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• Encouragement: The action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope. Oxford Dictionary
• Encouragement: Words or behaviour that give someone confidence to do something.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Affirmation,  Self-confidence,  Criticism,  Doubt,  Motivation,  Helpfulness,  Love,  Inspiration

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Encouragement is a beautiful gift

• One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. John O’Donohue
• Giving encouragement to others is a most welcome gift, for the results of it are lifted spirits, increased self-worth, and a hopeful future. Florence Littauer
• The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Sidney Madwed
• I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you. Blaise Pascal

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Encouragement is a powerful force

• Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I may not forget you. William Arthur
• Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Our workaday lives are filled with opportunities to bless others. The power of a single glance or an encouraging smile must never be underestimated.   Richard Rieger
• Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring….all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Leo Buscaglia
• If someone listens, or stretches out a hand, or whispers a kind word of encouragement, or attempts to understand, extraordinary things begin to happen. Loretta Gizartis

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Encouragement motivates people to practice and excel

• Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost all incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique–be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his or her ability to do it, that the person has an undeveloped flair for it–and that person will practice until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.  Dale Carnegie
• Motivation

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Encouragement makes people blossom into their potential

• The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential.  If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom, and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams.  We would have more than one Einstein, Edison, Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, Dr. Salk and other great minds in a century.  Sidney Madwed
• I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement. Charles Schwab
• If I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. Stephen Covey
• The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it, and then help that best into the fullest expression. J. Allen Boone
• If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Great people make you feel that you too can become great. Mark Twain
• We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them. Elbert Hubbard
• Encouragement from any source is like a drop of rain upon a parched desert. Thanks to all the many others who rained on me when I needed it, and even when I foolishly thought I didn’t. Claire Gillian
• Potential

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Encouragement helps people to achieve wonderful things

• Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement– and we will make the goal. Jerome P. Fleishman
• One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. John O’Donohue
• Achievement

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Encouragement builds and lifts people up

• The most powerful and predictable people-builders are praise and encouragement. Brian Tracy
• Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. Elizabeth Harrison
• The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own. Benjamin Disraeli

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Encouragement brings out the best in people

• I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement. Charles Schwab
• Bring out the best in other people. It’s better to build up than to tear down. Tim Hansel

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Encouragement is oxygen for the soul

• We should seize every opportunity to give encouragement. Encouragement is oxygen to the soul. George M. Adams
• It’s only in the safety of gentle curiosity, encouragement, and self- love that your soul can bloom as it was created to do. Sue Patton Thoele
• Praise is like sunlight to the human spirit: we cannot flower and grow without it. Jess Lair
• The soul

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Encouragement achieves far more than criticism

• The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he or she is wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him or her where he or she is right. The reason we don’t do it so often is that it’s more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass.  Robert T. Allen
• Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. Elizabeth Harrison
• It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections. Daisaku Ikeda
• Criticism

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We all hunger for encouragement

• There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don’t care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause. George M. Adams
• We live by encouragement and die without it – slowly, sadly and angrily. Celeste Holm
• Always remember, everyone is hungry for praise and starving for honest appreciation. David Berg
• There are two things people want more than sex and money…recognition and praise. Mary Kay Ash
• Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival—to be affirmed, to be appreciated, and to be understood. Stephen Covey
• Human needs

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Encouraging others makes you feel good too

• Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that one never miss the opportunity to give encouragement.  George M. Adams
• Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. J.M. Barrieh
• When someone does something well, applaud! You will make two people happy. Samuel Goldwyn

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Encouraging others costs nothing

• Something I realized a few years ago in one of those “Of course–I should have realized that all along!” moments is that encouragement is absolutely free. It doesn’t cost me a cent to give it out, but its payoff is incredible.  A brighter smile, improved performance on any sort of task, much more enjoyment in doing something–I see these in people constantly when I or someone else encourages them.  I often read stories by adults who have succeeded in life largely in part because just one person saw their potential and encouraged them when they were younger, and they have never forgotten those people or their words.  Wouldn’t you love to feel that something like that would be possible with you as the remembered person?  I know that I would, but unless I plant the seeds today, that sort of harvest will never come to pass.  Tom Walsh
• A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

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Be known as someone who encourages, not someone who discourages

• Whether or not we realize it each of us has within the ability to set some kind of example for people. Knowing this, would you rather be the one known for being the one who encouraged others, or the one who inadvertently discouraged those around you?  Josh Hinds

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Use words that encourage and inspire

• Every time words are spoken, something is created. Be conscious of what you say and how you say it. Use words that build up, appreciate, encourage and inspire. Lucy MacDonald
• Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. Yehuda Berg
• Be impeccable with your word

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Catch people doing things right

• Be a good-finder. Try to catch people red-handed in the act of doing something right. Bob Moawad
• Catch people in the act of doing something right. Ken Blanchard
• The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he or she is wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him or her where he or she is right. Robert T. Allen

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Encourage others by taking an interest in them

• Taking an interest in what others are thinking and doing is often a much more powerful form of encouragement than praise. Robert Martin

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Encourage people to live up to their highest idea

• Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. Swami Vivekananda

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Encourage people to be the best they can

• Encourage each other to become the best you can be. Celebrate what you want to see more of. Tom Peters
• Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. Stephen Covey

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Encourage those who lose heart

• Being human, we are imperfect. That’s why we need each other. To catch each other when we falter.  To encourage each other when we lose heart.  Some may lead; others may follow; but none of us can go it alone.  Hilary Clinton

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Encourage those who fail

• A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after a success.

