Our world is changing. We no longer need to wait to get picked for many activities that once had a barrier to entry.

We can self publish and make our book available to anyone with an Amazon account. We can start creating movies on our own and upload to YouTube. We can connect with people who want a skill that we have through a freelance website. We can own a B&B simply by signing up for AirBnB, which makes it easy to find people to come stay with us.

So why not also choose to be a professional athlete?

Let me explain my thought process. I was washing my hair after a second workout in a day and pondering my decision to grow out my hair. When showering often, as we tend to do as triathletes, having short hair is really nice. But, I am ready for a change.

After watching the Kona Ironman World Championships recently, I thought to myself, if those pro women can deal with long hair, I can too!

Then I realized that being a pro usually means that training for them substitutes for a full time job. I’m sure many juggle a lot of other things, but training well is their number one priority.

So maybe I’m not in the same boat.

But then I thought, why not? I am currently self employed. I cannot and certainly don’t want to race with the pros (who go literally twice my speed, at least), but I can still sponsor myself and become a pro in my own world!

Steven Pressfield (hopefully this is the correct attribution, I am about 85% sure it is) says that it wasn’t until he decided to adopt the mindset of becoming a ‘pro’ writer that he finally wrote his first book. Why? Because when he was a pro, he did what professionals do. He sat down to write every day, and things started to come together.

Whether self-employed or not, we can all decide to adopt a ‘pro’ mindset to our training, or any other activity that we want to excel at. We don’t need to be picked.

In truth, I am not even sure I want to take my training as a pro would. Especially at this point in my life, it is a great hobby and lifestyle, but along with so many activities. Nonetheless, it’s fun to think about.