written during three years you'd expect it to contain more meat than it does.
The chapters of this book are as short as Seth Godin's sentences. Here's an example: "The amateur tweets. The pro works." (Yes, that's the whole chapter.)
One of the book's longest chapters consists of an excerpt from Rosanne Cash's memoir -- detailing her "turning pro" moment. The chapter following that is an excerpt from The War of Art where Pressfield retells his own life-changing moment. The book's third "turning pro" moment is made up of a one-page description of an alcoholic finally deciding that she's had enough of her drinking.
If those descriptions of going pro aren't enough for you, there are plenty of other clues as to what happens when one turns pro:
"What happens when we turn pro is, we finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads. At last we find the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along as our passion, our calling, our destiny."
The author describes turning pro as life-changing decision. It is similar to 9/11 in the sense that you never forget where you were when it happened. Pressfield's life can be divided into two parts: before and after he turned pro. This makes it very confusing when he, perhaps as an attempt to show how similar he is to the novice creator, writes that "The amateur is you and me" and "But mostly what we all fear as amateurs...".
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