An Ultimate Lifestyle Secret - The Power Of Enthusiasm

A note from peter@thewealthyattitude.com for Thursday May 21 2008

Welcome to this fine Thursday.

It was really fun yesterday as folks who saw my note and who had to call me, certainly made sure they brought a conscious level of “enthusiasm” to the conversation. Amazing what a little suggestion brings forth.

Quite a while ago, a traveling salesperson was transferred into a small rural town. He was met at the bus station by Ralph, the only other person working in the same town. Ralph had had his bags packed for weeks, hoping that he would be transferred out. "I can't believe they're keeping me here even one more day, it's a terrible place to work," he complained, "the people are rude and skeptical and no one will let you in their house."

Yet, in the first week, the new salesperson had put on more successful demonstrations than Ralph had in the previous two months combined! What made the difference? Did the new guy have more product knowledge than Ralph? No, in fact he had just started with the company four months earlier. Was he a harder worker? No, in fact Ralph sometimes worked extra hours late into the night. The real difference was Enthusiasm. The new guy was just excited about the product and the opportunity.

While Ralph dragged himself from house to house, putting in his time with a martyr's attitude, the new guy went at it with an enthusiastic flair. He quickly assembled a group of excited customers who helped him spread the word about his product.

In no time, that small town was one of the most productive areas in the company. And Ralph? He got transferred out all right -- straight to the unemployment line.

David Schwartz once made this profound observation: "Results come in proportion to enthusiasm applied." That statement is just as true today as it was when he wrote it in 1959 in his timeless book, The Magic of Thinking Big. Do you have a project that is not progressing as rapidly as you would like? Are you sometimes frustrated when a really great idea only produces mediocre results? Just apply a little more enthusiasm! Soon it will become catchy and infect everyone around you. A little extra enthusiasm can mean the difference between success and failure.

As the old saying goes ... the only difference between try and triumph is just a little "umph!"

Enjoy today’s offering by our friend Gilbert.

An Ultimate Lifestyle Secret - The Power Of Enthusiasm

by Gilbert Griffiths

The power of enthusiasm is born when your thinking is fixed firmly on your goal and your imagination and desire work together as teammates. Enthusiasm is an incredibly powerful tool to create momentum in anything that you are doing.

I have found that when I am enthusiastic about something it is much easier to accomplish it than when I have a task that I do not like. I believe that enthusiasm is a force coming from deep inside you that lifts you up and takes you along. Enthusiasm is more than just jumping up and down or shouting your lungs out. It is bringing joy into your task.

It is claimed that very little of value is completed if enthusiasm is missing. Most of the greatest inventions, masterpieces and accomplishments of all times were possible because the creator was enthusiastic about his or her task. Some even claim that enthusiasm for a task makes up for a lack of skill. I think that we have all seen sports teams fired up by enthusiasm beat teams that, on paper, were more talented.

Enthusiasm is the self-raising force that lifts your dreams up to the stars. All of us have dreams, however, only those people that are extremely enthusiastic about their dreams ever take the action necessary to bring them to completion. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes and the speed of your stride. Everything in your life seems better, brighter and easier when you approach it with unbridled enthusiasm. Remember, when you were little, everything was as bright and shiny as a new penny and you just could not wait to get your hands on it? Well, the world has not changed that much, but you have. Sure, there is more technology today, but life is just about the same, maybe a little faster, but only because you make it that way.

I am sure that if you approach everything with enthusiasm today, you will find that things are done more quickly and that your days will be as enjoyable as they were when you were a child. You see, enthusiasm is the wondrous engine of life that adds fun and excitement to everything you do. It is the underlying force that is at the bottom of all progress. Enthusiasm is a powerful tool and when used properly, it can be a superb catalyst toward progress. Enthusiasm is the mark of sincerity and, truth wins no victories without it. Enthusiasm is the power that lurks within each of us waiting to release our hidden genius, enabling us to produce fantastic results that no one dreamed we could ever do.

In conclusion, enthusiasm is the spark that will take the mundane and turn it into the creation of a lifetime. If you approach all of your tasks with true enthusiasm, you will find that you have unleashed the power and the passion that will ensure success in all of your ventures. It will be a success that will lead you to an ultimate lifestyle, a future full of happiness and the culmination of all your dreams and desires.

Options and Liberty

by Brian Klemmer

Here’s a novel thought: All people have freedom. What about those who live under a dictator? They, too, have freedom. Why? Because it’s the ability to choose, and all human beings have that, as Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has so eloquently described, even in unimaginable circumstances. However, the consequences of their choices are far different than average circumstances. And even though all people have freedom, very few enjoy liberty.

Liberty is the ability to do what you want to do when you want to do it, to go where you want to go when you want to go there. Most important, it’s the ability to be what you want to be when you want to be it.

Compassionate samurai search for choices, solutions, and meaning in life, rather than waiting for them to appear. They try to increase the liberty that they and others enjoy. They don’t shrink from tough choices simply because they don’t like the perceived outcomes.

I believe that of all the gifts God grants us, the most powerful is choice. It’s also a very useful tool if used skillfully. It has a power that gives us the potential winner’s edge all of the time. It’s the ability to create liberty. That might sound like an unrealistic philosophy, but it isn’t. What you pick now determines what you enjoy tomorrow. What you decide not to choose also determines what you’ll never have in this lifetime.

So at the end of the day—or even at the end of your life—you can be an average person and blame others for what did or didn’t happen for you. Or you can be a compassionate samurai and enjoy yourself even amid dire circumstances and create a life of liberty for yourself and others.

If liberty is so great, why aren’t there more compassionate samurai experiencing it? The answer is because there’s a cost for everything. There’s no free lunch. Every benefit has a corresponding cost or something you must give up. There’s a price to acknowledging that you have choices (as there are different consequences for pretending that you don’t). There are costs for making the compassionate samurai choice, as well as for taking the easier way out. At West Point, we were taught always to choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong. They were teaching us to be compassionate samurai. Some might argue about the compassionate part, but we’ll save that for another discussion.

If we wimp out and don’t make the right choices, we lose our liberty.

Frankl once recommended the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be complemented by a "Statue of Responsibility" on the West Coast. Perhaps he was saying that our liberty requires us to make good decisions. If we wimp out and don’t make the right choices, we lose our liberty. When we do this, we choose obvious short-term benefits with not-so-obvious long-term costs over obvious short-term costs that have not-so-obvious long-term benefits. The very nature of a compassionate samurai is to pick the latter.

I’m concerned with what I see in American society; in fact, that was the impetus for writing this book. Listen to average people complain about how their children won’t benefit from the Social Security program, yet they’re unwilling to change their lifestyle in any way. Look at how average people enjoy the benefits of their current status, but they shrink from considering the future environmental impact of their excesses on their grandchildren even to the point of being "confused" about whether global warming and other such issues are real.

Consider those who made huge amounts of money in the Enron, Tyco, and even Arthur Andersen scandals, with no concern for the thousands who lost their retirement savings as a result—let alone the damages the economy suffered or the cynicism about business that was generated. This isn’t really a new thing. Such behavior has occurred throughout history in nations and families who received abundance rather than earning it. A different, higher value is established when something is earned. When life is painful enough, moving forward becomes a more obvious and easier choice to make for the average individual.

Excerpted from The Compassionate Sumurai: Being Extraordinary in an Ordinary World by Brian Klemmer