Have you received a compliment lately? Congratulations if you have! My condolences if you haven’t. Even if you have been edified lately, I will bet you would feel even better if those comments of appreciation came more often. Don’t we all appreciate it when others compliment us and appreciate us and/or our efforts? That “building up” is actually one of the most positive and productive things we can do for others. Edification, the building up of others is especially meaningful when someone has goofed up. That doesn’t mean that we should falsely compliment them for the goof up. After all, we are all human, right? What it means is that instead of putting them down for the goof up, the focus should be put on what they did right! When we get positive feedback, it is human nature for us to want to do better. More often than not we know when we have made a mistake and typically we are feeling down about our error but to hear what we did right encourages us to continue to work on being better.
Consider the opposite. You make a mistake. Someone calls you out on it. Maybe they even criticize you as some kind of moron, or even worse they describe you as evil. Think about it for a minute. How do you want to respond? There are plenty of examples in our society in how to get dramatic and try to outdo the other person’s rant and negativity, right? Anyone educated or not can respond with disapproval and expletives. But when we respond with drama and ranting I guarantee you we don’t feel good about it. We may put up the front, “I got the best of them”, but down deep we are only waiting for further retaliation.
We may disagree with others but they, and we, are due respect. Different perspectives cause different ideas which can cause disagreement. Whether it’s politics, religious beliefs, what the boss did at work… We can disagree without the name calling and expletives. This kind of behavior does not demonstrate intelligence or respect. Respect is earned but don’t focus on whether the other person deserves respect. They do. Focus on treating everyone else with respect and you will earn the respect of others. Take the high road! My loving mother always reminded me, “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.” Sometimes it is difficult to live out but it is great advice.
So what is your preference? Building up or tearing down? What makes you feel better? Being built up or being torn down? The better we are at building people up, the better we feel and the more positive energy we draw to ourselves. The opposite is very true as well, creating negative energy draws negative energy right back at us. Our challenge is to resist the negativity and focus on the good in everyone. Look hard if you struggle to find the good, because it’s there.
God doesn’t make junk! He made you and I good and it’s our responsibility to help each other be better. Positive builds up and makes better. Negative tears down and destroys. Let’s all be the builders of better people and in the end we all win. You can do it!