Encourage...Pursue

Encouragement is fantastic...both giving & receiving.  


A couple of days ago my niece mentioned that she had had the opportunity to encourage another classmate at school.  He had decided that because his grades were so bad, he wasn't going to put anymore effort into this semester and just start over next semester.  My niece said she thought it would be better for him to begin putting in effort right now, so that by next semester he would already be in the habit of doing his work.  The next day this boy thanked her for her words the fed into his life, that he had made the choice to put effort into his grades starting that day.  My niece, in turn, received much  encouragement from others as they learned of her advice.


Encouragement changes who we are.  It changes how we see ourselves, how we think of ourselves, how we see our situations and it changes how we go about putting effort into our lives.


The day I heard about the above story I had started traveling down Encouragement Road. I'd decided my first blog post would be on encouragement, so this was perfect timing.  The decision came as I was wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up, because in reality, I still have half my life to live!  That's a lot of years to keep growing! While I was thinking of that, I began walking down memory lane; who I had already been, where I'd been, the decisions & choices that got me to those places...and yes, the encouragement from others that gave me the confidence to pursue.


Encouragement comes to us, or from us, because of an ability to see great things in people that they cannot see in themselves, sometimes in areas that they have never even considered feasible.  The picture I posted at the top of my blog came from a creative side of myself that I never thought existed..."oh, no, I'm not very creative", "no, my mind just doesn't work that way", "no, my sister is the creative one"...it had never occurred to me that I could be creative in other ways than the ones I already knew!  Thanks to my good friend, Tina, and her continual encouragement to take baby steps, I slowly began to step out into a whole new world.  One filled with color, imagination, new creativity, words, pictures...the list could go on & on.  She didn't instill those things in me, she was an instrument used to catapult me into a new era in my life, which in turn has catapulted me into other new areas.  The possibilities are endless!


I have always believed that people need to pursue, that it is an essential part of our inner beings to continually grow and challenge ourselves.  The problems come when we don't believe we have the abilities.  And you know what?  We may not have the abilities in the beginning, but that's not a reason to stop.  That's when we have an opportunity to pursue, to learn what it is we need to do to be able to achieve the things we are pursuing!  Don't let those supposed "dead ends" stop you in your tracks, turn them into a temporary road block just begging to be rammed into, like in the movies when the good guys are trying to get away but the bad guys are trying to block them...just drive straight through as fast as you can while still staying on the road!


Be encouraged today, in whatever it is, to pursue it.  Start small if you need to, but pursue.  Begin to understand that we are a people multifaceted, made to be more than one thing, more than what is perceived at face value.  You are more than what you see!  There is a plethora of things within you, just waiting to be discovered...by you!  Take a moment to go back to a time when someone encouraged you in something you thought impossible to achieve and give it a try.  Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't, but at least you tried and you can always try something else...the list is endless!