BY DOVE
Forty years ago, I was given a wonderful opportunity by the company my husband worked for to take a class called Human Effectiveness Training, through United Learning Institute. The greatest take-away I got from this class was to “catch people in the act of doing things right.” What a change in perception this was. Don’t focus on the negative, compliment on the positive. It feels so good for an individual’s actions and work to be approved. You are then training the person to do more good things, work better, be kinder—in other words, build on the beneficial actions and deeds.
If parents did this with their children, can you imagine the confidence that would be built in the child? We would change the way our whole society functions. Instead of raising children who do not have the ability to cope with adversity, they themselves would be strong enough to know who they are and that they have amazing skills. The same would exist in the workplace. Competition would not be the dominant focus—one being better that the other—but each would have their own strength.
Many Native American cultures had the practice of ignoring children when their behavior was inappropriate and putting their focus only on the good behavior. Is it not time for us to change from constant viewing of events from the negative point of view and shift our energy to the good things, even the very small things that each of us accomplishes?
As this article will come out a day after the elections and hopefully there is a definitive result, I would ask all of us to place our focus not on personality of the winner but on the good things that have been accomplished. Maybe the media could finally relate truth instead of the babble they put out. Do your research and determine what is really going on. Know why you approve or disapprove of someone, and is it true.
I don’t know if you have ever had a political conversation with an 8-year-old but it can be most enlightening. My grandson was repeating opinions his friends had stated about the current administration. I explained that the current president did not take a salary for the work he was doing. After explaining what a salary was, I told my grandson that one of the things the president did with his salary was give it to veterans. He said “Does he give any money for children? I think we need to build a children’s hospital here and it needs to be small. Children don’t like great big hospitals.”
Out of the mouths of babes, focus on what can be done that is positive. I love this place and I love my country. Can we find what is good in each of us?