Hi, this is AJ, welcome to our next lesson.
This one is called “Excitement.”
We’re going to talk about excitement and I’m going to read a little section from
a book called The 4-Hour Work Week, which is a fantastic book.
I love this book.
In fact, I’m going to do a few lessons based on sections of this book because I really,
really love it.
I think it’s just an incredible book that really has a very creative way of looking
at life and work and enjoying yourself.
The theme of the book, really, is enjoying your life.
I mean that is really what the book is all about and Tim Ferriss is the writer of the
book.
Again, the book’s title is The 4- Hour Work Week written by Tim Ferriss.
Absolutely excellent book, I highly recommend it.
Now the section we’re going to talk about today is about excitement.
So let me read what Tim has to say about excitement and then I’ll talk more about it.
So here we go.
“What do you want?
Well, first let’s ask a better question.
Most people will never know what they want.
I don’t know what I want.
If you ask me what I want to do in the next five months for language learning, on the
other hand, I do know.
It’s a matter of specificity.
What do you want is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.
Forget about it.
What are your goals is similarly fated for confusion and guesswork.
To rephrase the question we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Let’s assume we have 10 goals and we achieve them.
What is the desired outcome that makes all the effort worthwhile?
The most common response is what I also would have suggested five years ago, happiness.
I no longer believe this is a good answer.
I no longer believe that happiness is the reason we achieve goals.
Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and the idea of happiness has become ambiguous
through overuse.
There is a more precise alternative that reflects what I believe is the actual objective for
achieving goals.
Bear with me.
What is the opposite of happiness?
Sadness?
No.
Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness.
Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this idea.
So, for example, the opposite of love is not hate.
The opposite of love is indifference and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
Excitement is the more practical synonym of happiness and it is precisely what you should
strive to chase, it’s the cure all.
When people suggest that you follow your passion or that you follow your bliss, I believe they
are, in fact, referring to the same idea, excitement.
This brings us full circle.
It brings us back to the beginning, to our beginning question.
The question you should be asking isn’t what do I want, it’s not what are my goals,
the question you should be asking yourself all the time is what would excite me?”
Okay, that’s a nice little section from Tim Ferriss from The 4-Hour Workweek.
And, you know, I think he’s right.
Happiness can be found right now very easily.
You don’t need to achieve a goal to be happy.
You don’t need to speak perfect English to be happy.
You don’t need a lot of money to be happy.
You don’t need to do anything.
You can just smile, make your physiology strong and be grateful for everything you have now.
Be aware.
Be grateful of everything you have now in your life, your family, your friends, all
the people you love and who love you.
All the great opportunities you have in your life, your health.
All of us have so many great things in our life.
Happiness is really just a choice, an emotional choice.
You choose to be happy.
You can make yourself happy right now in any situation.
So we don’t need to have goals to be happy.
We don’t need to achieve things and get success to be happy.
But if we want passion, if we want excitement, well, that’s where goals come in.
Goals make us grow.
They push us to become more, to try new things, to become bigger and better people, to live
amazing lives.
That’s why we have goals because, as many people have said, you’re either growing
or your dying.
So we can be happy anytime, anywhere, but if we really want to be passionate, we really
want to feel powerful, positive emotions and feel this incredible energy, well, we need
to grow.
We need to feel excited about our lives, not just happy, excited.
That’s the reason to have goals.
So when you’re choosing your goals – and this is the most important point from this
section – when you’re choosing your goals don’t choose small goals.
Don’t choose boring goals, boring goals are useless.
Why have a goal if it’s boring?
Just stay the same.
The only reason to choose a goal and to try to achieve a goal is if it excites you.
It will give you energy and passion and excitement, trying to get it and actually getting it.
You should feel excited about both.
That is the purpose of goals.
They provide energy, they provide excitement.
So when you choose goals you must, you absolutely must choose exciting goals.
When you write that goal down you should feel excited immediately.
If you don’t it’s a bad goal, throw it away and make a new one.
All of your goals, your health goals, your money goals, your job and work goals, your
relationship goals, your language learning goals, they should all be super exciting to
you.
