My two favorite emotions are lucky and enthusiastic

Or, I’m in no hurry to clean chicken curry

photo credit: kaibara87

Yes, that’s right, we had chicken curry for dinner and I’m in no particular hurry to clean it. Love basmati rice, hate the way my kids drop it all around the table. Bleh.

So, while I wait for the rice to dry out a bit so it doesn’t stick to the broom I thought we’d talk about my feelings. See, last week I had the most amazing bit of luck, I entered the 12kfor12k raffle to benefit UNICEF and won five free sessions with my life coach Tim Brownson! Isn’t that amazing? Look here, that’s my name at the top. It’s spelled wrong, but that’s okay, usually they put the “e” in O’Connor so the “e” in Tracy was a refreshing change.

I was walking around feeling incredibly lucky and just bursting with joy of it all and then I made the mistake of telling a funsucker about it and sent them the link to the prize page. And they were all “Hey, didn’t you already have coaching? Why didn’t you ask if you could swap prizes? Look, you could have won a chandelier! Or an iPod! That kind of sucks that you won something you already had. Oh well, at least it was for charity.”

Excuse me? Hello! What kind of weird reframing of an incredibly amazingly positive experience is that? Think about it, what were the chances of me winning anything at all? And then to win the very prize I’d been having oodles of fun joking about winning all day? Practically zero! But I did it and thus I am incredibly lucky. Yes, I could have won something I didn’t already have, but it wouldn’t have made me laugh nearly as loud. The older I get the more I realize there’s not much better than those laughs that start way deep down in your belly and go on forever and that’s what I won (plus I now get to email Tim all my junk  guilt-free for a long, long time and won’t have to post them in my blog. So really, we all won, except Tim). How on earth could I have been luckier?

The point is I love feeling lucky and will find any reason to feel that way and I won’t let anyone get in my way with their “logic”. Or “math”.

My other favorite emotion is enthusiastic. I don’t know if that’s really an emotion. Heck, is lucky an emotion? Who knows, doesn’t matter, they both feel very emotional to me and that’s what counts.  I read a great book called The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas last week. It’s about a guy that works at various magazines devoted to niche hobbies like spelunking and tea and kite buggies. Um, yeah, I still get lost when I try to do reviews, my idea of one is this: This book was good; if you like books that are good and make you laugh and don’t suck and you aren’t totally stupid, you will like this book. I do and I have excellent taste.

Or, you could read this eloquent review on Fritinancy. Don’t read any more that that though, because she writes really well and has interesting subject matter and frankly I don’t want to lose you to her. Okay, read this post on Spants, you really have to read that, but then stop reading and come back to meeeeeee!

After reading the book, I got to thinking how much energy I get from people who have a passion and aren’t afraid to show it. You’re just talking to them, and even if you have no idea or interest in what they are going on about, you can’t help but be swept away by how good it feels to be genuinely excited and devoted. Tickled pink, my Dad calls it.

You know, it always baffles me when I meet somebody who is just gosh darned determined to hold back on showing enthusiasm. Or worse, is embarrassed by other people’s enthusiasm. Why? Isn’t enthusiasm one of the best parts about being human after the ability to bake pies and quilted toilet paper? I’m sure people have their reasons, but seriously, go ahead and be doofy. See, the thing is, you can act like you don’t care to try and forestall disappointment or embarrassment in the future but what I’ve learned is when things don’t work out no matter what I’ll feel some disappointment and probably some embarrassment, too. So why deprive myself of the joy of just throwing myself all out into it?

And this is the funny thing, the more I go for things with enthusiasm and gusto, the less the setbacks get me down. Not sure why that is, but it makes me feel pretty damn lucky.

(Note: Amazon affiliate links in the post, if you buy after you click, I get a portion of the sale.)

Tagged as: 12kfor12k, Book Review, Charlie Haas, enthusiastic, Fritinancy, lucky, The Enthusiast, Tim Brownson