Juiced! Success comes when you're excited about what you're doing.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management

LINDBERGH SAID, "WHEN I WAS LEARNING TO FLY, I was juiced! I threw everything I had into learning everything I could about flying because I just loved it!"

This happened to be Erik Lindbergh, grandson to Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. (Incidentally, there are some possible stops along the way: Iceland, Greenland and the Azores). Grandfather Lindbergh performed this incredible feat in 1927, changing aviation forever.

Grandson Erik was at Centennial Airport in late August to speak to a crowd of 200 people present for the kickoff of the Wings Over the Rockies aviation museum's Barnstorming Tour of some 13 Colorado communities. The purpose of the tour is to interest kids in math and science by bringing them the ideas inherent in aviation and flying.

There were at least 100 kids in this group at Centennial, all hanging on every word that Erik spoke. He is quite an aviator in his own right. In 2002 he battled uncertain weather and winds to fly a small airplane across the Atlantic to Paris, duplicating the feat of his grandfather 75 years earlier.

Here at the Wings event he was really talking to the kids who were all sitting in a big circle in front of him as he stood on the back of a trailer, flanked by two ultra-modern airplanes, the Adam Air A500 and the ATG Javelin executive jet.

He told the kids that he wasn't that great a student in elementary school or even in high school. He struggled there and in college to get decent grades. But when it came to learning how to fly, he excelled! He aced all the written exams because he studied and applied himself to his utmost. In his words, he was "juiced!"

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His advice: To find success and happiness in life, find something that gets your juices going. It's an automatic key to opening your mind, making you receptive and eager and making learning fun. The result is a...