Perseverance
Author: Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold

The following is an excerpt from the book Dragon Spirit: How to Self-Market Your Dream -- A Zentrepreneur's Guide
by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold
Published by Newmarket Press; .95US; 1-55704-563-1
Copyright © 2003 Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold


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, 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 “survival of the most adaptable.” 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 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.

Excerpted from DRAGON SPIRIT: How To Self-Market Your Dream -- A Zentrepreneur's Guide
By Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold
Copyright © 2003 by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold
Reprinted by permission of Newmarket Press, 18 East 48 Street, New York, NY 10017, (212) 832-3575
Visit www.newmarketpress.com and www.zentrepreneurs.com






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Ron Rubin, the "Minister of Tea," is Chairman of the Board of The Republic of Tea. He keeps a permanent residence in Clayton, Missouri.

Stuart Avery Gold, the "Minister of Travel," is COO, and the lauded editorial "voice" for the company's Tea Revolution. He keeps a permanent residence in Boca Raton, Florida.

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