Marathons are strange beasts. They don’t just test your body—they test your mind, your soul, and your purpose. On November 24th, at the Philadelphia Marathon, I learned that lesson firsthand. By Mile 23, my hamstring seized up, and a lightning bolt of pain shot through my body. I gasped for air and thought, This is it. My race is over. But marathons are also stories, and this was mine.

Have you heard of the Cherokee parable of the Two Wolves? It goes something like this: An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret..."

Pressfield's 20 qualities of the professional are not just a checklist to tick off, but a compass to guide us in our own pursuits. They remind us that true success is not about reaching a destination, but about the person we become in the process—and that the path to mastery is paved with the unglamorous but essential qualities of the professional.

The answer is → start. There is wanting something. And there is doing something. Everything in between is just resistance.