“Every person needs to hear a ‘wonderful.’”

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, How Happiness Happens (p. 21). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

That is so true.

Right before this Max said, “If a soccer coach wants to increase the odds of a player missing another goal, he should get angry and shout at her. If the coach wants the player to return to the game with better vision, he should give her a word of affirmation. ‘People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be—not what you nag them to be.’1

“A little boy said these words to his father: ‘Dad, let’s play darts. I’ll throw, and you say “‘Wonderful!”’”

Max then says, “Every person needs to hear a ‘wonderful.’ Here is why. A discouragement conspiracy is afoot. Companies spend billions of dollars to convince us that we are deficient and inadequate. To sell face cream, they tell us that our faces are wrinkled. To sell new clothes, they pronounce that our clothes are out of fashion. To sell hair color, they must persuade us that our hair is dingy. Marketing companies deploy the brightest minds and deepest pockets of our generation to convince us that we are chubby, smelly, ugly, and out-of-date. We are under attack!

“We can relate to the two cows grazing in a pasture when a milk truck drove by. On the side of the truck were the words ‘pasteurized, homogenized, standardized, vitamin A added.’ Noticing this, one cow said to the other, ‘Makes you kind of feel inadequate, doesn’t it?’”

He continues, “Inadequacy indwells a billion hearts.

“Who is going to tell people the truth? Will you? Will you distribute encouragement to the world? Will you make some happiness happen? Will you call the forgotten kid from the back of the pack to the front? Will you remind humanity that we are made in God’s image? That we are chosen, destined, and loved? That God is for us, not against us? That we are in God’s hand, in God’s plan? Will you go face-to-face with the tidal wave of inadequacy that sucks people out to sea?”

So, will we? 

Yes, yes!