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When you think about personal development, what authors come to mind? Jim Rohn,
Bob Proctor, Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy
And Seth Godin?! Yup. Godins brilliant little treatise on what it takes
to succeed at anything has taken Barnes & Noble by storm and given
the maverick New York marketing guru a firmly established place in the Personal
Development Hall of Fame. Subtitled A Little Book That Teaches You When
to Quit (and When To Stick), The Dip is the surprise bestseller
of the year.
The Dip is what Godin calls a mind grenade, and that grenade
jumps right in by blowing up the old Vince Lombardi truism, Winners never
quit, and quitters never win. Nonsense, says Godin: in fact, winners quit
all the time. Its just that they know when to quitand
when to stick. And therein lies the tale. What distinguishes winners is that
they quit exactly in those non-challenging but dead-end situations where most
people settlein Seths parlance, the dreaded cul de sac. The
dead-end job, the going-nowhere relationship, the not-bad-but-hey-it-could-be-worse
situation. That way lies the average, the majority, the mediocre.
And where do winners choose to stick it out? Precisely where most people quit:
in the dip.
The dip is that no-mans-land that comes long after beginners luck
has run out, the thrill of the new has paled, the freshmans flush of enthusiasm
has wanedbut long before the goal is won.
The same Robert Frost who wrote Two roads diverged in a wood and I
/ I took the one less traveled by, also wrote this: The woods are
lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before
I sleep.and in both cases, he was writing about The Dip.
The dip is the place where youve heard no more than a dozen
times; where everyone else has lost enthusiasm for the meetings or the conference
calls; where most people have decided its not fun any more
and moved on to other distractions.
And that way, says Godin, lies success. The dip is the most difficult leg on
the journey to true achievement, the reason so few reach the top, and it is
what makes reaching the finish line both rare and valuable. The dip is the reason
most people wont make itand the reason you will.
The dip, Godin confides near the end of the book, is the reason
were here.
The Dip is shot through with especially powerful messages for network
marketers. If ever there were a pursuit with a hefty built-in dip, it is this
profession. In our business there are myriad reasons to quit, and surviving
the long stretch of the networking dip takes a remarkable willingness to stay
focused. In a 100% volunteer labor force, quitting couldnt be easier:
people quit on themselves all the time. Read The Dip, and youll
understand why youre still here.
Hardcover, 96 pages; $12.95; Portfolio (Penguin Group)
Also available on CD (abridgement), read by the author.