Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work

This book will help you identify all the excuses, coping mechanisms, and tricks that your brain plays on you that hold you back from actualizing the best version of yourself. As I was reading this book I constantly highlighted passage after passage noting something along the lines of “I’m guilty of this” or “I definitely need to keep this in mind”. The lessons from this book can be applied to all walks of life but in particular any form of creative work e.g. writing, music, content creation, film making, etc. where it is common to feel Resistance even to doing the things that we supposedly love to do. The format with the short chapters and concise lessons make this an easy, yet incredibly valuable page turner.

I gifted all the Pressfield books to my nephew when he graduated college. It's a great set of books.

"Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work" by Steven Pressfield is like a sequel to "The War of Art." Maybe not a sequel, but a follow up? I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I enjoyed "The War of Art."The book can be a quick read if you want to zip through it. It's 132 pages long, and many of those pages are not full of text. However, if you zipped through quickly, you would be doing yourself a disservice. The things Pressfield writes about deserve to be thought about, pondered, and implemented, not just breezed through.The book's theme is turning from an amateur to a professional, and that will mean different things for different people. I'll admit, there were passages in this book that I really connected with, and others that made me go, "huh?" Some things just didn't click with me.I liked that the book has passages on why you should turn pro as well as passages on how to turn pro. The book contains things that will motivate you, and others that will make you look at yourself a bit differently. It's a simple read, but the things the book discusses are hard to do. But reading this will get you started.Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of Lost Conscience: A Ben Baker Sniper Novel and others.

I am just now sending a book to the editor that should have been published by last October. There are some reasons for the delay, like, travel and other pressing events. But the main reason that it is not published is me. Honestly, sometimes I think it is crap. Sometimes, I think it is a vain exercise. Sometimes, I think I need to review it again for the tenth or twentieth time. Sometimes, I am afraid of how people will respond when they read it. Sometimes, I think I should change the title or something else about the book as I endlessly obsess over trying to get it just right. Turning Pro was written for people like me.Turning Pro is a book to encourage people to act on what is in their heart. It has special significance for people who want to write or create something as it delves deep within the psyche of what causes us to sabotage what is probably our single most important contribution to the world.Living as "amateurs" is our way of running away from our true selves. It causes us to develop a shadow career that keeps us from being our truest selves. Pressfield writes, "Both addict and artist are dealing are dealing with the same material, the pain of being human and the struggle against self-sabotage." (p.22). "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 find the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along was our passion, our calling, our destiny." (p.70)A good portion of the book unwraps the habits and attitudes of the "professional," like, "The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it." (p.99).Steven Pressfield is an interesting guy who has done a little bit of everything during his life, from fruit picking, to truck driving, to writing screen plays (The Legend of Bagger Vance) and books. Turning Pro is a small book with a lot of white space on some pages, but it is not its word count that makes it valuable; it is that fact this guy gets inside our head (at least mine). He exposes what holds us back and encourages in the hard work that will move us forward to being our truest, best self, moving us from to dreaming to creating.His companion book, The War of Art, sets the context for this one and is equally insightful and inspiring.

I am so happy I bought this book on a whim. It has opened my eyes to what it is that I have been doing wrong in my pursuit of creating a meaningful life. A quick and easy read, but packed with crazy amounts of inspiration and a-ha moments!

Extremely effective for my 8 year old to stay focused no matter the noise around in the classroom

Good speed of delivery, Nice book

Brutal

Segundo livro que leio do autor e posso dizer que é um escritor fantástico, bem simples direto ao ponto e com orientações práticas.Neste livro o autor procura deixar claro um conceito que iniciou em seu outro livro "A guerra da arte" a ideia de se tornar um Profissional. Segundo ele ao se tornar um profissional você consegue realizar seu trabalho de uma forma completa e sem ficar preso a procrastinação ou preguiça. Ao longo do livro o autor expões diversas ideias práticas para você se tornar um profissional.Recomendo este livro principalmente para trabalhadores do conhecimento, escritores, pois mostra os passos necessários para que sua arte chegue ao mundo. Também recomendo para todos aqueles que querem desenvolver sua carreira e ter mais produtividade no dia a dia.