 The professional mindset works in two ways. It's important for us to grasp the distinction. First, the pro mindset is a discipline that we use to overcome resistance. To defeat the self-sabotaging habits of procrastination, self-doubt, susceptibility to distraction, perfectionism, and shallowness, we enlist the self-strengthening habits of order, regularity, discipline, and a constant striving after excellence. That's not hard to understand. But what about the magic? What about madness? What about flashes of brilliance and uncontrollable outbursts of genius? How does the professional mindset help there? Isn't it too severe, too hardcore, too regimented? Answer, no. A monk glimpses the face of God, not by scaling a peak in the Himalayas, but by sitting still in silence. Yoga, meditation, and the martial arts access the soul by way of the body. The physical leads to the spiritual. The humble produces the sublime. It seems counterintuitive, but it's true. In order to achieve, quote-unquote, flow, magic, the zone, we start by being common and ordinary and workman-like. We set our palms against the stones in the garden wall and search, search, search, until at last, in the instant when we're ready to give up, our fingers fasten upon the secret door. Like a child entering a meadow, we step over the threshold, forgetting everything except the butterfly that flits across our vision. From this play arises Guernica, and the Godfather, and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. There's a well-known gunnery sergeant who, when his young marines complain about their pay, explains that they get two salaries. A financial salary and a psychological salary. The financial salary is indeed meager. But what about the psychological salary? The feeling of pride and honor, the sense of belonging to a brotherhood with a brave and noble history, and knowing that no matter what happens, you remain a member of that fraternity as long as you live? How much, the gunnery asks, is that worth? You and I, as artists and entrepreneurs, receive two salaries as well. The first might be called conventional rewards, money, applause, attention. That kind is fine if we can get it. The problem for most of us is we can't. We bust our butts training and practicing and studying and rehearsing, and nobody shows up, nobody notices, nobody even knows we exist. No wonder people quit. The struggle requires too much agony for too little payoff. That's the conventional reward. Then there's the psychological reward. Remember, Krishna told Arjuna that he had the right to his labor, but not to the fruits of his labor. What he meant was conventional fruits. Does the monk meditate only to achieve enlightenment? What if that never happens? What does the dancer take from ballet class? Is it fun for the actor to perform? Why does the singer sing or the filmmaker shoot? When we do the work for itself alone, and I know how easy that is to say and how hard it is to do, we're like that marine who sleeps in a foxhole in the freezing rain, but who knows a secret that only he and his brothers and sisters share. When we do the work for itself alone, our pursuit of a career or living or fame or wealth or notoriety turns into something else, something loftier and nobler, which we may never even have thought about or aspired to at the beginning. It turns into a practice.