I’ll never forget the moment I realized I was a critical person.
I read that spouses should affirm far more than they criticize. Afterward, I started noticing that most of the feedback I gave Mike was negative. I dug deeper into the research and learned that to keep a relationship’s emotional bank account healthy, spouses must deposit five times as many affirmations as criticisms. By God’s grace, I slowly changed my habits. At first, saying nice things felt a little contrived, but now it’s part of our marriage culture.
The workplace is another context where criticism can reign to bad effect. A study reported in the Harvard Business Review found that the highest-performing workplace teams made almost six positive comments for every negative one, while the lowest-performing teams made three negative comments for every positive comment. If you’ve ever worked in a grumpy, negative workplace, you know how it can deflate courage and dent productivity.
I had learned habits of criticism from my family of origin, where it reigned in parent/child and sibling relationships. I unconsciously carried that habit into my adult life, and my poor husband bore the brunt of it. Once I learned about the power of affirmation, I gradually changed my habits. I’m a work in progress, but thank God for that progress.
No one is naturally affirming. It’s a skill we must learn, a habit we must intentionally develop. But it’s worth the effort! I can testify from my own experience that it makes a massive difference in relationships and reflects back on the heart like a sunbeam.
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
“When tempted to complain about what someone has said or done, praise something in that person’s life or character.”
This Month's Challenge
Here’s a challenge for you: Go out of your way to affirm someone once a day for the next week. It can be the same person or different people. Reply to this blog here and tell us how it made you—and them—feel!
EG White, Help in Daily Living, p. 34.
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