Creator or consumer?

Steven Pressfield's book 'Turning Pro' invites you to consider two states of being that it's possible to occupy; the amateur, and the pro. In his own case, h...

Steven Pressfield’s book Turning Pro is ‘up there’ for me in terms of books that have had an impact on my way of being. I don’t want to get all High Fidelity on you and create a top-ten list of personal development books in order to state definitively where in the hierarchy Turning Pro deserves to live, but fair to say if I did have a top ten list, it would be on it.

At it’s core is a pretty simple concept. There’s a ‘pro’ version of you, and an ‘amateur’ version of you. Most people live as the amateur. Pressfield calls his amateur “the addict”, and his pro “the artist”.

I find this concept to be incredible useful in guiding decision-making from moment to moment, and discovered it to be most powerful when I named the two states as they resonate most for myself; the consumer, and the creator.

As I have, you might want to personalise the labels to align with who you are. What do you call the above-the-line version of you? And when you're not at your best, what do you call that?