Encouragement

I can say that my life has revealed that encouragement beats criticism.
During formidable years of our lives whether beginning as children or beginning again post stroke, authentic encouragement has always been welcome and needed.
It has been hard throughout my life and unfortunately I encountered more people who are willing to voice their criticism than those who voice their encouragement.
This has taught me to choose to display my encouragement more than anything else.
Maybe the old expression "if you don't have anything good to say don't say anything at all" rang a little too strong in my life and sitting on our hands or biting our tongues isn't necessarily the thing to do either.
In hindsight things should be said at times rather than suppressing them, but if the things to be said are not good then getting the point out in a productive insightful fashion is still advisable.

Unfortunately I seem to see people suppress encouragement more than criticism...too bad, why can't it be the other way around? Is it the squeaky wheel gets the grease analogy? As my friend pointed out the squeaky wheel gets replaced...lets hope it does.

A Dalai Lama once said, At the best we should help others. At the least, we should not harm them.

This said, encouragement helps all of us, whether recovering or just living.

Encouragement reinforces us, it helps us continue. If this blog helps anyone let me know, for now I am running out of things to post.

I continue to hope for full recovery...after eight years post stroke, I might resign myself to where I am at that point but for now, I near the three year mark and I maintain the hope that I can come back all the way!