Motivational Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you today by Ettitude, makers of fine organic bed sheets and duvet covers. Try out their silky soft bamboo lyocell bedding for 100 days risk free. Get 10% off your purchase by using the special coupon code: inspiration. Visit them online at Ettitude.com. That’s ETT-IT-UDE.com. Discover what it feels like to sleep on a cloud.

Today’s podcast was edited and adapted from Up and Doing by C. P. McDonald, published in 1918.

Try enthusiasm on your job. It is the greatest of all pre-requisites of Success. It leads to better things — to the coveted, attainable prizes we strive for.

It is enthusiasm that makes us win — achieve — advance — become doers — take the initiative — the bold play. It makes the gray day a good day — the dull day a happy day. It points the way to opportunity — of fresh, new inspiration.

Enthusiasm makes the present beginner a future winner. It forces us to move from a groove — to take heart and start all over. It gives us the soul to win the goal — the chance to play the leading role.

Those who walk hand-in-hand with enthusiasm, land with enthusiasm on the top rung with the victors. Without enthusiasm, we simply fill in — hold down a job momentarily and then — oblivion.

Enthusiasm makes the shirker a worker — a performer of big things — an accomplisher of deeds. It makes for efficiency — and gives a fund of good fortune which the failure mistakes for luck. Only the doubter goes unmourned, unsung, unmissed. The believer is the receiver — the winner of the better things — the “getter” who reaps while the quitter sleeps.

Try ambition on your job. It will send you home at the end of a long day’s work with a whistle on your lips and a song in your heart. It will make you long for the dawn of a new day — when you can plunge in again.

Ambition makes a man among men — a woman among women — whether you work in a factory, office, café, shop, or wherever it may be.

Ambitions lends solidity to our slumbers — relish to our food— joy to our journeyings.

With ambition as our constant companion, we walk straight — our chin comes out — our jaws square — our eyes flash a do-or- die determination. We acquire the winning punch that knocks out Adversity. We are neither a spiritually minded bigot who decries the commercialism of the age nor a materialist sneering at the dreamers — for we know the world has its uses for all kinds.

Ambition keeps civilization throbbing and pulsating with Hope — lights flashing — spindles humming — fingers typing — hammers pounding — steam hissing — dynamos snapping. It keeps a perennial song bursting from the throats of dreaming millions.

Ambition make us train for bigger things — those things which the indolent mountebanks and lackadaisical pessimists have given up striving for. It keeps the yeast of our desire formenting in the ever-expanding world of material gain.

Ambition keeps alive in the breast of the plodder the ever-burning spark of future mastery — the irresistible impulse to reach the domain of leadership.

Try out perseverance on your job. Let it show you the short cut out of the deep rut. Let it prove that the person who’s con-tent to move in a groove is tramping and tamping the treadmill of failure. Try it out and perseverance will get you in — right up among the movers and shakers of the world.

Don’t stay among the runts and blunts of the rank and file. Get up with the stalwarts of your profession — the men and women who carry their load over the road of progress and never stop at the way stations of discontent.

Give perseverance a chance to help you advance. Let it show you the ways to the boss’s praise — and a frequent raise. And why the long work day beats the short shirk day. Put the spurs of determination into the flanks of indecision.

Perseverance wants to help you — to make you the kind of worthwhile person who works for all their worth. It’ll make you peel off your coat and pitch into the seeming impossible and make it a reality. It will give you the power to make a flower of results bloom in every weedy bower of skepticism.

Perseverance will make you a David to all the Goliaths of adversity. It’ll give you a mallet of faith with which to crush and hush the exponents of indolence. It’ll put you on the inside — on the win side — of life.

TRY determination on your job! It will inspire you to extend yourself to reach the dizzy, busy heights of victory. It will give you the strength to drive the length of the rough, rutty, but royal road to leadership.

Determination will be the compass to your ship of faith through the storm-tossed seas of reverses. It will lay for you substantial foundations under your castles built in the air. It will make it possible for you to come out of the woods and deliver the goods.

Determination gives us the power of seeing through things and seeing things through. It supplies the force of purpose that distinguishes the doer from the idler. It inspired Sam Brown to conceive the suspension bridge from a suspended spider’s web. For fifty years it was the stand-by of Galileo while he worked out and completed the invention of the pendulum.

Determination teaches us how to increase our earning capacity by increasing our efficiency. It is the friend of those who have the nerve and the verve to put their ability to the test — who make mistakes the stepping stones to success.

The person that determination befriends keeps moiling and toiling on the song side — the strong side — of duty. And you will smile to know that you have done your eternal best — have met every test — and treated trouble as a jest.

