Zen and the Art of Affiliate Marketing: Patience and Commitment.
“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,” the White Rabbit tells us in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It was true in 1865 and it’s true today in the information age.
Something about the internet makes us impatient. It’s a curious phenomenon. Instant isn’t fast enough.
Prior to the internet, building a business could take years, require employees and loans, cost a small fortune and might never break even. Now, thanks to the internet, anyone can build a business over a weekend, run it by themselves, be profitable within months, and produce a full-time income within a few years. Yet, for some people, that isn’t fast enough.
Why is it that some of us will work for decades at a dead-end job under the thumb of a boss, but refuse to work a few years to build a profitable online business that will set us free?
The Rest of Your Life.
In the book Zen Flesh Zen Bones, a collection of Zen writings compiled by Paul Reps, there is a story of a young man in ancient China who wanted to be a great swordsman. He went to Banzo, the most famous swordsman in all the land, and asked to be his student.
“If I work hard how many years will it take me to become a master,” the young man asked.
“The rest of your life,” Banzo said.
“I cannot wait that long. If I become your devoted student, how long it will take?”
“Maybe ten years,” Banzo said.
“If I work more intensely how long will it take?”
“Thirty years,” Banzo said.
“Why is that?” The young man asked. “First you say ten years and then you say thirty. I will undergo any hardship to learn as quickly as possible.”
“In that case,” Banzo said. “You must stay with me for seventy years. A man in such a hurry seldom learns quickly.”
Patience and Commitment.
Impatience is a crafty saboteur. If it has its way, impatience will convince us that because we can’t quickly reach our goal, we won’t reach it at all. That’s a dangerous lie that might move us to abandon our dreams.
But, it’s not enough to be patient. You need commitment too.
The truth is, anyone capable of reading this post is intelligent and creative enough to build a life-changing online business. Will there be frustration, set-backs and dead-ends? You bet. These are the gate keepers testing your resolve. However, they are no match for commitment and patience.
Recent Comments
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Beautiful Analysis of how we manage our expectations in our career and business. The faster we want our task to be completed, the more we make mistakes and produce Low quality work. Patient is a virtue and calmness is a necessity in this fast and connected world.
Your advice really brings out the problem most of us are facing each day because the society has transformed our behaviour subconsciously.
Time to make a bold change before it sticks with us for the rest of our life.
HI, Gary! Good to hear from you, and as always your post is right on! We live in an instant gratification society and getting people to be patient and commit is increasingly difficult. For the young ones, anyway.
Grant
Hey Gary
long time no see! I'm glad you're OK and active.
Very well said, keep on moving forward
What a great and profound post Gary! So very true. God give us all patience and commitment!
Hey Gary, great post! I struggle with patience myself. It can cause many to just give up if it's not happening fast enough. Those who can commit and fight that impatience are much more likely to succeed.
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I am seeing this a little differently. Apple, Windows and Linux are different OS's and they work differently. Tomboy Notes in Ubuntu is amazing to organize tasks. I tried to catch these messages in my outdated iPad - it didn't quite work. Apple says you have to upgrade (no, I won't)
On the other hand, neuro-science and hormones have an important role to play too..!!