Living Life With Enthusiasm

As young man, Winston Churchill was a profound underachiever in academics. This is interesting, because in so many ways he was a genius, for instance, as an adult he could quote verbatim whole pages of material he had read 50 years previously. Even as a youth, he was able to memorize a ten thousand stanza poem.

Churchill later grew into a world class author and historian, a truly excellent amateur painter, arguably the best orator of his age, a cunning fox of a politician and a visionary leader of the free world, all different passions. He embodied enthusiasm.

There is a key to understanding his academic failure. He once said, “They kept asking me questions about what I didn’t know, as opposed to what I did know.”

Really, we all only get enthusiastic about our own agendas. Once Churchill was free to write, speak and act upon what he did know and had a passion for, he went non-stop for the rest of his life. But when he was forced to respond to what others imposed, he was lackluster.

What are you passionate about?

I am quite frankly dumbfounded by the number of people I meet all over the world who are apathetic and bored. In a world of great books, magazines, things, people, loves, work, food, music, film, art, philosophy, politics, religion, children, and the Internet; people are bored?

How in the name of God, literally, can people be bored? There isn’t enough time to study and understand, let alone do all that life has to offer. Your task is to identify ten things that turn you on. Then prioritize them.

Twist the agenda imposed on you so that you get to study, communicate and do what you passionately care about. I am not suggesting that you should never compromise. Life is a compromise. But you must have a base from which you are compromising.

It’s like the poor soul who says, “All I want is a friend.” The response is, “Well, what do you want to be friends about?” People who have friends have music friends, another set of political friends and a different set they go fishing with.

I don’t fish. Yet I enjoy being in the company of someone who can enthusiastically tell me the beauties of it. I know he or she is a kindred spirit because he or she understands joy. And I know that anyone that anyone who is passionate about fishing could get interested in my passion, even if just for a moment.

Grasp your dreams and twist the world’s agenda to fit your passions, and share your enthusiasm. It’s infectious. Boredom is a killer, but the world will buy joy gladly.

The Pot To Watch

Our sense of self-worth determines our attitudes and our capacity for achievement. But we may have trouble expressing our own self-worth in words or in learning how others feel about themselves.

Noted author and psychotherapist, Virginia Satir, developed an easy down-to-earth and surprisingly workable way to talk about self-worth.

She grew up in Wisconsin. On her back porch was a huge round black iron pot that stood on three legs. It was used almost daily.

Her mother made her own soap, so for part of the year the pot was filled with soap. When threshing crews came through in the summer, the pot was filled with stew. At other times, her father used the pot to store “stuff” for her mother's flower beds.

The family came to call it the “3-S pot.” Anyone who wanted to use the pot faced two questions: What is the pot full of, and how full is it?

Long afterwards, when Satir became a therapist, and people told her their feelings, some saying they felt full, empty, dirty, or even “cracked” she thought of that pot.

She helped families communicate by asking them to picture everyone having an “inner pot” containing their feelings. Doing so gave them a way to express feelings that they wouldn't otherwise talk about.

A father might say, “My pot is full today,” and the rest of the family knew he felt on top of things, full of energy and good spirits.

Or a son might say, “I feel low pot.” This told everyone he felt he didn't matter, or he felt tired or bored or bruised, not particularly lovable.

A wife who hesitated to tell husband that she felt inadequate, depressed or worthless would say frankly, “Please don't bother me now, my pot is dragging!”

The down-to-earth word “pot” made it easier for people to talk about their self-worth or self-esteem. Satir defines self-worth as the ability to love one's self and treat oneself with dignity and confidence.

If we appreciate our own self-worth, we're ready to see and appreciate the worth of others. Both kinds of appreciation are essential if we expect to find success and happiness in life. As Satir puts it, “The crucial factor in what happens both inside people and between people is one's self-worth, one's pot.”

At every moment, everyone has a feeling of self-worth, and it colors whatever they see and do. As with Satir's old family pot, the question you need to ask is: “What's in my self-worth pot now? What's in yours?”

Trust Thyself

Perhaps the greatest essay ever written by a human being is “Self-'Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The essay is a battle cry for the individual to listen to his or her internal genius, to swim upstream, to stand apart from the crowd, to take personal initiative in spite of fear and to go forth into productive work.

Emerson said, "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense. Else, tomorrow as stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another, trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

Obviously, we need to enter into an alliance with other people, to seek the counsel of others, because the key word to all success and achievement is "thinking." All humans are not willing to think and none of us need their counsel and should not listen to it Think independently and find other independent thinkers for correction and synergy. Then take action.

To think and act are blessed freedoms that God has given to every individual, and what time to be alive. World political and economic freedoms are breaking out around the globe. There are troubles like those in the Middle East, but this is not the Big Picture.

Consider what is happening around the world in terms of wealth creation. The Internet has created more millionaire in the last ten years than the in the last fifty combined. Look at all the advances in computer and communication technology.

Think about this a bit, and you will realize that the world is about to enter the age of wealth, not leave it. The bears of the future cannot conceive it. I am bullish.

Big corporations are downsizing and laying off employees at a record pace,but thousands of small businesses are springing up all over the world and employing people at a rate at two-and-one-half times that of the layoffs. We must find a need, trust our intuition about filling it and take the personal intuitive of action. Create a want!

Oh yes there will be problems, setbacks and reversals. There have always have been. There will be abuses of freedom. There is and always was. It will take work to keep our heads on straight. It always did. There will be tyrants, dictators, and cheats. There always are.

What's new here? So what? The Big Picture is bright. Every true human being regardless of race, sex, or social status is a cause, a county, and an age.

The February Blues

In my experience, February is the absolute worst month for many people. The holiday season is long gone, winter has been here for awhile, and it seems as though winter is never going to go away.

Of course, we know in our heads, that winter is going to go away, but in our hearts, well, it seems like another thing. To me "February Winter" is a metaphor for living through the common grayness of life.

All of us have our burdens to carry. For some, the burdens of carrying aged parents, once young, vibrant and strong, to their ultimate destiny this winter.

To others, the horrific problem of teenage children may be wearing them down. Or the unfulfilled promise of working extra hours at sometimes two and three jobs has not yet borne fruit. There are hundreds of February winters. Almost everyone has a few.

Now, in our heads, we know there is a light at the end of whatever tunnel we are in, but it is sometimes hard to believe in that light. We have been too long in the darkness.

One line has always given me hope for the soul: "Hope is the dream of a waking man." The beauty and profundity of this line are endless. We all have dreams, but some of those dreams occur when we sleep.

Dreams while we sleep we cannot control, but we can control our waking dreams. We can choose what we shall dream about when we are awake. That is within our power, and that power is the watershed dynamic in human consciousness.

If, in our waking dreams, we allow ourselves to get into visions of powerlessness, revenge, envy, futility or despair, then we shall remain forever in the month of February. On the other hand, if we consider the coming spring, empowerment, forgiveness, applause, human poetry or positive vision, then the flowers reman a future hope in our lives.

Every farmer lives this waking dream when he or she invests seeds in the soil. Our dreams are seeds, but which dreams we allow ourselves to plant make all the difference.

Plant good seeds of blooming spring. For winter shall pass, and we shall all celebrate the joy that God has in store for us.