“Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.”—Mignon McLaughlin
There’s something more than uncomfortable about the idea that if you felt incapable of performing that you would perform at all.
We’ve all heard the stories of elite athletes who’ve continued to play following a torn hamstring, or semi-sprained (God forbid, sprained) ankle.
Of course, elite professional training helps.
Someone who trains diligently as we imagine a professional does recovers faster, and has the internal movement algorithms to move even faster.
Athletes, martial artists, top clinicians; operators and field agents, can perform under tremendous amounts of affliction because of their training.
There are earned secrets to doing work well.
As my teacher likes to say when performing in the eye of the hurricane, “It’s not about speed, but knowing where you’re going.” In martial arts, a professional looks fast to an amateur and you can be sure it’s similar in other endeavors.
And yet training isn’t enough to sustain one playing hurt, let alone playing hurt well.
You need morality. You need a revelation of what it means to perform at a high-level, especially when you’re forced to compare yourself to others.
You need to reason what you do is an extension of who you are, and as an expression of what you believe is morally right about the world. This is the only way you’ll keep going when every flashing red signal is telling you to STOP.
It won’t be about how you feel at that point, but what you can give. It won’t be about doing your best, but doing what’s required.
This is partly what is meant by professional.
You are one of the best, if not the best, at what you do. It isn’t because you’ve worked so many years and have put-in so many hours. It’s because you get the job done when no one else could or was willing.
For you, it’s a moral imperative.
Your process might be effective, if unusual. You might become a completely different person to the people who know and love you, when you’re in the throes of your work.
You might seem cold and unbothered by common ragebait.
The preoccupations of most people are distractions away from the problems they deal with when they’re not preoccupied. For you, this is morally reprehensible. No chore or vulgar piece of entertainment prevents you from executing.
For most professionals, they’re happiest when at their craft.
This much is clear when you work with them. How they conduct themselves is not up for a debate. This is their work and this is how they work. Contradict them and watch what happens.
Professional associations import equivalent cultural norms.
There are strict rules to uphold so that the liberty each professional allots themselves continues uninterrupted. Doing right by others matters to your future prosperity and well-being. A mistake might be tolerated; selfishness is not.
To avoid indiscretions, learn to be of service and to be quiet.
Being a professional is about doing things well and earning the respect of your peers, as an insurance premium that protects you against mortality. Reputational death sees few resurrections. Skip the séances, and survive on integrity.
Professionals must work harder than most to be dependable.
Don’t mistake this for permission to go at things alone.
The worst mistake I’ve ever made was not respecting a smart group of professionals of whom I was a part. It probably set me back years, and cost me hundreds of millions of dollars.
The short version is, I was “stealing” and never knew it.
I believed I was much better than how they were treating me, because of my potential. I believed I deserved a seat at the table, a voice from the stage, to be written about and understood, because I “had the stuff.”
This is an amateur mistake and the shape of entitlement.
Professionals don’t judge you by your potential; they judge you by your results. There’s no other way to do it. They couldn’t introduce me as someone worth listening to when I didn’t cost anything. I had some success, but very little.
This was the theft I was committing.
I never paid the price I believed I had, but was trying to extract sympathy from people who I respected, because I explained their ideas better than they had.
One imagines they would’ve been impressed with my ideas alone, since mine were the more developed and advanced versions.
Not exactly how professionalism works.
We love you for who you are. We value you for what you do. This is what’s durable and necessary, and misunderstood, about private social spaces.
The best things in life are found in our relationships with others, and the best of us in these relationships insist on service, and professionalism. It’s difficult to be of service if you’re unprofessional and to be professional if you’re not of service.
You might need to stop stealing to be invited in the rooms.