TRY initiative on your job! It keeps you from standing aside to let the next best person forge ahead. It enthuses you to pick up a heavy burden with a light heart. It puts you where you belong — in the ranks of the winners who have served the world well.

Initiative forces us to say “I will!” and forget “I can’t”. It transforms us from a runner-up to a leader — from a slave to a master. From a dreamer of little things to a schemer of big things.

Initiative makes us think more, plan more, do more. Makes us create new avenues of business — fight for the recognition due us. It makes us a champion instead of a trailer — a person of distinction instead of a distinct failure.

Initiative supplants deficiency with efficiency — weakness with power. It clears our heart and mind of pessimism and crowds them with inspiration — confidence — determination.

Initiative knocks off the shackles and fetters of inaction and brings to us the shekels of our betters — in action. It loads us with happiness — snappiness — scrappiness. It goads us with vim, vigor, and virility, to the vortex of victory.

Initiative spurs to clear the decks of today of the wrecks of yesterday. It encourages us to hustle and tussle with broadened brain and greater muscle. To sense the cents and garner the dollars.

Initiative is responsible for the success of every great person in the world. It has won battles of business, brain, and brawn. It is the quality that makes a person put their own money where their mouth is. It is the creator of prosperity— the lubricant on the wheels of progress.

TRY energy on your job. When troubles beset you— when adversity stalks beside you — when failures deride you — fall back on the limitless energy that resides within you.

Ulysses S. Grant, John Adams, and Andrew Johnson went to the White House because they knew of energy’s value. Grant rose from a real estate agent, Adams from a malt seller, Johnson from a tailor’s bench. But for energy, Thomas Edison would have remained a butcher, Napoleon a book agent, Astor a piano salesman, Columbus a wool peddler.

Energy is the dividing line between the “good” time and the “saw wood” time. Energy gives those who woo it and stick to it the seasoning power of reasoning power — the learning power that develops earning power.

Utilized by sharpest brains today, it make them winners of gains tomorrow. It is the weaver of the fabric of character — the invisible instrument upon which we patiently pick out the tune of attainment — the magnet that draws the dollars of diligence.

You won’t find energy used by the chap looking for a nap — by the one who quits using his wits — by the worker who doesn’t aspire to climb higher — who watches the clock and delights to knock — by the laggard who joys to rob his job of what they ought to put in it — who won’t pitch in and begin something because they can’t see the end.

Energy for the strong-willed, long-willed, song-filled spirit — the hustler, the tussler — the person who can buck UP and pluck up — who can take their clay and mold it to the satisfaction of those they mold for. Give me the worker who can measure with the yardstick of experience a goodly margin over and above what they set out to achieve — who tries for the prize — who has a mental wallop in every brain cell — who begins the day by buying a set purpose on credit and pays for it when the “knock-off” whistle blows with the earnings of fulfillment.

TRY courage on your job — Napoleon, Alexander, and Caesar, despite their physical handicaps, believed in the power of courage — and became great. Dante, an exile, a physical wreck, gave the world the “Divine Comedy.” Courage was Robert Louis Stevenson’s greatest asset during fourteen years of hemorrhages, illness, and violent coughing. Had it not been for courage, “Treasure Island” would never have been written.

It wasn’t luck that transformed Socrates from a commonplace stone-mason to a great philosopher. It was courage.

Courage was the friend who helped Sir Isaac Newton to greatness from a bookkeeper’s stool; who made Shakespeare, the son of a butcher, an immortal; and Harry Blackmun, who worked as a janitor, a Supreme Court Justice.

Courage is your greatest capital — your one indispensable asset. Courage brings health, happiness, hope, achievement. With courage on the job, you can’t fail; without courage, you’re helpless.

Through it all, remember this. You’ll win out if you don’t give up. When you’re called on to drink some bitter cup, drink it and smile as a brave person should. But don’t retreat: Life is a game you have got to play; it’s is not all worry nor all dismay; some of it’s bad and some of it’s good. And the bitter is mixed with the sweet.

The world is kind to the strong when you fight, fall, and get up again. But it has no place for those who fail and stand in their tracks and howl and wail. Never bow down to the weight of the yoke. Laugh at your troubles as you laugh at a joke. Cut out the worry and cut out the doubt, and you WILL win out.

So, turn your back on discontent and disdain to ever worry. Grasp the hand of opportunity and hold it tight. Worry is the thing that kills, and kills you in a hurry — Why struggle in the darkness when the world is filled with light?

Of all the antidotes for trouble, laughter heads the list. Success someday will crown your efforts, if you persevere and stay the optimist. Let every life that touches yours derive some inspiration. The fruits of work are not for those who harbor hesitation, but for the men and women whose daily work inspires motivation.

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