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Encourage your spouse

• Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your partner’s perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement. With verbal encouragement, we are trying to communicate, “I know. I care. I am with you. How can I help?” Gary Chapman
• In marriage, each partner is to be an encourager rather than a critic; a forgiver rather than a collector of hurts; an enabler rather than a reformer. Norman Wright

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Encourage children

• A parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help them develop a personal set of tools for the task. Randy Pausch
• Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision. Denis Waitley
• The more I encourage my child to think for himself, the more he will care what I think.
• “Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

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Encourage original ideas

• Have someone in charge to help enforce the following guidelines: Suspend judgment. Every idea is accepted and recorded. Encourage people to build on the ideas of others. Encourage way-out and odd ideas. Michael Morgan
• We need – and should encourage and honour – not only discoverers of facts hitherto unknown but explorers of ideas and rethinkers of values. Walter Moberly
• Ideas

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Learn to celebrate and encourage yourself

• When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside. Joel Osteen

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Rely on your own encouragement more than the encouragement of others

• Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge. Fritz Perls

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Encourage your talent

• But talent—if you don’t encourage it, if you don’t train it, it dies. It might run wild for a little while, but it will never mean anything. Like a wild horse. If you don’t tame it and teach it to run on track, to pace itself and bear a rider, it doesn’t matter how fast it is. It’s useless. Elizabeth Hand
• Talent

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Encourage your virtues

• Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make them habitual. Thomas Jefferson
• Virtue

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Encourage yourself when you’re learning something new

• When a little child is learning to walk or talk, we encourage him and praise him for every tiny improvement he makes. The child beams and eagerly tries to do better. Is this the way you encourage yourself when you are learning something new? Or do you make it harder to learn because you tell yourself that you are stupid or clumsy or a ‘failure’? Louise L. Hay
• Learning

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Encouraging yourself brings great rewards

• We flourish under the benefits of encouragement, praise, approval, and acceptance. If we live with encouragement– especially our own–we learn to be confident.  If we live with self-praise, we learn to appreciate what’s around us.  If we coexist with self-approval, we’re more likely to give ourselves–and others– a little slack.  Leslie Levine

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Don’t encourage your fear

• Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. Arthur Somers Roche
• Fear

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Stick around positive people who encourage you

• Get around the right people. Associate with positive, goal-oriented people who encourage and inspire you. Brian Tracy
• I am a shining star, and I surround myself with people who encourage my brightness. Cheryl Richardson
• I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine myself, encourage me to grow.  Cher
• There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend. Katharine Butler Hathaway

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Encouragement doesn’t need to be eloquent

• So often we think that to be encouragers we have to produce great words of wisdom when, in fact, a few simple syllables of sympathy and an arm around the shoulder can often provide much needed comfort. Florence Littauer
• Eloquence

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Teaching is all about encouragement

• Our best teachers do more than impart facts and figures – they inspire and encourage students and instil a true desire to learn. That’s a fine art in itself. Sonny Perdue
• Nine tenths of education is encouragement. Anatole France
• The first task in teaching for creativity in any field is to encourage people to believe in their creative potential and to nurture the confidence to try. Sir Ken Robinson
• Teaching

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Final thoughts

• You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins. Jim Stovall
• Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• One word or a pleasing smile is often enough to raise up a saddened and wounded soul. Therese of Lisieux
• You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime. Dale Carnegie
• I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou
• In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. Albert Schweitzer
• Make it your life’s mission today to bring to the attention of another just how extraordinary they are. Say it. Say it. SAY it. Their heart is waiting to know that their own best thought about themselves can be believed. Neale Donald Walsch
• See the light in others and treat them as if that is all you see. Wayne Dyer

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• Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up. John C. Maxwell
• The tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body; use yours to lift someone up today. Terri Ann Armstrong
• Children need encouragement: if a kid gets an answer right tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good lucky feeling. Jack Handey
• I believe that we parents must encourage our children to become educated, so they can get into a good college that we cannot afford. Dave Barry
• Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year. Chad Sugg
• Modesty: The art of encouraging people to find out for themselves how wonderful you are.
• Never look at the trombones; you’ll only encourage them. Richard Strauss
• What does Christmas mean if we can’t encourage small children to sit on a stranger’s lap? Ian O’Doherty

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