There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.
The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards. He will murder his darlings without hesitation, if that’s what it takes to stay true to the goddess and to his own expectations of excellence.
Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren’t sick, they’re self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face.
There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
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.
The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.
What husband is he who abandons his wife? What wife is she taken without love? The gods demand of us action and the use of our free will! That is piety, not to buckle beneath necessity’s yoke like dumb beasts!
If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artist seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to-sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can.
It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.
A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.
Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.
That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.
There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will.
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.
The rancor I once bore recedes, supplanted by admiration and a sense even of loss at the mates we might have been and the times we might have shared.
Indeed, we own a bond, my friend. That most sublime of all: reminiscence for our vanished youth.
What could be more natural for this man than to draw to his bosom all with whom he shared that time, even his foes? Perhaps his foes more than any.
When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.