Steps to Enthusiasm

Too many people are defeated in life because they lack a very important quality: enthusiasm. Those who think of enthusiasm as a kind of superficial emotion should remember that the Greek words en theos mean “in God,” George Matthew Adams puts it this way: “Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set afire.”

Just as the world loves a lover, so does the world love the person who is excited about life. If you are a person with no enthusiasm, or not enough, I suggest three steps which may help you.

Act as If: the noted psychologist William James said, “If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.” for example, suppose you have an inferiority complex that you want to change. Start visualizing yourself, not as you think you are, but rather as you’d like to be—in this case a person confident, assured, able to meet people and to deal with situations. Then act as if you were that confident person. It has been proven that, in time, you tend to become what you think you are.

Ventilate Your Mind: Empty your mind of gloomy thoughts. Go over the day’s unpleasant incidents: a sharp word, a disappointment. Review your mistakes, error or stupidities. Hold them before you, drawing from them all the lessons they have to give. Then lump them together and mentally drop them out of your consciousness, saying these therapeutic words: “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before . . . (Philippians 3:13)

Tell Yourself All the Good News You know: Psychologists agree that you can condition a day in the first five minutes after you awaken. It was Henry Thoreau, the American Philosopher, which used to lie abed for a while in the morning telling himself all the good news he could think of that he had a healthy body, that his mind was alert, his work interesting. The same kind of technique can help you look forward to the day with eagerness. And the more good news you tell yourself, the more good news there is likely to be.

Maybe God bless you, and may you feel the joy for living that He wants you to have. N.V.P

Immaturity - 1

If we need more proof that professional stupidity is an occupational hazard of the office of a political spokesman, consider Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Anthony Golez’s defense of his provocative remarks about political immaturity. Asked whether he thought the debilitating street protests in Bangkok would happen in Manila too, he had said no, “because our people have reached a high degree of political maturity whereby our people respect due process and the rule of law.”

In other words, Thais, according to Golez, were politically immature. He did not say it outright; he did not need to. That’s basic logic, something a medical doctor of Golez’s quality and administrative ability would have easily followed. Indeed, you don’t need to be a doctor to know that if p implies q, then not p implies not q.

Thailand’s ambassador to the Philippines, Kulkumut Singhara Na Ayudhaya, drew the correct inference when he called a news conference to assail Golez’s comment, and Sen. Richard Gordon’s too, as unduly harsh and even unnecessarily interventionist.

But in response, Golez played dumb. “For the record, I did not say the Thais lack the political maturity,” he said Thursday. “I said in my interview that the Filipinos have reached a high level of political maturity.”

This defense is, at best, a half-truth.

ref: inquirer.net