As a young child, The painter Benjamin West once decided while his mother was gone on an errand that he would paint a portrait of his sister. He got out all the bottles of ink and paper and went to work. By the time he was finished there was quite a mess. When his mother returned home and saw the mess he made, she overlooked it, picked up the portrait he had done, kissed him on the forehead and said, “what a beautiful painting!” He later said that it was with that kiss that he became a painter.
Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” And a Japanese proverb says, “One kind word can warm three winter months.”
There is so much more to be accomplished by building someone up than tearing them down. So much more is gained when we encourage someone’s positive traits rather than focusing on the negative ones. What are the tools that will inspire, strengthen, empower the people we come in contact with? Our words. Not just our words, though, but the way they are spoken and the love that accompanies them.
Once an older women saw a young mother with a child starting to misbehave in the grocery store. The child was pulling a box of cookies off the shelf and starting to yell when the young mother whispered something in the child’s ear. The child stopped her fit and put the cookies back on the shelf. The older women came up to them at this point and said, “I sure would like to know what you just said to your little one!” to which the young mother replied, “I asked her to put it back.”
I hope that I can use kind words and see others built up around me. I know that as I do I will be stronger because of it, too.
