girl talk
than
plan than you think!
8
Think about how many times you’ve crossed paths with someone and asked, “How are you?” but didn’t stick around long enough to hear their response. Probably more times than you would like to admit or even realize. In the fast paced world we live in, we can barely get the words out of our mouths before we’re already thinking about something else. How powerful would it be if we capitalized on that small moment and turned it into an opportunity to speak into someone’s life?
Now I’m not trying to get all deep on you. You don’t have to conjure up some fancy words to speak into someone’s life. Just take the time to listen to what they are saying and offer some encouraging words. It can be as simple as “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it works out for you,” or “That’s great. I wish you the best with that.” There is great power in the phrases that roll off our tongue.
Every time we open our mouths we choose to either add a brick to someone’s foundation or chisel a hole in it. As an educator I see teachers make that decision with their students everyday. When a child makes a bad choice the teacher lets him or her know the choice was wrong
and then explains why. Almost immediately the child begins to shrink down inside themselves. They hang their heads, lower their eyes and some even start to cry. A little piece of that child is chipped away. But right after the reprimand the teacher can start the rebuilding process. They can let that child know that they made a mistake, but are not the mistake. They can encourage them to learn something from what happened and make a different choice next time. After all, isn’t the goal for them to be a better person than they were before they made the mistake? That won’t occur if we spend more time talking about the mistake than we do talking about the solution.
Let’s all make a choice to put down the chisels and add more bricks.
by Angela Whitehead