Not just a little bit, “Oh, that would be nice,” no, no, no, no, you should feel passionate
and excited just thinking about it.
“Wow that would be great!”
So let’s talk about money, for example, because it’s just such an easy, clear thing
to talk about, it’s easy to measure.
So let’s say money, you decide “Oh, I’d like to have a little more money.”
Well that goal sucks.
There’s no excitement in getting a little more money, it doesn’t excite anybody.
But let’s say you love cars and you say “I want enough money to buy a new Ferrari,
a hot, red, fast, Ferrari, woo-who!”
Well, as we’ve talked about before, that’s exciting.
That’s a real goal.
You will now have a lot of excitement and energy trying to get more money.
Because now you have something exciting, you have an exciting reason to do it.
You’ll be excited trying to get the money and if you succeed you will be very excited
to buy that car.
Or maybe you have a more generous goal that excites you.
Maybe your goal is to help hundreds or thousands of homeless people, to give food to people
who are hungry and to see the happiness on their face.
That’s exciting.
That’s an exciting reason to get more money.
You can wakeup every day and feel fantastic about that goal.
It will give you energy every single day and when you accomplish that goal you will feel
great, you will be excited when it happens.
That’s a great reason to get more money, also.
So, again, excitement is what we’re looking for.
That energy, that passion, that excitement, that’s the purpose of goals, so you need
to evaluate every one of your goals.
And, yes, we’re sort of repeating some of the ideas we’ve had in the past.
It’s okay.
This is a very important subject.
And I want you to think about it again from a little bit different point of view here,
that your life should be exciting.
You’ve got one life, you’re going to die.
We all are going to die.
Do you want to get to the end of your life, look back, and say well, it was kind of boring?
It was okay, so-so.
It wasn’t bad.”
I mean that’s a wasted life.
That sucks.
You might as well end right now if that’s your poor little goal.
That sucks!
But I know you don’t want that because you’re listening to me still.
You would have quit by now if that’s what you wanted.
I know you want more.
You want to get to the end of your life and look back and say “I lived an amazing life!
I’m excited about all the great things I did!
I’m excited about all the people I helped!
I’m excited about all the things I learned!”
Well that’s what you want in your life right not too, don’t you?
Don’t you want to be excited about your job or your career, about your work?
If you’re not you need to change something.
You need a bigger goal, a bigger more exciting goal.
You need to keep making that goal bigger and bigger and bigger until you do feel excited.
That’s when you know it’s a good goal, when you start feeling excited and a little
scared, as you know.
And it’s the same when you talk about your body or learning English or anything.
You’ve got to find the excitement in it and that’s so much more powerful than just
achieving something.
If you achieve, you make a million dollars, but you’re not excited, there’s no exciting
reason, you won’t be happy.
In fact, probably the opposite, you’re going to feel very sad and disappointed.
So find that excitement, find your passions in life and choose goals that excite you.
That is the only reason to have a goal.
All right, good luck.
I hope that you’ll go our Member Forums and write your goals.
Tell everybody about your goals.
We want to know.
Make us excited.
I’m excited to read great goals that other people have and I’m really excited to hear
when they’re working on them.
So, please, go the Forums and write down your exciting goals.
Share your exciting goals with all of us, all of your Effortless English Club members
and family.
Share your big, exciting goals with us.
And then, you know, every week or every month, tell us what you’re doing.
How’s it going?
And when you have successes, when you achieve exciting goals, when you feel great and excited,
please, go to the Forums, share your excitement.
You know most other groups, most other peer groups, most other learning groups they’re
always just complaining all the time.
It’s so negative.
It just takes all the energy out.
But not our club, our club is the opposite.
We share our excitement, we share our successes, we share our passion.
That is the purpose of the Forums, it’s the purpose of our Master Member Site, it
is the purpose of the Effortless English Club.
So I’m asking you, please, share your excitement, share your positive energy with us.
Give it to other people, inspire other members.
Let’s do that for each other and build an amazing community, an amazing family of English
learners.
All right, I will see you next time.