Five Signs of a Real Professional

People tend to call others professional too quickly nowadays, and in this confusing situation, more people believe themselves to be professional. However, sometimes reality shows something else.

If you think about the people around you, who would you call professional among them?

'Léon: The Professional' or the 'Hitman' movie and video games show why Léon and the Agent 47 were professionals. Here's a list of the common signs of the professional attitude.

Disciplined

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, former Navy Seals, say: forget motivation, you need discipline. Discipline can give you a structure. It also can be controlled while motivation is more about emotions.

Discipline is a natural boost to focus, and forms habits in time to make things effortless.

Think about sports. Discipline is the complementary of endurance to progress towards your goal. We all heard before that goals without plans are only wishes, and self-control can help you create and keep a mission.

Build a system of small and useful habits and stick to this system as Léon did with his morning routine. It boosts both confidence and success.

Self-confident

Léon was always confident that he could do everything. Professionals are self-confident in a very positive way. Based on their experience they can estimate what the cost and benefit of their actions are. We make every decision in the balance of price and interest, and the trick is that in many cases we don't know one or the other.

Making good decisions is hard, but if you are confident enough, you'll make more right choices and will not fear from failure.

Our movie heroes were more comfortable with uncertainty too because they knew that clear majority of the situations lack certain circumstances or information. Be confident, take things as they come and adapt.

Self-aware

In her book, Insight, Tasha Eurich writes that 95% of people think that they are self-aware. However, only 10-15% are truly are.

This enormous gap shows that being self-aware is far from being obvious. Sophia Amoruso (#GIRLBOSS) says: "True success lies in knowing your weaknesses and playing to your strengths." Most people are aware of how others could see them, but knowing the inner strengths and weaknesses is more challenging and requires mindful practice. It is where the great people could have a significant advance.

Start searching for situations, when you can emphasize your strength. While you can work on your weakness to turn it into power, it's not in your nature and on the other hand, it's more fun playing to your strengths instead.

Authentic

What successful people do is: listen more – and listen actively - before they speak. It gives you time to think before you speak and you will not jump to early conclusions.

Our brain is trying to make the quickest decision based on our previous experience and prejudice or wandering in the past or future during a conversation. Force your mind to stop for a moment and reflect on what you hear with your full attention. You will be in a better position to make the decision or ask further questions. Also, it will help you build valuable relationships.

Here’s a quote from the Hitman movie what captures the point: "We determine who we are by what we do." Real professionals listen more and talk less; they let their actions speak.

Positive

Many people burn out, get bored or just have an attitude of complaining about everything. It may be part of the culture in some cases, but you can find it on many levels and in any jobs.

Both negativity and positivity are sticky. Observe your actions, catch your reactions, and transform them into something positive. The impact of a negative and a positive result can decide the whole case and push others to negative or positive directions unintentionally.

It requires practice, and you need to be mindful of catching yourself being negative, but it worth the energy and time very well because it influences your whole life.

Summary

You can never actually learn to be professional, but one day you will realize that you've become one. You will see that it becomes effortless to listen more to others, talk less and to be calm and disciplined because you know that you are very capable of handling any situations remaining confident and content.

Watch the attitude and actions instead of definitions, and you will see who is a real professional around you.