Curbing my Enthusiasm

(or how I thought not giving a shit was cool)

Somewhere along the line it wasn’t cool to get super excited about anything anymore.

I didn’t get an official memo-but around 6th grade the “cool kids” developed this aloofness, this attitude that getting overly excited about an activity “Was not cool”

Anyone that knew me back in grade school knows that I was not one of the cool kids, but I still emulated their behavior. I started to roll my eyes at school pep rallies, thinking that getting fired up was beneath me or something.

Here’s the interesting thing: this attitude continued into my adult life.

I never showed too much enthusiasm: just enough to get through whatever activity I was doing.

Whether I was at a football game, or even at parties-I felt I had to “Curb my Enthusiasm”.

This robbed me of the opportunity to fully enjoy my kids and play with my girls when they were little. I felt like I had to act like a grown-up.

Truth is, I’ve never felt like a grown-up even at almost 60 years old.

All I’ve accomplished is to tamp down the joy in my life.

So now I’m at a fantastic motivational seminar, and they are asking me to turn up the volume on my joy and actually get excited and I found out that I was having trouble letting go.

We are being trained to go in and out of different emotional states in seconds, so you can master your emotions instead of them mastering you.

I realized that attitude of being “too cool for school” was not really serving me so I changed it. It’s gone.

I’m looking around and there’s a guy in front of me here with his wife. She obviously wants to be here. He doesn’t look thrilled.

He’s not participating.

He thinks this is stupid.

He isn’t going to get much out of this seminar.

Maybe he doesn’t really play with HIS kids

God, it took me so long to change.

Maybe I can make it up to my girls if I can play with my grandkids (when I have them.)

Love ❤️,

-Dan

Http://tonyrobbins.com

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash