Pondering encouragement…..

A sheet of paper with a pencil sketch of landscape of river with hills behind, a mug of water to the left and some pencils and pens to the right of the paper. all on a dark wooden table.

I’m pondering encouragement over here today. Thinking about how we interact with others, and how we show up for ourselves. How often do I focus on ways to improve, instead of notice and call out progress made in myself, my work, and in the world around me? Improvement is all well and good, but after hearing what was wrong with my sketch this morning, I felt far less interested in finishing my creation than just abandoning it and moving to something else. How interesting.

Yesterday I shared an ongoing sketch with one of my sons. I knew the hand was wonky, and someone else had mentioned the lips were not right. But my son focused on how the shadows were made of random sketching, and how difficult that is to get to look right and what a great job I had done on rendering the squiggles. Really- he looked at the picture and essentially went -”over here in the shadow, you scribbled well, and I know that is hard to make scribbles random ”. Silly, right? Yet my heart was lifted at his notice of something I had done well. I felt proud of the work I had done and the progress I had made (really, scribbled shadows can be annoying and bothersome to create for former perfectionists)

Scribbles in pencil on white paper.

My kids teach me so much. Today I’m going to try to point out areas to improve far less, and point out efforts made, far more. Encouragement in daily life and with those around us is so important. What we say and how we say it has the amazing power to lift a heart, or make it heavy. To ease ones burdens, or lighten the load. May I always chose the better part.