The words of my mouth

Recently I have learnt about the value of encouragement....the thing is I haven't really tired any new skills or done anything that was sooooooo amazing I am surprised you haven't heard of it, but I have done some "different" things and it been in these things that I have been encouraged and it has really made a difference.

Not Saturday just gone, but the Saturday before I was given the opportunity to do something that I have wanted to do for a long long long time...(and cross no. 7 off my list, which was a bonus) I got to sing with a big band...not just any big band though...the box hill salvos big band! Now I have sung lots before, but not this style and its something that I have always wanted to do. Naturally because it was all very new, i was a bit stressed out about it. But I got lots of encouragement before, during and after and it made all the difference.

On Friday at uni, we had what is called a teaching clinic where we get to practice our dietetic skills on actresses and actors, during which half the class participates and are filmed and the other half observe. Well it was my turn to participate and I had the job of closing the session with the "patient", so I just had to recap and let them know what would be happening next time we saw them. Being the very person that I am I was more stressed about what I would look like on camera, than what I would say because I talk all the time so it wasn't that strange. But afterward I got some really nice encouragement from people in my class, the actress and from our teacher about my manner with the client. Not something that I really did on purpose, but it meant so much to me that people took the time to affirm the qualities that they saw in me.

Why do I tell you these stories I hear you ask??? Not because I want to tell you how could I am because I can tell you in detail lots of reasons why I wasn't, and because there is a better and defiantly more important point to my blog...here it is...

There is sooooo much power in encouragement. It is something that is soooooo easy to do, it requires so little effort or thought, but it means so much to the person that receives it. In the bible it talks about the tongue being a destructive weapon that can corrupt the whole body (James 3:5-6) and so often it is... I know I am constantly paying people out and have a go at something, in fact its part of culture and way of life to have a go at things and people. But words can do so much good too and I don't think that there is enough good words going around!

I think that if I encouraged people as much as I paid things out, I would probably explode of encouragement. But it would be nice to even just have a balance, or maybe even just a little more encouragement going out than all the other rubbish I say! I want to be an encourager that looks for the good in people and tells them when I see it!

Just a thought I had...

Stay tuned.