Energy and Enthusiasm

“Some people are too cool for enthusiasm.  Not us.” – Coach Quick

"Enthusiasm is contagious.  Be a carrier." - Susan Rabin

:"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions." - Henry Ward Beecher

             I think often about how much I enjoy being around people with enthusiasm, and I have realized over the years that ventures that start and continue with a high amount of enthusiasm are invariably successful.  For me, enthusiasm is a spiritual characteristic.  It indicates a certain spirit or tone of being.  You can recognize an enthusiastic person easily because people usually gravitate toward him or her.  The enthusiast is awake to new experiences and approaches them thinking, “What can I gain from this new situation?”  The enthusiast is an adaptable person because he is used to finding and accepting challenges.  He knows that life is more enriching when lived with a curious spirit, a spirit that animates life rather than crushing it under his foot.  We see enthusiastic people around us each and every day.  These people teach the classes that you like to go to.  These people are oftentimes the most successful in their chosen profession because they are confident and have fun with life.  Their enthusiastic spirit keeps their life fresh and exciting.

People with enthusiasm radiate energy.  Energy is the active manifestation of the spirit that an enthusiastic person possesses.  It is easy to see this energy in those who have it, but it is perhaps easiest to see it in people who do not have it.  These people are the classic “mopes.”  You and I all know a “mope.”  The person saunters into the room, eyes downcast, with a bit of a glazed over look.   Their body language screams “I don’t want to be here!”  These are the kinds of people who always see the down side of things.  They see the roadblocks to opportunity rather than the potential gains to be had.  They see what can go wrong instead of what can go right.  These kinds of people bother me because they simply lack the enthusiasm to “put themselves into play.”  They are so concerned with what can go wrong that they refuse to even play the game.  A mope lives in fear of failure.  A person with enthusiasm embraces new opportunities in life with the attitude that he can learn something about himself by trying something new, even if he may happen to fail.  These people advance straight toward opportunity with a lot of energy thinking only of what they have to gain.  For an enthusiast, failure is just something that we can learn from – a natural outgrowth of an adventurous spirit.  Living life without energy and enthusiasm is really a refusal to truly “live” at all.

Energy and enthusiasm are important in life and athletics because they often determine your individual performance.  Even when you lack talent, performance can be improved substantially by contributing a certain amount of energy to a situation.  I’ll give you an example from my teaching experience.  At certain points during the year, I teach all of my students a unit in drama.  I usually break each play down into small scenes, divide the class into groups, and ask each group to perform a scene.  Now, most of my students will not turn out to be the next Robert DeNiro or Nicole Kidman, but the dual concepts of enthusiasm and energy often determine their success.  I always have one group of students who can’t even conceive of acting out a scene in front of the class.  They come up with excuses – “I can’t act,” “This is embarrassing,” or “The dialogue is too hard.”  When met with a task outside of their comfort zone, they react by refusing to participate.  They become resigned to a bad performance because they cannot conceive of producing a positive result.  They approach the task with little energy or enthusiasm.  On the other hand, I always have a group that meets the task eagerly.  They trade acting and setting ideas back and forth, practice the lines and actions numerous times, and have fun while preparing their scene.  They take an uncomfortable and difficult situation – acting in front of class – and turn it into a successful performance because they apply enthusiasm and energy.  The spirit of the group enables them to tackle the challenge, and their collective energy ensures success.

This concept of collective energy is particularly important when you think about the challenges facing a cross country team.  The challenge before the individual is how to maximize his own performance for the benefit of the team.  Improving performance as a distance runner takes both spiritual and physical energy.  The spiritual aspect refers to our attitude each day for training.  What type of enthusiasm do we have for the task at hand each day?  People who meet the daily challenge of training have to radiate enthusiasm.  They must want to do the run.  Having an enthusiastic spirit enables an athlete to generate the amount of physical energy needed to complete the run or the workout.  For example, two years ago we did a workout during track season that consisted of 40 x 400 meter repeats.  I only required the varsity to do 20 repeats, but I challenged them to do 40.  Rather than being mopes and focusing on the difficulty (or perhaps the stupidity) of the challenge at hand, the boys chose to take on and meet the challenge.  Their enthusiasm helped to generate the physical energy necessary to complete the workout.  We’ll call this Quick’s First Law of Motion: Enthusiasm creates energy for performance.