The Potency of Enthusiasm

“Nothing,” someone once told me, “is as contagious as enthusiasm.” He was quoting Edward Bulwer Lytton though I didn’t know it as the time. It is a thought that has stayed with me over the years and I have no doubt of its truth. Let’s face it, if you can’t get enthusiastic about your own ideas and projects, how do you expect others to get excited?

When I first started writing songs, as a young man still thinking I might become a pop star, I would sometimes go over to the piano or pick up my guitar and begin a new melody. With the song only half figured out, I would then often leave it for a day or two. After a couple of days, either I could remember that song or I couldn’t. And that was how I would test to see if the song was worth finishing; whether or not it was something I might be able to get enthusiastic about.

Do you have enthusiasm for your work, the job or business in which you are presently engaged? If so, that great; if not, are you doing the right thing? It is said that most people will spend about 72 thousand hours in their day jobs. That’s a lot of time to be doing something for which you have no enthusiasm don’t you think?

Without enthusiasm, it is impossible to give of your best. But with that magic ingredient, whatever you do will come to life. I remember, at my last place of work, seeing a colleague teach a course with passion and enthusiasm. Other people taught the same material, but just did not get the same results in terms of customer satisfaction. Everybody loved the enthusiastic guy and indeed, he was a role model for many.

Here’s a couple more questions for you to contemplate:

1. If you somehow inherited enough money to live comfortably without ever working again, would you continue to work?

2. If you answered ‘yes’ to the first question, would you continue to work in your present field of expertise?

If you answered ‘yes’ to both of the above questions, I bet you also answered ‘yes’ to the question about having enthusiasm in your current job. If we are engaged in what we want to do, it is easy to be enthusiastic. If, on the other hand, we are going to work for entirely the money, then perhaps we may not be quite so enthusiastic.

However, even in your present job, whatever it is, if you could just be more enthusiastic, I guarantee the world would perceive a different person and your results would improve, no matter what you do.

What Can Enthusiasm Do for You in Your Present Job?

Within ten days, enthusiasm took me from $25 a month to $185 a month(nb:that was in 1920′s)-it increased my income by 700 percent. Let me repeat-nothing but the determination to act enthusiastic increased my income 700 percent in ten days! I got this stupendous increase in salary, but not because I could throw a ball better-or catch or hit it better, not because I had any more ability as a ball player. I didn’t know any more about baseball I did before. … Enthusiasm alone did it; nothing but enthusiasm.

The above quotation is taken from the book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger.

So how can you become more enthusiastic about what you do? I love Zig Ziglar’s answer to this question. You can watch him speaking about it here.

He suggests that you take a piece of paper and write at the top the following heading: 20 Things I Love About My Job. Then you have done that, make a list. Force yourself to do it if necessary, but find 20 things you, at least, like about your present job. Zig usually starts people off by suggesting that number 1 on your list might be that ‘they pay me’.

Zig then suggests that you use that list to craft 20 positive affirmations about your job. Say them every day to yourself (and don’t worry, they can’t lock you up for it) with enthusiasm and as Zig says, you won’t believe how the people around you have changed

Will Edwards
Whitedovebooks

Be the Best You:7 keys to a Positive Personality!

our physical diet has a large impact on your health and energy levels. If you eat fresh, healthy, high-quality foods of all kinds and avoid the foods that are bad for you, you will have more energy, be generally resistant to most diseases, sleep better, and feel healthier and happier.

In the same way, your mental diet largely determines your character and your personality and almost everything that happens to you in life. When you feed your mind with positive ideas, information, books, conversations, audio programs, and thoughts, you develop a more positive and effective personality. You become more influential and persuasive. You enjoy greater confidence and self-esteem.

Those who work with computers use the expression “GOGO,” or “garbage in, garbage out.” But the reverse is also true, “Good in, good out.”

When you make a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to take complete control over your mind, eliminate the negative emotions and thoughts that may have held you back in the past, and become a completely positive person, you can actually bring about your own personal transformation.

