How to Encourage

When you have a chance to encourage someone, how exactly do you go about it? We're Off Balance On Purpose in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Remember a moment when you were ready to give up or lacked confidence, and someone's encouragement made all the difference for you. Encouragement is a powerful force that can transform belief, ability, and results.

Using this power, you can activate and uplift people all around you. Your encouragement can bring them out of self doubt and into action. With encouragement, you literally can change someone's self-perception and life through the power of your words. Here are three suggestions to make the greatest impact.

1. Encourage with passion. As you encourage someone, convey your belief in them and bring emotion. If they don't yet feel it within themselves, let them feel it from you.

2. Name their strengths. When you identify qualities they possess, or attributes you admire in them, you strengthen their strengths. Think of it as flipping switches within their belief system to activate "full power."

3. Amplify the upside. In our minds, we are constantly weighing the pros and cons, and can get stuck between why we should or shouldn't. Help them understand how a short term risk or effort now will change the impact and quality of their life forever. Be specific. Help them see a positive future with crystal clarity.

I enthusiastically encourage you to encourage others. You have this ability inside you now, and it gets stronger with practice. Encouragement costs you nothing, and yet its value can be priceless. When you bring honest, sincere, specific encouragement, you change the world in ways you'll witness and ways you'll never know. So, who will you encourage today? Until next week, stay Off Balance On Purpose.