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Dragon
Spirit:
How to Self-Market
Your Dream
by Ron Rubin &
Stuart Avery Gold |
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PERSEVERANCE
Weathering the Daze Reign and Shine
The greatness of a dragon is not judged
by its strength, but by its perseverance.
Now for your personalized self-marketing forecast. One that you can be
sure to count on with absolute certainty:
Do not expect clear skies.
The decision to self-market your dream will cloud you with confusion,
thunder you with turmoil, and leave you wading chin-high through doubt
pouring down in a torrent. Know now that weathering the daze of disappointment,
frustration, and setbacks will not leave you toasty and dry, and it is
not (repeat: not) for those individuals with weak mental and emotional
resources. To take on the challenges and obstacles of self-marketing your
dream, you must have the ability to work from the inside out in all ways,
approaching each new day with a presence and consciousness that is catalyzed
with patience, persistence, and perseverance. We promise you that no matter
how great your intention, how sincere your aspiration, how exceptional
your idea, without resolute steadfastness and purposeful determination, you will tangle yourself in nonexistent limitations and knot yourself
in
unfounded fears. Doomed by your own inaction, you will wimp out, abandoning
the richer experience that awaits you, languishing in the repeated echoes
of shoulda-coulda, the ultimate phantasm that haunts us all.
Not a good place.
So here is something we would like you to learn today, and it is so important
that it can't be overstated: It takes a give-as-good-as-you-got commitment
to manifest your vision. More than any specific skill or talent, self-marketing
a dream requires placing priority on certain qualities of thought and
attitude. Adaptability of thought and action will allow you to overcome
seemingly insurmountable setbacks, viewing adversity and failure as only
temporary barriers to success. Be unreasonable. Hang on to a tenacity
that others may think is an upside-down belief, until the world looks
level. Perseverance gives timing a chance to come to your aid. Realize,
please, adaptability is not the attribute of a blessed special few it is the endowment of all who open themselves to inspiration, desire,
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and hard work.
To be a Zentrepreneur is to understand the essential lesson handed
down
in Charles Darwin's study, On the Origin of Species. Often mistakenly
misquoted as expounding the survival of the fittest, truth is, Darwin's
theory is actually based on what he described as the 93survival of the
most adaptable.94 The true Zentrepreneur adheres to the mantra that the positive
force of a pliant attitude is the most powerful source of energy available,
allowing you to adapt to circumstance and attend to those things that
can be controlled your thoughts, your emotions, the endless moments
of doubt, the self-directness that gives you the endurance to act, excel,
and succeed. A really good idea demands it. It also demands that there
be a led-and-fed readiness to tolerate uncertainty. To know that there 20
is a way. Understand this: Zentrepreneurs never retreat from their goals.
They constantly affirm their conviction that they will find a way to achieve
them. And understand this, too: Every single successful product or service
that exists was started by a person with an idea and a strong capacity
to deliver the idea despite a terrifying tempest of trepidation.
Perseverance is continued effort.
It is also the process of being in love with what you want to do, without
being in love with the idea of what you want to do. This daze-and-confusion
is tragically one of the main reasons that many turn their backs, hopelessly
giving in to the pressures of discouragement. Too often too many quit
because they believed that their ultimate goal was not reachable, failing
to understand that it is the process rather than the product or service
that actually gets you there. In other words, it's not the idea that forms
the action, it's the action that forms the idea.
Successful people have an enthusiasm for the perpetual experience of the
process, which fuels their determination and perseverance, which powers
them to do. Loving what you do actualizes a compelling intensity and exuberance
that can overcome the damaging intervening thoughts of rejection, uncertainty,
and self-pity thoughts that can, if you let them, paralyze you from
taking action. Or worse: cause you to recoil from your purpose. Worse
yet: in the crunch, giving up and giving in altogether. The difference
between success and failure is the difference between a strong will and
a strong won't. Perseverance yields progress. Take solace in Gandhi, who
stated that joy lies in the fight.
Perseverance is zest for the pursuit.
It is the willingness to face fear and confront cynicism with a clear-headedness,
understanding that success will come when you treat each day of the process
as a learning curve rather than an earning curve. Perseverance is the
discipline that is used as a review for steps taken, a guide to improve
the process with revised insight and dauntless will. It is a way of looking
at what needs to be looked at. It is, quite simply, making yourself and
your business one percent better in one hundred different ways.
Nutshelling it, it is the courage to forge ahead when you discover the
downsides and risks, and fear the inevitable failure. Perseverance is
difficult, but it is the hallmark of success. Those that have prevailed
in any endeavor have shown a common trait the endowment of a strong
mental spirit. We feel that this can't be repeated too often, which is
why we are going to repeat it again and again throughout this book: The
primary attribute available to you in order to successfully market your
dream is ultimately like a gift. . . .
It's the thought that counts.
© Copyright 2003
by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpted from DRAGON SPIRIT: How To
Self-Market Your Dream - A Zentrepreneur's Guide, by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold.
Reprinted by permission of Newmarket Press, NY, NY.
Ron Rubin, the "Minister of Tea", is Chairman of the Board of The Republic of Tea. He bought
and took charge of The Republic
of Tea in 1994, a two-year-old
company that had been founded
by the same people who created The Banana Republic.
Stuart Avery
Gold, the "Minister of Travel", is Chief Operating Officer, and the
lauded editorial "voice" for the company's Tea Revolution.
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