Jason’s Grandfather (Papa) Said the Same Word Every Single Morning. It Stuck.

By Jason Shelfer

Host of The Living Lucky® Podcast | LivingLucky.com

His name was Rooster.

I don’t know the exact origin of the nickname. I just know that’s what everyone called him, that it suited him completely, and that no one who ever met him forgot him. My grandfather was the kind of person who changed the temperature of a room just by walking into it. Not because he was loud or demanding, though he could certainly hold a room. But because of the energy he brought. Every single time. As if he’d decided somewhere along the way that walking through a door was an opportunity worth taking seriously.

Every morning, without fail, Rooster woke up and said the same thing.

“Boy, do I have Enthusimatism!”

Not enthusiasm. Not optimism. Enthusimatism. A word he invented — or stumbled onto, or received from somewhere — that managed to be both of those things at once and something more besides. The kind of word that doesn’t exist in any dictionary but makes complete sense the moment you hear it.

I heard him say it hundreds of times growing up. And I want to tell you honestly: for a long time, I thought it was just a funny quirk. A grandfather thing. The kind of saying that gets attached to a person the way a nickname does — charming, beloved, slightly inexplicable.

It took me years to understand what he was actually doing.

Rooster wasn’t just expressing how he felt. He was deciding how he felt. Every morning, before the day had a chance to tell him who he was going to be in it, he made a declaration. He announced his energy. He named his state out loud and, in naming it, claimed it.

He was doing, without any framework or formula or coaching certification, exactly what we teach at Living Lucky®.

He was consciously creating his luck.

There’s a principle in neuroscience and in performance psychology that the state you bring to any experience shapes the experience itself. Not just your perception of it — the actual outcomes. The conversation you walk into in a state of openness and energy goes differently than the same conversation entered in defensiveness or exhaustion. The decision you make from a place of confidence lands differently than the same decision made from fear. The day you begin by declaring your Enthusimatism unfolds differently than the day you shuffle into apologetically.

Rooster understood this. Not as a concept. As a practice. A daily, non-negotiable, first-thing-in-the-morning practice that he never bothered to name or explain because he was too busy living it.

I think about him often when I talk about the 4-Minute Formula. Because in a way, what Rooster did every morning was his own version of it. He answered the question “how do I want to show up today” before anyone else could answer it for him. He set his RAS — again, without knowing what a RAS was — to scan for reasons to feel alive and engaged and grateful and full. And his RAS, loyal and literal, found them.

That is the whole game. Rooster figured it out decades before we had the neuroscience to explain it.

Enthusimatism became one of Living Lucky®’s most beloved words — not because we invented it or trademarked it or built a curriculum around it, but because it captures something that all the clinical language in the world doesn’t quite reach. It is the feeling of waking up and choosing, before the alarm has fully faded and the day has fully arrived, to be the kind of person who meets what’s coming with energy and openness and a genuine belief that something good is on its way.

It is what Living Lucky® feels like from the inside.

And it is available to you every single morning. Not because you have to earn it or manufacture it or wait until you feel it naturally. But because you can declare it. The way Rooster did. Out loud or on a page or in the quiet of your own mind before the day gets hold of you.

I want to tell you one more thing about my grandfather.

He wasn’t a man without hard days. He wasn’t exempt from loss or difficulty or the ordinary frustrations of a life fully lived. The Enthusimatism wasn’t a mask over any of that. It wasn’t toxic positivity or willful blindness to what was hard. It was something more durable than either of those things.

It was a choice. Made fresh every morning. That the day ahead was worth meeting with everything he had.

That choice, made consistently over a lifetime, produced a man who changed the temperature of every room he walked into. A man whose nickname was Rooster because he crowed every morning like he meant it. A man whose word — one made-up, ridiculous, perfect word — is now spoken by people in 134 countries who never met him but somehow recognize exactly what he meant.

That is the compounding effect of a morning practice. Not in journals or in metrics or in anything you can easily measure. In the kind of person you become. In the rooms you change. In the wordsyou leave behind.

Boy, do I have Enthusimatism.

Try saying that tomorrow morning. First thing. Before the day gets loud. Out loud if you can manage it, even if you’re alone in the kitchen and it feels slightly ridiculous.

Rooster would have told you it works better that way.

The 4-Minute Formula Journal gives your morning declaration a place to live and grow. Available on Amazon and at livinglucky.com.

Why do I wake up every morning with more energy, more gratitude, and more genuine enthusiasm for what the day is about to bring than I did the day before?

Write that down. Say it out loud if you’re feeling brave. Rooster would be proud.

Start Living Lucky® — Enthusimatism is not something you wait to feel. It’s something you decide to have.