Going pro. We’re all right on time. Everything is confidential and mysterious until it’s not.
The idea of going pro has been in my ear for years and years, from two quite different mentors.
Marie Forleo has been my online business teacher since 2013. I first discovered her work the week after enrollment for B-School, Marie Forleo’s online business course, had just closed its doors for the year. You know what made me say yes to the price tag on that class in 2014? I started watching her free weekly show, Marie TV, I implemented what she taught, and my income doubled.
From then on, Marie Forleo has been my teacher, earned my trust, and delivered an enormous amount of value in my life, personally and professionally. Year after year, I’ve heard her refer to Steven Pressfield, whose book, Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work, is now at the top of my reading / listening list. Here’s Marie Forleo’s interview with Steven Pressfield.
The concept behind “going pro” is that our passions, creativity, and entrepreneurial endeavors deserve real resources, discipline, and action.
So often, we are lax with ourselves about pursuing greatness when our goals lay outside of a traditional job or accountability system. Even those of us inside of mainstream rhythms can bring an amateur hour vibe to creative work or “side projects” that always stay to the side even if they’re the real deal flavor peal of why we’re here on planet earth.
Examples of neglected life work may include that novel you want to write, your weird activism collages that would make an amazing web series, or maybe a not so hidden penchant for transformative coaching of some sort.
When we go pro, everything changes.
Going pro changes what time you wake up, how you take care of your body, what you eat, the media you consume, your wellbeing practices, the support you seek out, the relationships your prioritize, and how you show up to your Life’s Work (capital letters L and W) each day.
This last decade (can you believe it?) I’ve been blessed with so many diverse professional opportunities including documentary filmmaking, facilitating creativity workshops, fundraising, event planning, developing websites, creating branding, managing online blog publishing, designing ebooks, editing manuscripts, illustrating on commission, producing self care content, teaching Reiki, offering healing sessions, joint-facilitating Medicine Circles as a Medicine Caller, doing the food for retreat weekends, and coaching other entrepreneurs for optimized self care through mounting success.
10 years into this entrepreneurial adventure, it’s time to show up to Life’s Work in a new way.
The personal goals for my work life have been to create location independence and time freedom for myself. I needed time and space to heal my body, mind, and spirit after surviving cancer at the age of 20 and then deciding to get sober when I was 26. Professionally, I wanted to support people and businesses that were doing meaningful work in the world.
I’ve been very successful reaching these goals. Each year I’ve traveled extensively, been able to show up for the babies and elders in my community, I work with incredible clients, and I have gotten progressively healthier and happier to live in my own body by becoming my own best friend and healer.
I recently became courageous enough to collect some feedback about what it’s like to work with me, which you can read here. While I’ve done my very best with clients over the years, I haven’t always been able to give my all to my own free content, online presence, and clarity about what I have to offer the world.
We’re not casual.
Working with me changes people’s lives when they are ready to change. I’m arriving at a place of respecting the intensity of that more fully, and taking measures to be transparent and well resourced to support my clients as they navigate success, successfully.
In addition to Marie Forleo, the other voice I’ve heard talk about “going pro” is Sophia Wise One. Over many years now, Sophia has been my Reiki Master Teacher, a colleague, client, and my dear heart friend. In between rounds of Medicine Circles, it’s nearly a guarantee to hear Sophia announce:
“When you know, go. And go pro.”
If you don’t know what a “Medicine Circle” is . . . in a nutshell: One person goes into the center, everyone else listens in to their own intuition, and then a zillion different healing / trippy / curious experiences are possible. If you have questions on this, I’m happy to answer them.
So, in a Medicine Circle context, Sophia’s pronouncement of, “When you know, go, and go pro,” means:
- Listen to your guidance.
- When you sense it’s your turn to go into the center, IT’S YOUR TURN.
- Show up with pro-tools: communication, enthusiastic consent, and an ability to say “No.”
- Do your work to stay in the building of your body, or travel away intentionally, or both.
- Heal like it’s your job, because it is. Literally, that’s how peace occurs on the planet: one human at a time doing the work to experience peace in our own selves.
From a business mentor and a healing mentor:
(and they are both both, because neither of those things are separate, and they are in fact so intimately entwined for me and for the people who I work with that I legitimately have a Both / And offering alongside my Healing and Business support offers) . . .
I’ve heard the good word, and I believe you both. Today’s the day I go pro.
All there is to do now (in perpetuity, one day at a time) is to look forward and live my very best life on behalf of love and service, for fun and for real and for always.
I’m in. I’m ready. Are you?
Leah Moon
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