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Five reason it’s great to be an amateur

Clayton J. Hester
3 min readFeb 8, 2022

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Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Every year we’re all reminded of the massive gap between professionals and amateurs. At the Olympic games, and other major sporting events, you see these amazing athletes that seem to defy reality at times.

These people may be professionals in their field, but few would suggest they are the only ones who can truly compete. Rather those competitions promote a spirit of participation that is accessible to anyone who wants to try.

There are many examples beyond the Olympics of this kind of thing. For instance, there’s a sense in many communities that one should start with local competitions before trying out for the professionals. We see this is in music, sports, and business as well.

I’m proposing we try a new approach though. Rather than start with local competitions, let’s go right to the professionals and learn what we can from them.

We win every time because we get to see things from a perspective that is not our own. It’s easy to think you know everything there is about your job or field of interest because you spend so much time mastering it. Let’s instead use that mastery to see the world in a new way, and learn something along the way.

1) They are accessible

We often talk about how professionals have access to resources we don’t. That is…

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Clayton J. Hester
Clayton J. Hester

Written by Clayton J. Hester

Country boy. Explorer of the creative process & life, the arts, storytelling, innovation and history of ideas. Omnia in gloriam Dei facite — claytonjhester.com

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