Experiment:  Act Enthusiastic for a Month

Frank Bettger wrote the book ‘How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling’ in 1947. In the book Frank talked about how becoming more enthusiastic transformed his life for the better.  You can purchase a copy of Frank’s book on Amazon:

 

Please see my review of the book here.  For the month of February 2016 I decided to conduct an experiment on myself and act enthusiastic for the month and see what would happen.

What did I actually do?

The first challenge that I was faced with was to understand what does it mean to be more enthusiastic?  How do I put enthusiasm into practice?   I expected that I would have to force myself to become more enthusiastic.  I am a natural introvert and I expected that I would have to transform myself into an extrovert for the month.   I expected that my enthusiasm therefore would be fake and simply an act.  It is hard to consciously force yourself to do something and to remember to do it for one month!  Therefore I decided to use self- hypnosis to programme my mind to become more enthusiastic.  Hypnosis Downloads have a self hypnosis audio on enthusiasm which I decided to purchase and try out.

What did I observe?

After listening to the self-hypnosis audio a number of times I found that I was doing things with much more energy than before and time at work was passing quickly.  I was getting through things on my to do list with ease.  I was entering more easily into a ‘flow’ state.   I felt like a larger version of myself.  I felt more passionate and energetic about what I was already doing.

What did I learn?

Firstly, what I gained from listening to the audio was a much deeper understanding of the concept of enthusiasm.   When you look up synonyms for the word enthusiasm in the dictionary you find the following:

“eagerness, keenness, ardour, fervour, warmth, passion, zeal,zealousness, zest, gusto, brio, pep, go, sap, liveliness, vivacity,vivaciousness, energy, verve, vigour, dynamism, vehemence, fire,excitement, exuberance, ebullience, spirit, avidity, avidness;”

Enthusiasm does not therefore mean that you become some type of Pollyanna character by being unreasonably or illogically optimistic all the time.  What I learned was that being enthusiastic means becoming a more focused, passionate and energetic version of myself. It was still me but with the dials turned up so to speak.  Therefore there was nothing fake or strained about my enthusiasm.

Conclusion

In conclusion I consider the experiment to have been successful.  Anything that helps us to become more passionate, excited and energetic about what we are doing on a daily basis is certainly very worthwhile.

“The real secret of success is enthusiasm. Yes, more than enthusiasm, I would say excitement. I like to see men get excited. When they get excited they make  a success of their lives.”

Walter Chrysler