“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” That old rhyme ranks right up there as one of the most inaccurate clichés ever. Careless words or purposefully harmful names, in fact, do hurt us. They inflict more damage than most of us realize. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” or “You don’t see Bobbie crying like you are, do you?” “You’re stupid, you’ll never amount to anything.” These types of statements are like seeds being planted in a person’s life. Repeated a few times and they, very likely, will become reality. How better it would be if our speech reflected something positive.
There is incredible power in the tongue. We can heal or hurt with the words we use. The Bibles says the tongue is like the spark that sets off a whole forest fire! It compares the tongue to the rudder o a large ship. It’s a small part of the ship, but it can change the direction of the whole thing. We can alter the direction of our children, employees or spouse by the words we choose to use. A word of praise and encouragement gets better results than a word of rebuke or correction. How about catching someone doing something right and letting him or her know you noticed? Try it out on a cashier at the gas station or with the next person you cross paths. Let your speech produce positive results. Guard your words carefully; they’re hard to put back once they come out. And, as my mom always said, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2016
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