Failure can knock the confidence and enthusiasm out of people as quickly and as easily as a punch on the nose can make your eyes water. How can we recover and maintain the enthusiasm we have lost? How can we learn to see clearly once more?

Only a few years ago, I attended a seminar organized by the Anthony Robbins group on making money through investing in shares amongst other things.

As I walked out of the doors full of enthusiasm and excitement ready to make the most of my new found confidence and knowledge, I was met by men in straw hats who were advertising a course on making money through investing in shares.

I attended the weekend course and my enthusiasm and confidence increased.

A year or so later I had managed to lose 27,000 pounds after being conned by some share brokers who turned out to be criminal fraudsters. They were 'selling' shares they did not own.

My lazy failure to check them out was more to blame than the seminar and course but my enthusiasm and excitement vanished like snow in the morning sun.

I have been on an investment course since but my enthusiasm is still gone. By losing enthusiasm, I have added one failure to another and have not followed the great advice of Winston Churchill:

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."

After losing money, I should have 'climbed back on the horse' as it were and invested what little I had left. Maybe I will one day. In the mean time I have focused on internet marketing instead and am gradually making progress in that field and despite some setbacks have maintained my enthusiasm.

I was impressed, yesterday, by reading Jason Cox's blog. Jason is a very successful and very young internet entrepreneur. He described a list of projects he had undertaken in 2005.

Some of them - the ones he had created himself - were complete flops but the copycat projects were a huge success. He had maintained his enthusiasm throughout. He did not allow the flops to stop his momentum or quench his enthusiasm. Success follows that kind of attitude like rivers follow rain.

Another great quote by Paul J Meyer sums up his attitude:

"Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass!"

This quote hints at the secrets of maintaining our enthusiasm. We need to vividly imagine our eventual success as if it was already ours. We need to fan our desire by thinking about why we are following this particular dream. We need to believe that we have the ability to achieve our goals and we need to act with enthusiasm.

If we don't feel enthusiastic, we need to act as if we do and the feeling will often follow on. We need to climb back on the horse if we fall off and not lie complaining on the grass.

The original meaning of enthusiasm means 'God in you'. With God in us, we should be capable of performing miracles or, at least, extraordinary deeds.

If we can maintain our enthusiasm instead of losing it when we fail, we should end up in the land of miracles and the land of the extraordinary.