Questioner (Q): What is the meaning of being a professional?
Acharya Prashant (AP): What is meant by being professional? What is this thing called professionalism about? Is it just about serving your profession with excellence, or is it something more than that? Whenever we hear this word, ‘professional’, an image comes to the mind. Is professionalism that image?
Clearly, there are two layers to this question. One, can professionalism be defined by a certain code of conduct, a certain personality, a certain way of carrying yourself? That is the first part, and that is how most of us know professionals to be. So, this first layer is very important. Is professionalism about that? Second part is about the profession itself. If professionalism is about being excellent, then being excellent in which profession?
Let’s look at the first layer.
What do you do when you walk into an interview room? You start wearing clothes that look like the clothes of a professional, right? You aren’t the professional yet; but because most of us have confused professionalism with the image of the professional, so we think professionalism is nothing but this image. You talk in a particular manner; that is called professional. You wear a particular kind of clothes; that is called professional. You carry yourself in a particular way; and that is called as professional.
Surely this layer, the first layer, is a very superficial layer, very very superficial layer. A code of conduct or a way of carrying yourself or a certain persona does not even mean that you are excellent in the profession, whatever be the profession. We are not yet taking that question; that is layer two.