Be the Best You Can Be

Mental fitness is like physical fitness. You develop high levels of self-esteem and a positive mental attitude with training and practice. Here are the seven keys to becoming a completely positive person:

1. Positive self-talk: Speak to yourself positively; control your inner dialog. Use affirmations phrased in the positive, present, and personal tense: “I like myself!” “I can do it!” “I feel terrific!” “ I am responsible!”

We believe that fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself as you go throughout your day. The sad fact is that if you do not deliberately and consciously talk to yourself in a positive and constructive way, you will, by default, think about things that will make you unhappy or cause you worry and anxiety.

As we said before, your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.

2. Positive visualization: Perhaps the most powerful ability that you have is the ability to visualize and see your goals as already accomplished.

Create a clear, exciting picture of your goal and your ideal life, and replay this picture in your mind over and over. All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. As you “see” yourself on the inside, you will “be” on the outside.

3. Positive people: Your choice of the people with whom you live, work, and associate will have more of an impact on your emotions and your success that any other factor. Decide today to associate with winners, with positive people, with people who are happy and optimistic and who are going somewhere with their lives.

Avoid negative people at all costs. Negative people are the primary source of most of life’s unhappiness. Resolve that from today onward, you are not going to have stressful or negative people in your life.

4. Positive mental food: Just as your body is healthy to the degree to which you eat healthy, nutritious foods, your mind is healthy to the degree to which you feed it with “mental protein” rather than “mental candy.”

Read books, magazines, and articles that are educational, inspirational, or motivational. Feed your mind with information and ideas that are uplifting and that make you feel happy and more confident about yourself and your world.

Listen to positive, constructive CDs and audio programs in your car and on your MP3 player or iPod. Feed your mind continually with positive messages that help you think and act better and make you more capable and competent in your field.

Watch positive and educational DVDs, educational television programs, online courses, and other uplifting material that increases your knowledge and makes you feel good about yourself and your life.

5. Positive training and development: Almost everyone in our society starts off with limited resources, sometimes with no money at all. Virtually all fortunes begin with the sale of personal services of some kind. All the people who are at the top today were once at the bottom, and sometimes they fell to the bottom several times.

The miracle of lifelong learning and personal improvement is what takes you from rags to riches, from poverty to affluence, and from underachievement to success and financial independence. As Jim Rohn sald, ”Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

When you dedicate yourself to learning and growing and becoming better and more effective in your thoughts and actions, you take complete control of your life and dramatically increase the speed at which you move upward to greater heights.

6. Positive health habits: Take excellent care of your physical health and wellness. Resolve today that you are going to live to be eighty, ninety, or one hundred years old and still be dancing in the evenings.

Eat healthy foods, natural and nutritious, and eat them sparingly and in proper balance. A nutritional diet will have an immediate, positive effect on your thoughts and feelings.

Resolve to get regular exercise, at least two hundred minutes of motion per week, walking , running, swimming, bicycling, or working out on equipment in the gym. When you exercise on a regular basis, you feel happier and healthier and experience lower levels of stress and fatigue than a person who sits on the couch and watches television all evening.

Especially, get ample rest and relaxation. You need to recharge your batteries on a regular basis, especially when you are going through periods of stress or difficulty. Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Some of the factors that predispose us to negative emotions of all kinds are poor health habits, sleep deprivation, lack of exercise, and nonstop work. Seek balance in your life.

7. Positive expectations: Practicing the Law of Attraction is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to become a positive person and to ensure positive outcomes and better results in your life.

Your expectations become your own self-fulfilling prophesies. Whatever you expect, with confidence, seems to come into your life.

Since you can control your expectations, you should always expect the best. Expect to be successful. Expect to be popular when you meet new people. Expect to achieve great goals and create a wonderful life for yourself. When you constantly expect good things to happen, you will seldom be disappointed.

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From My Mentor,

Brian Tracy