Enthusiasm - The Secret To Your Success

Enthusiasm is an offspring of desire. Never be willing to accept a 9 - 5 mentality which leaves no room for confidence; effort; willingness; progress; and the desire to grow. Your enthusiasm can affect you, your co-workers, and others, and is always accepted and welcomed.

Where enthusiasm is not there, you and your organisation will spiral downwards at a great speed into "accidie." This is one of the Seven Cardinal Sins, a beloved subject of the medieval moralists. Sometimes an absence of enthusiasm overlies accidie it may indicate clinical depression, or a depressive personality. If so, it deeds treating.

Here we deal with the consequences of lacking enthusiasm for our business, or work, or the latest appeal. At a superficial level it reflects a lack, perhaps, of any love for the task in hand. If so, beware, the enterprise may be in grave danger.

When we were faced with a huge possible bill for replacing the Georgian plaster ceiling in a medieval church, several members said, quite simply, "What do we need a Church for any way? Let's move to the village hall!"

That may be "accidie"in the sense that it reflected a lack of love and respect for what God had provided for us through the generosity of church members in former generations who built and reconstructed and restored the church building over nearly a millennium. It had the effect of making us all ask "Well, what is the building for, anyway?" Answering that question gave us the impetus and vision and momentum to carry forward an on-going "rolling"programme of repairs - planning the appeals and the fund-raising according to necessity.

When you get the vision right, as in this last case the purpose of the building, then enthusiasm returns. Enthusiasm is in essence neutral. It is easy to enthuse and desire the wrong things - witness the energy of so criminals, and the extraordinary ardour with which so many sin. Desire creates enthusiasm. You should make sure that anything you devote yourself too is comely and rational and has a good intent in society as well as your own life. After all, another word for desire is Lust. The growth of the "Pop-idol"over the period of the twentieth century is proof, if we wanted proof, that ill-directed desire becomes Lust and the offspring of Lust may well be idolatry, the worshipping of people, ideas, and things that are false.