Enthusiasm

 Achievers are those who are invariably motivated and activated by enthusiasm. They approach life with enthusiastic viewpoint. Enthusiasm turns your life completely.

The optimistic, the cheerful and hopeful people are the enthusiastic people. Contrast them with the pessimist, the sad and dejected once. You will find Enthusiasm is the one missing ingredient between them.

Sir Edward Appleton , the Scottish physicist who won Noble prize ,gives the credit of his achievement to enthusiasm. It is even above professional skill according to him.

Charles   Schwab says, ’’a man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.’’

At the beginning of any new project, the first comment we get is ‘’it just can’t be done’’. Generally people pull you down as they are not fired by enthusiasm.

An enthusiast may bore others, but he will never have a dull moment himself.

Arnold Toynbee said,’ ’apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things. IN the first place an idea which takes the imagination by storm. The   Second ,   is a definite intelligent plan for carrying that idea into practice.’’

Being enthusiast is being fully alive. It is a sad fact that many of the people are living without enthusiasm.  . If one asks such people,’’ how are you? ‘’, the answer would be dismal. ‘’ I am existing’’.

 For such people life is a boring. They are sad souls, to be pitied.

Some people lack self-confidence so much that they make themselves small, like nobody. To have such a small opinion of oneself is to affront God.

The important fact is, one can deliberately change by making oneself enthusiastic. A method of deliberately transforming yourself into whatever type of person one wishes to be is the first step. Then   you decide what characteristic you would like to have and  then to hold that image firmly in your consciousness. The third step is to act as if you actually possess the desired characteristic. Then to believe and repeatedly affirm that you are in the process of self creating the quality you have undertaken to develop.

The problem of sustaining enthusiasm is often difficult for older people. But dogged pursuance is the key to it.

Huxley says ‘’carry the spirit of the child in old age’’. Spirit of the child is open eye wonder, excitement and zest.

‘’None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm’ ’says Henery  David Thoureau.

New goals and fresh objectives are the motivators of enthusiasm.

A man in his mid-forty’s, is still full of enthusiasm because he has the goal of family, job etc. The elderly mostly has no such goals .But now he has the time to choose his goals. To some it may be writing and to others it may be music.

I know of a family, who had to move from their motherland due to strife and land as refugees in an alien culture. But they not only survived but even the uneducated mother took up  tailoring job in a firm and rose in her line to such a height that the whole family pitched in and today they are well known in their field in that new country. What fired them to reach this height? A goal to reach and fired by enthusiasm!

The impediment to enthusiasm is a mind full of gloomy thought.  Hate, prejudice, resentment, general dissatisfaction with people, world conditions, discouragement and frustration form a heavy blanket over the mind. To recondition the mind, mental ventilation is required.

What is mental ventilation? If one allows dark thoughts, regrets and resentment to accumulate, one’s whole psychology will be affected. Therefore mental emptying at the end of the day is required. That is recapitulation of unpleasant incident that may have accrued during the day and reviewing one’s own mistake, disappointment, unhappiness and mentally drop them from consciousness  by saying repeatedly ,’’forget them’’  every day  and a day will come when you would have dropped them. Some people have apprehension of the day ahead everyday. So the only thing to do is to face the day with enthusiasm by saying to yourself that God is great and he has given you so much. Any problem you are facing will vanish if you keep saying ‘’this too will pass’’.

 Cultivating enthusiasm and not dejection is the key to achievement.