Him: “So I was speaking with your boss today and [your boss] was singing your praises.”
Her: “Really?”
Him: “Yes. And I vehemently agreed. You need to hear things like this as it’s not always said.”
Her: “Thank you so much. That means a lot to me.”
This was a brief conversation introducing the feedback about to be delivered. So you can imagine the spirit in which that feedback would have been received. Even if the feedback-er had said the feedback-ee was rubbish at her job, her brain would probably have processed the exact opposite!
If that was me, it would have felt good, that short conversation would have really made me happy. I’ll be lying if I said otherwise. If you’d seen me, you might have wondered if there was something stuck in my throat, as I’m sure my neck would be longer. With my stride a bit more victorious, I might have looked like a peacock in full bloom!
But it got me thinking, as you and I do! How often am I lavish with my praise and compliments and positivity and encouragement with and on those around me?
What would it look like if I was, if we were quicker to praise and encourage and call out the gold in others, than criticise or find faults or even keep quiet?
I’m a woman of few words, verbal that is, probably not written! So sometimes, I need to rehearse the good things I want to say to others before I open my mouth. Or else I might just leave them confused as to whether I’m complimenting them or gone-plimenting them!
But I realise that as I love to be honoured and spoken well of, to have the good that I have be acknowledged more than the mistakes and errors of my ways, there’s a great chance, the people around me would love that too. Or don’t you think so?
Even when some of my students say stuff like “you’re my best teacher.” Which I know is all wash, it still makes me feel good, howbeit for a few seconds.
So I try more now to be more deliberate in the words I speak to others. After the Bible admonishes us to make sure our words are edifying to those that hear them (Ephesians 4:29).
Let’s call out the great in other people. Challenge yourself to find something good about someone around you and tell them. Don’t just ruminate on it on your head. They’re not psychic, of course, unless they are. So they can’t read your mind to know all the wonderful thoughts about them that you have.
Imagine if GOD only said “I know the thoughts and plans I have for you;” without adding that those thoughts and plans are “of good and not evil, to give us a hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11.
Imagine if that’s all was said about us. It wouldn’t give us the same hope that GOD thinks much of us.
Imagine if there was no 2nd Peter 2:9 – that you are a royal priesthood and so on; no “I am the apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8); no “you’re fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:!4); no “you have the mind of Christ” (1st Corinthians 2:16); and many others like so.
I think Christianity would lose most of its meaning. Because those great things GOD says about us, gives us hope for a better life, makes us feel and know there’s good and gold in us even when we may be surrounded by shit and life’s troubles.
To your being like your FATHER in Heaven, calling out the gold and good in yourself and in those around you, . . .
The Good Handshake 