Curious about Enthusiasm: If It Is So Great, Why Do So Few People Have It?

Henry Chester wrote, “Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power and influence.”

Edward Appleton said, “I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.”

And Mary Kay Ash went so far as to state, “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go farther than a great idea that inspires no one.”

The overall feeling from most of the quotations I discovered that refer to “enthusiasm” were that it breeds success and happiness. It is also the behavior most suggested in sales training. So, as I posed the question in the title, “Why do so few people have it and/or enjoy the benefits of enthusiasm?”

You may be thinking that I am just encountering the wrong people in the wrong situations. After all, there are lots of enthusiastic people. I wish there were. In my fitness classes, I do have a handful of enthusiastic students. They move, they sing, they yell and they smile. And yet I notice the majority act like they are just “putting up with it.”

Way back in the early 80s I was working as the manager of a textile design studio. There was a terrific young salesman named John who was enthusiastic about the fabrics and life in general. He and I put together a program for interior designers that consisted of him showing the new line of prints and my showing slides and explaining all about how those prints were created. The designers loved it, but the company VP thought that John and I were going overboard with our enthusiasm and halted our program.

And, then there is fake enthusiasm - worse than no enthusiasm. Bo Bennett agrees, “Faked enthusiasm is worse than bad acting - it is bad acting with the intent to deceive.” I think that this shows up often in sales. I feel that it is almost impossible to sell a product that one isn’t enthusiastic about.

In a past life I became involved with and sold a rather pricey goal setting program. It was my first foray into audio self-improvement. I loved it and was going gang busters, until a potential client asked me why he should pay close to $300 for my product when he could get a similar program from Nightingale Conant for only $70. I checked it out. My sales of the pricey program plummeted and I ended up selling Nightingale Conant tapes. I had lost my original enthusiasm.

It’s time to share some of the great quotations I found, and, if they don’t encourage you to work on your enthusiasm, I don’t know what will:

• Dale Carnegie stated, “Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”
• Was I Ching correct when he wrote, “He who possesses the source of enthusiasm will achieve great things. Doubt not. You will gather friends around you as a hair clasp gathers the hair.”
• The strong and never, never give up statesman, Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
• While Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed, “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”
• And Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.”

All I know is that I love my life and live every day and every moment with enthusiasm. It may not be for everyone, but why not try it? It is much more FUN that way!

Curious about Appreciation: How Full Is Your Bucket?

David Brandt Berg wrote, “Always remember, everyone is hungry for praise and starving for honest appreciation!”

The book, How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life, was mentioned several times on the discussion lists to which I belong. So, I was delighted to find the CD audio program of it this past week. This short book packs a big punch.

"Clifton and Rath paint a compelling picture of the good things that happen when people are encouraged, recognized, and praised regularly, as well as the emotional, mental, and sometimes even physical devastation that can occur in the absence of such positive encounters . . . Leaders who want to eliminate or avoid this kind of destruction should make How Full Is Your Bucket? required reading for themselves and their people."

I know that a good number of us have worked at or still work at companies where we feel unappreciated. Some bosses are so bad - and I do speak from experience - that they never, never tell employees that they have done a good job. I once said to one of the worst, “It wouldn’t hurt you to say `thank you’ once in a while.” His answer was, “I say `thank you’ every time I sign your paycheck.”

Lack of appreciation, however, isn’t just prevalent in work situations. Family interactions and interactions with customers and others in passing are often far from positive. So many people never say thank you or compliment someone for a job well done. I am sure you can share many examples.

So often parents focus on the poor grades, rather than the good ones. Patrons in a restaurant complain about minor mistakes - a missing fork or spoon - and never say thank you for anything. People who are in a check out or check in line, where the person waiting on them is working as hard and quickly as possible, are often grumpy and even nasty.

You would be amazed by how quickly you can brighten a total stranger’s day by being pleasant, saying thank you or even complimenting them on something they are wearing. “My, I love your earrings. They suit you so well!”

I feel that Dale Carnegie said it all, “You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”

Another area that Tom Rath, co-author of the Bucket Book with Donald Clifton, speaks about is the power of focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. More than a year and a half ago, I took the Clifton StrengthsFinder test. He wrote the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, with Marcus Buckingham. Clifton’s and Buckingham’s premise is that too many of us focus on overcoming weaknesses rather than building on our strengths.

This also happens with a lack of appreciation. We are berated for what we have done wrong - never praised for what we have done right.

Here are some thoughtful and quite true quotations from the past and present:

• Voltaire wrote, “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
• Mother Teresa felt that, “There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”
• Ralph Marston stated, “Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.”
• And, Margaret Cousins shared, “Appreciation can make a day - even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.”

My question to you is: do you make your sincere appreciation of others abundant and verbal? How often do you make a positive impact on friends, family and peers? Visit the Bucket Book website and take the Positive Impact Test. You will be surprised at the difference it will make in your life and relationships.

Curious about Intensity: Does Intensity Add or Subtract from Your Life?

When Lawrence Taylor said, “You try to stay within the rules for the sake of the game, but you can always turn up the intensity,” he was speaking as an athlete. I feel, however, that he could just as easily be talking about life and business in general.

