Greensboro News-Record
Sunday, February 18, 2001

Even guys like Vince can dare to dream
by Lynn Brisson

" When you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. "
— Henry Ford

A couple of weeks ago, I spent an evening with several motorcycle enthusiasts, a would-be James Joyce, a philosophizing grandmother, an independently wealthy hypnotist, a former psychic hot-line worker and Vince Charlivy of Eden.  

A big, brawny man of Polish/Lebanese descent, Vince supervises 85 security staff members. He loves humor and has children ranging in age from 10 to 35 and five grandchildren, with more on the way, and he says his life is boring.  

I got to know all of this about Vince at the free Small Business Center seminar titled. "Are Your People Burned Out or Fired Up? Enthusiasm - Get It to Give It." Vince was at the seminar at Rockingham Community College hoping to be injected with enthusiasm that he could pass along to others at the Cone Medical System hospitals, where he works. I was there to get a story.

I met and focused on Vince because seminar leaders love nothing better than to scramble the seating arrangement then ask you to interview the stranger beside you and introduce him to the class. Vince was the stranger beside me.

I butchered Vince's last name during my introduction, and he got everybody laughing about my "menopausal cat, which is currently undergoing hormone therapy.  

I believe I've mentioned on other occasions that I do not have a normal life. I dared not grumble about being tired or any other such nonsense, because seminar leader Denise Ryan, owner of FireStar, "a firm specializing in enthusiasm," said: "Everybody knows people who choose to be miserable. All they see is the negative. They are enthusiasm vampires." She then spent three hours pumping us with enthusiasm. Not just for our jobs. But for life.  

" Everybody falls asleep," Ryan said, meaning everybody gets in a rut and puts dreams on hold. "When you fall asleep, life slips through your fingers." Throughout the evening, Ryan quoted Thoreau, Ghandi, Henry Ford and others. 

She made us re-evaluate and resurrect long-forgotten dreams and goals. She dared us to believe we could do anything. She did all this while clapping her hands, walking back and forth across the front of the room, and bouncing up and down in her black pumps. I feared her energizing enthusiasm might catapult her across the room, or onto a seminar table, or into our laps.  
My new buddy Vince leaned over and said something about cats and women and hormones. He also wondered what Ryan had ingested before coming to the seminar.

I really like Vince.

Ryan went on to say we have an enormous effect on those around us. We have the power to change others' lives. In all relationships, both personal and professional, we affect the moods, feelings of self-worth and enthusiasm of others simply by our choice of words and actions.  

I decided to put her theories to the test. Now, I'm not much of anything in the morning. I generally come fully awake and cognizant about 11 a.m. The day after the workshop, however, I walked in the front door with a big grin and happy hello. To my surprise, I was rewarded with the same. It made me feel good, better somehow, less sleepy or less like Oscar the Grouch. It made my whole day better.  

Ryan said she likes quotes and sticks them all over the place. So, I got some sticky notes and pasted quotes around my cubicle, waiting for a reaction from my coworkers. I got none. Maybe they think I'm ridiculous, but maybe they'll eventually put up a few quotes of their own.  

I tried out some enthusiasm on the family and noticed more laughter, less grumbling. On store clerks, I got a mixed response. But on burned-out school personnel, voila, I received big smiles in return.

This stuff is magic! It works! It's weird.

All this life-changing matter from a free seminar. When I write one of the many books-I’m planning, I'll have to give some well-deserved credit to the Small Business Center and Denise Ryan. And then I'm going to locate Vince, just see what he's up to.  His wife, you see, wants him to start living, which means riding motorcycles with her. I think Vince has his own dreams.

Contact Lynn Brisson at 627-4881, Ext 127,
or lbnsson@news-record.com

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