Mark Twain once said, “I can live for 2 months for a good
compliment”. So it means he can live in
a year for 6 compliments. Who is Mark Twain? For all we know, and some in here
who don’t.. he is a great writer/author/novelist in his time 19th
century. He is the author of Tom Sawyer. And I guess every one of us have heard
or have watch The Adventure of Tom Sawyer when we are young. He died at the age
of 75, so 450 good compliments are all he needs in his lifetime. hehe
But what is a compliment? As I google it and did my research
I came to know that “compliments” are words of affirmation.. or words of
encouragement.
As this stage of my life, I am reading a lot of books I am
reading several books about love, and I think everyone notice it. I just got
curious, about all the understanding of human love all about and how to perfectly
show it. And I came to bump with this book “the 5 love languages by Gary
Chapman” it is a book best suit for young couples who are in a relationship or
couples who are married. This book will help you understand the love language
of your partner or the people around you, and effectively help make the
relationship grow.
The first love language that I read here is the words of
affirmation. Gary Chapman said that in all relationship the word of
encouragement has a great impact to a person’s life that we might not be able
to take notice of. It is one way for us
to express our love to all the people around us. It’s all about saying the
right words.
Imagine a married woman keep nagging at her husband or her
children every day of their life? But of course that woman intention is not to
harm them but to care; she just happens to show her love for them is in a wrong
way. Which could possibly be misunderstood by her family?
But how, how do you think we can do this?
1st we can by knowing what is the person’s
desire. Just like all of you guys to me here at toastmasters, everyone of you
knows my desire to improve on this public speaking, and repeatedly I am so
thankful to GOD that all of you almost always and never fail to give me a word
of encouragement, those words gives me fuel to pursue and improve on this path,
even if I am an amateur and I am not good in English. To be honest, everything
here in toastmaster is hard work for me; I give time because I am encouraged.
What are the ways you guys encourage me?
By evaluating me in all my speech, whether you are and not
my evaluator/ mentor, by saying kind and humble words like “its good” , “it was
great”, “you are funny”- in a good sense, “your speech is better than the last time”,
“you can still improve on this…”, you have the “power/energy”, “you show
enthusiasm” , and all the words you guys have told me. And for others, just
simple by laughing and being attentive with the moment I am speaking. With these
guys, I felt loved by toastmaster’s family and I felt gas-up to speak in front.
Another way that we can show our words of encouragement indirectly
?
For some here knows that I have a shobe, who is 10 years
younger than me, when she’s still a baby I had the chance to take good care of
her, she is still the baby of our family, in the Chinese Yin-Yang, if she is
the yin, and I am the Yang, we we’re
totally opposite, if she is dark, I am fair, if she is chubby-cute, I am slim,
if she have a curly hair, I have a straight hair, and if she is a genius, I am
a street smart. hehe. She is currentIy studying in Mapua, taking up Civil
Engineering. All I can say, she is really a genius, engineering is just “sisiw
for her”, her grades for all her math subjects are 1 and 1.25 and 1.5 is the
lowest, lowest grades she have is 2 for subjects she hates like history. And she
studies in a very relax mode all the time.. Imagine??? I love her so much, that
I use to praise her all the time to other people, like what I am doing right
now, so im likewise with all our friends and churchmates. Last week my mom
approached me with this funny story, my mom said, you know what shobe said last
night? “kakainis si achi, she tells around how high my grades, the tendency
people approach me and ask how iam doing in school because they heard how achi
tells everyone how good iam, with that I am pressured, pressured to maintain my
grades” see? She is encouraged to study hard, bec indirectly she was praised.
So I am encouraging girls/woman out there, tell other how
sweet your boyfriend or husband is… so that….
So by the end of the day, a good compliment really has an
impact in the lives of the people we love, or even the people around us. And in
this way, we can show them or others that we care and we love them. So if we
love them, we want them to live long, so start giving them a reason to live for
2 months and another 2 months and another 2 months, after all to give words of
encouragement is free. And if you want
to know more biblically about words of affirmation I am going to give you a
take home assignment.