Yesterday I was reminded of intensity more than once.

First, I attended an inspiring all-day seminar for writers. Every speaker and workshop leader is a writer and each exhibited a sense of intensity for their writing and their writing careers. Even though they all shared that pursuing this career is not easy, they were intense in their dedication to writing. One well known writer, went so far as to say, “I write, for I have no other choice. If I had to take a regular job, I would slit my throat.” That is intense.

The poet Philip Levine reinforced this choice when he wrote, “I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.”

Later in the day, while listening to the tape of an excellent teleseminar, I heard Alex Mandossian speak to Jim Edwards about the power of intensity by using the following metaphor. Both he and Jim could go to the health club, work out on the same equipment for the same length of time, yet one would have better results in their body makeup than the other. What caused the difference? The intensity with which they were working.

I see this every day in the fitness classes I teach. Even though I continually call out, “Push! Work that body! Use you arms! Give it your all,” I find that there are a number of participants who are barely moving. These are often the ones who complain that they aren’t getting the results they desire and expect. Note: I do know that some are still doing the best they can. I am not referring to them.

I submit to you that in all areas of our lives that if we live and work with intensity, we will not only experience a high level of success, we will also create daily fun and excitement. We will enjoy others more, and others will enjoy us more.

It is time for some meaningful quotes to present other takes on intensity:

• John McDonald stated, “The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed.” Maybe our desires need to be more intense.
• Herbert Read wrote, “Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.”
• Jane Roberts said, “The channels of intuitive knowledge are opened according to the intensity of individual need.” How is that for a mind tickling thought?
• Stendhal suggested the obvious, “People happy in love have an air of intensity.”
• And, I don’t agree with Joanne Woodward who said, “Intensity is so much more becoming in the young.” I find intensity becoming to all. What about you?

Several artists, writers and performing artists made some intense observations about their work:

• Joan Miro, one of my favorites, said, “I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.”
• Laurell K. Hamilton wrote, “My plots rarely change in mid-stream, only the romance arc, or the character development catches me off-guard or an occasional nasty bit by the villain. It's not usually anything that changes the book too much-just steps up the intensity.”
• Roy Harper shared, “I've listened to a lot of music, and I reckon that my records are definitely better, more stimulating, and more carefully constructed than any others. I've studied the melodies and lyrical forms of many artists, but no-one else quite seems to sustain the burning intensity of my own work.”
• And, another of my favorite artists, Jim Dine, said the following, “I do not think that obsession is funny or that not being able to stop one's intensity is funny.”

So, how intense are you? I challenge you to step it up a bit and see what happens.

I leave you with this thought-provoking quote by Leonore Fleiser, “The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct ratio to the intensity with which other try to prove him wrong.”

Curiosity about Punctuality - Does It Help or Hurt?

“Punctuality is the politeness of kings.” - Louis XVIII

How do you feel about punctuality? And, how punctual are you? And, if you are a punctual person, does it bother you when others aren’t?

When I arrive early for everything - meetings, appointments, and gatherings - I often explain by saying, “I know I am a bit early, but I always allow extra time. You see, because of my father, we were always the first to arrive at parties.”

You could call me a punctual person. I admit that if I am running late due to circumstances beyond my control, I start to feel physically ill.

Therefore, it is amazing to me to know people who are chronically late for everything.

As I have mentioned before, I teach several group fitness classes a week. As long as one person is there on time, I start. Often I will start a class with only a handful of people in attendance and within ten minutes have a room full with as many as 35. For some reason, these late arrivals don’t bother me. I rationalize that they ran into extra traffic, or had to drop a child off at school, or just left work (some work through the night and others quite early).

What does bother me - and, I am sure, the class participants who are there - are those who always arrive as much as a half-hour late. They are disruptive while setting up their equipment and, because we are short of some supplies, cause even more disruption with their asking and looking for those supplies. These very same students tell me they are upset that we start too early for them and they wish the club would change the class times to suit them.

They might also agree with the following two quotes (the only ones I found that were semi-negative about punctuality):

• Evelyn Waugh wrote, “Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.” I certainly know that this isn’t true. I can’t remember ever being “bored.”
• Oscar Wilde described someone as, “He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”

What Waugh and Wilde are saying here, in my opinion, that those of us who are punctual don’t have anything better to do with our time. I prepare for being early and I suggest you do, too. Being a voracious reader, I always have a book, report and/or a publication with me so that the earliness gives me time to steal a few extra minutes of catching up.

Business successes have shared the following suggestions about punctuality:

• Richard Cecil wisely states, “If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality, I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own.”
• Thomas Chandler Haliburton points out that, “Punctuality is the soul of business.”
• And Don Marquis wrote, “Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.”

Charles Dickens extolled its virtues, “I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.”

And, yes, I do have friends who are always late. I am always prepared with reading material, because I don’t want to have happen what William Hazlitt describes, “Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.”

Let me leave you with an interesting and thought provoking quotation by George William Russell, “When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.”

So, I ask again, “How punctual are you? Is it a help or a hindrance?”