Speak Life

My professor recently sent out a video titled, “You will probably fail,” and began his introduction by saying the same. He explained that he would put an image up on the video, and when we saw it, we were not to think about it but say the first thing that came to mind.

He counted down…1, 2, 3, go!

The image I saw was a shirt, so I said, ‘shirt’ out loud, as instructed. But, then my first reaction was that I was not supposed to get this right, so I looked for my failure and decided that since the image was clearly on a circle that looked like a decal, I automatically assumed that I should have said sticker. Lastly, I  noticed the words across the shirt’s image read “pants” and continued to listen to the rest of the video.

He explained that most people will shout out pants instead of shirt, and the lesson was that we tend to read people without seeing the image behind them. Wait a sec, what? I just got that right, but I found a way to assume my failure because I was told I would probably fail.

Words are powerful. We can choose terms of affirmation to encourage one another, or we can choose to tell others they are not good enough, they can’t do something, instead of encouraging them to try. One way we can watch them fall, get up and try again. The other way, we can watch them fall flat on their face and give up, assuming failure is inevitable.

I may have received a different lesson from this than he intended, but I’ll take it. We all need encouragement sometimes, but kids especially need it from their parents.  I would say that employees may do better if bosses do the same thing. Let us be intentional about speaking life-giving words to those around us.

“Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them” (Eph. 4:29, NLT emphasis added).