If you take some time to think about the people in your life whom you most appreciate, you’ll probably find that they are all encouraging. Everyone needs some encouragement, whether they’re going through a rough time or a smooth time. In the former scenario, encouragement helps people get back on track; in the latter scenario, encouragement helps them stay on a good path and take care of themselves.
The most successful people in the world have had coaches, support groups, or simply people who saw their potential and the possibilities they could manifest and encouraged them to follow their dreams. Who knows how many people decided to stop harming themselves, started one or more successful businesses, or stood up for an unpopular yet important cause because they received encouragement from someone close to them? And think about all the other people who benefited from their positive action; they wouldn’t have gotten those benefits if not for the encouragement given to the initial person. You never know how much impact you can have on another person with even a small gesture of encouragement.
It’s amazing what an encouraging word can do for someone. I’ve heard it phrased as “speaking life into people” and I love that. I’ve seen two versions of a great quote about this and each one is attributed to a different person. I like both, so I’ll include the one attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson here:
“Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”
And the one attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe here:
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
Everyone responds differently to encouragement but I’ve never seen anyone feel worse after receiving it than they felt beforehand. If someone didn’t appear to feel better after receiving some encouragement, it may just be that they felt it but didn’t show it, showed it differently than most people, or showed it later on once that good feeling had had time to settle in and take root.
Encouragement is sometimes overlooked until it is absent. Nowhere is its absence more apparent than when spending time around draining, discouraging people who always bypass the positives and go straight to the negatives (even if the negatives are imaginary). After being around discouraging people for even a small amount of time, an encouraging person is like a breath of fresh air and provides welcome relief from the negativity.
I like encouraging other people because I enjoy seeing them succeed, particularly when they didn’t think they could. I have many encouraging friends and I love the feeling I get when they speak life into me. Having the chance to give someone else that feeling is a wonderful way to pay it forward. Additionally, speaking words of encouragement to others also encourages me and motivates me to shoot for the moon. Part of this comes down to my desire for my words to match my actions and another part comes down to the fact that we as humans start to believe the things we say the most. If I’m regularly saying positive, encouraging things to other people, then it’s easy to keep my thinking aligned in that same fashion. In closing, I’ll leave you with these questions: who has been a major source of encouragement in your life, and what are some ways that you’ve used to encourage the people you know?