The Enthusiasm–Laffter Connection: A Guide for Gaining Positive Life Skills

By Bob Moss

For decades, author Bob Hubba Jubba Moss has had a passion for teaching, promoting, and mentoring enthusiasm as a valuable life skill. In The EnthusiasmLaffter Connection, he offers a thorough understanding of the enthusiasm-laffter connection, a concept based on the idea that hearty laffter is the greatest gesture of human enthusiasm.

Based on experiences gained during a long education career, the topics and ideas evolved from teaching biology, coaching sport teams, designing tennis visualization drills, and promoting hearty laffter as the best enthusiasm. The EnthusiasmLaffter Connection also explores easy-to-use and fun activities for putting more laffter and enthusiasm into daily life experiences.

Moss provides an in-depth look at how to understand, develop, and sustain the lasting talent of eternal enthusiasm and positive energy. He communicates how enthusiasm becomes a learned life skill once one is aware of how important it is, how to get it, and how to maintain it on a 24/7 basis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491765296

Bob Moss

Bob “Hubba Jubba” Moss has held a forty-five-year passion for exploring the laffter enthusiasm connection. As a high school, university, and elementary school teacher, he used his classrooms to mentor joy and enthusiasm. Moss and his wife have two children and two grandchildren and reside in White Hall, Arkansas.

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Copyright © 2015 Bob Hubba Jubba Moss.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-6528-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6529-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015905579

iUniverse rev. date: 06/30/2015

Table of Contents

About the Author

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Enthusiasm: Catch It, Learn It, Share It

Chapter 2 There’s Magic in Our Laffter

Chapter 3 Creativity Is Me and You Too

Chapter 4 Remembering 2B Positive

Chapter 5 The Twelve S’s for Success

Chapter 6 Creative Visualization

Chapter 7 Reflections of an Enthusiasm Mentor

Chapter 8 Applying Enthusiasm Concepts

Summary

Reader’s Quiz

Quiz Answers

List of Relevant Resources

Further Acknowledgements

The enthusiasm–laffter connection has been very, very good to me! (Bob Hubba Jubba Moss)

This book is first dedicated to my immediate family, including my parents, the late LaVerne and Robert Clinton Moss Sr.; my wife, Edna Jean; my brother, Oliver, and his family; my children, Anita Young (and her husband, Grayelin) and Parry; and my grandchildren, Aladrianne and Junior. Also, I dedicate this work to other relatives, colleagues, and students who have enjoyed and respected my passion for sharing enthusiasm–laffter lessons!

About the Author

Bob Hubba Jubba Moss

Motivation Lecturer, Coach and Mentor,

Volunteer Motivation Coach University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (2006- Present)

Formerly:

Adjunct Faculty, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (2008-2010); Teacher, Coach & Counselor, San Diego Unified School District (1965- 1971 and 1995- 2001 [Retired 2000]); Physical Education Department, Faculty Emeritus, University of California San Diego (UCSD); (1971-92); US Marine Corps (1961-65).

Bob Moss was born, raised and educated in San Diego, California. In 2006 he moved to White Hall, Arkansas 34 miles south of Little Rock, and a mile north of Pine Bluff. Over the past 45 years, he has developed a unique passion establishing joyous and enthusiastic attitudes for person of all ages.

Moss holds degrees and/or credentials from San Diego State University (BA & MA) and Cal Western University (teaching credentials). He has given decades of leadership services to the local, state, regional and national affairs of professional organization, in the areas of physical education and counselor education. His professional leadership efforts have included conference presentation, in-service workshops and keynote addresses. He has received many peer awards for his dedicated professional involvements. He is also praised for his role as a drum major for urging greater professional involvement by diverse educators.

Referred to by friends, students and colleagues as Hubba Jubba Moss is highly regarded for his presentations promoting enthusiasm and joy for others. While teaching at UCSD, Moss utilized his classroom as a laboratory for developing visualization techniques allowing students to experience accelerated learning of motor skills and attitudes. Combining his talent as a self-styled enthusiastic sports official with a gamut of visualization techniques, he assisted students to become high level referees and umpires in a very short period of time.

By chance in the late 1970’s, Moss stumbled across the relationship between his enthusiastic mannerism and Gelotology (the study of laffter). Hence the laffter/enthusiasm concept was born. Moreover, Bob has pioneered the role of sports motivation coach since 1972, and has served as a consultant at all levels of sports play, across America and on several West Indies Islands. He also often times speaks on the topic: Transcending Multicultural Barriers.

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Foreword

By: Dr. Jack Douglass

Retired, University of California San Diego, Vice Chancellor,

Researcher and Faculty Member

I am proud and happy to contribute a few thoughts regarding the written works of my colleague and good friend Bob Hubba Jubba Moss. On so many occasions, I have described Bob as an experience getting ready to happen. In the spring of 1971, while serving as a vice chancellor at UCSD, I informed Bob of an open faculty position in our physical education department. Moss was a high school teacher, coach, and counselor at the time of his interview, and he was hired from a slate of highly qualified candidates. He immediately began establishing himself as one of the most dynamic and student-friendly teachers on campus. During my tenure at UCSD, I frequently shared the fact Bob Moss was one of the most creative and student-friendly faculty members on campus!

In the spring of 1992, Bob Moss retired from UCSD with faculty emeritus honors and continued teaching at the local high school and elementary school levels for another ten years. After retiring once again, he continued his classroom presence as the Hubba Jubba Subba until he and his bride of fifty-three years (Edna) relocated to White Hall, Arkansas, in 2006. The validity of Hubba Jubba’s successful ventures are made obvious by the quality and quantity of his lectures and workshop presentations to state and national professional organizations, K–12 schools, institutions of higher education, professional and intercollegiate athletic teams, and community groups.

So what’s so special about Hubba Jubba’s creative and friendly ventures? First of all, during his second year at UCSD, he added the concept of mental imagery to his tennis class syllabus, creating a scientific reach allowing students to gain personal experiences with academic theory seldom available in their scientific and mathematics classrooms. Thanks to their mental imagery (or pretend practice) lessons, most students were awed by the accelerated improvement of their tennis skills. Moss immediately expanded the concept to his softball classes and sport officiating course, his work with student athletes, and then an accelerated improvement of motor skills course, funded by a UC Regents instruction improvement grant.

Secondly, the combination of Bob’s spirited attitude, rotund body mass, and jovial personality enables him to immediately connect with others. Late in his second teaching year at UCSD, he began to realize his natural enthusiasm had been at the root of his ability to effectively communicate with his students.

Just a few years later, Moss stumbled across the subject of gelotology (the study of laffter). When combined with enthusiasm instruction, this served as a unique motivational teaching approach; thus the enthusiasm–laffter connection began.

It has been a valued professional and personal treat to observe the growth and progressive development of Bob’s motivational talents from the UCSD tennis courts to Arkansas, where he now resides. Over the years, Moss has eagerly served as a professional and community leader, always ready to share his creative motivational presentations with others; in fact, the world. My most memorable times with Bob occurred over four summers during which I included him on my touring team of physical educators providing tennis lessons for youths and their teachers on the West Indies islands of Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, Saint Lucia, and Barbados. In addition to his tennis clinic duties, Bob volunteered numerous motivation presentations to