Never pass up the opportunity to speak encouraging words to someone for spoken encouragement is a powerful neurotransmitter and key to success.
We have all met these people oozing success from every pore. They knew exactly what they wanted to do from the moment they popped out of their mother’s womb, and have been doing it ever since. Most of us, however, needed a bit more time to discover our talents and direction. We needed to be nudged, and sometimes booted into the job arena before we could settle on a career path.
Whether we moved full steam ahead on all cylinders from the time we were tiny tots, or took a slower more methodical route, something that impacted each of us to varying degrees was the encouragement we received along the way from others. Encouragement happens to be one of the 10 characteristics that I value in those around me.
According to the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, giving encouragement is to promote, to foster, to inspire, to stimulate by assistance.
In one of my previous blogs, I mentioned Isidor Rabbi who won the Nobel Prize in nuclear physics in 1944. When he was asked what led him to science, he said that when he came home from school, it was his mother’s habit to ask him, “What good question did you ask today?” And, while she never purposely steered him into a particular direction, the approach she took had a profound effect on her son. In her own way, she encouraged him to be an inquisitive and curious student. This eventually led him into the field of science, innovation and success. Rabbi’s encouragement, his confidence builder came in the form of questions.
When I think back to my childhood, and I’ve asked friends about theirs, nowhere can any of us recall being asked by our parents, once we stepped through the front door, about what good questions we might have asked at school that day. Seldom did our parents ask us anything at all. Quite simply, it was, “Tell us what you learned today.”
And, for us, any encouragement or pat on the back started with that simple statement, “Tell us what you learned today.” Not only did these words get our mental wheels spinning, they also put us in the spotlight. It was like a form of show and tell. It was time to shine.
I think for many of us when we think of encouraging words, we generally think of statements like, “You’re the best. Go for it. You can do it.” However, questions which move us to think in a different way can also inspire and encourage us to move forward.
In the long run though, it doesn’t really matter what form our words of encouragement take. What’s most important to each of us is that we have people around us who are willing to support us, who are willing to nudge us along when we need it and will give us the encouragement to experience the success we want to achieve.