Grow the Game®

Chazz Woodson - Words of Wisdom
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Catching Enthusiasm

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Happy Friday!

Enthusiasm is caught, not taught. – 8,789 Words of Wisdom

Enthusiasm is contagious no matter what area of life we are considering. And nobody can teach us to be enthusiastic. We have to decide on our own to do so. I have often used the example of playing lacrosse at Brown. The first month (often two months) of practice are far from ideal. Cold, snow, ice, wind… There’s not much enjoyable about running around when you cannot feel your hands and feet. The only saving grace is that after a little while… you can’t feel your hands and feet. But you still feel the wind smacking you in the face. You still feel the pain in your legs during the last 80 yard sprint. And you still feel the burning in your lungs as you try to breathe.

But there was a choice that we had to make every single day. When I first stepped outside on my way to class, the first thing that usually crossed my mind when I felt that wind cut through my jacket was “practice is going to be awesome today.” (I will leave it to you to determine the level of sarcasm in that statement). The same thought usually went through my head on the way to practice later that day.

And the same thought went through my head after getting dressed, walking up the stairs to the roof, and getting ready to walk through the door onto the field. The difference, this third time, was that I wasn’t speculating anymore. I was making a choice. I had to choose to be enthusiastic because that’s all that I had going for me. And I suspect many of my teammates private made the same choice at about that same time every day. The evidence of this was usually the shouts and cheers for the cold weather, snow, ice, wind, rain, or whatever was in store for us.

These were the same cheers for out sprint work. It wasn’t that these things were fun. They weren’t. But we made them fun, because we were determined to. There was no other way to approach it, if we were to get anything productive out of it, and if we were to survive it.

Every day, find a way to be enthusiastic. Surround yourself with other enthusiastic people. And if you don’t have that option, don’t be ashamed to be the only enthusiastic person in the building.

Make it a GREAT day and a GREAT weekend!

Stay blessed.