What
You Feed Grows
What
You Starve Dies
"When
you say good things about people,
no matter how bad they are at the present,
they will eventually become good."
A story goes like this :
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”. The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
This story is generally related to the positive and negative thoughts, we all of us have and how by nurturing the positive thoughts we get positive outcomes, whereas by nurturing our negative thoughts, we get negative outcomes. I would like to relate the same story, in context to Recognition. Now, there are two types of recognitions - Appreciation is a positive form of recognition and Criticism is a negative form of recognition.
Very often we are quick to find a
fault, whereas late to appreciate something good in people. Even though our
intention is good, it does not bring in the desired results. Don’t we see the
daily newspapers filled with so many negative headlines? Has this reduced the
amount of crimes in the country? The answer is NO! This is because; any form of
recognition will reaffirm itself and henceforth be repeated.
Appreciation is a food for our soul.
When one is nourished with appreciation, he develops a positive self esteem and
becomes a star performer, whereas a person, who is often criticized, develops a
poor self esteem and as a result becomes a poor performer. No one likes to hear
words of criticism, whereas everyone likes to hear words of appreciation. So, why
not we bring about the expected positive change by appreciating people?
I am a member of a service organised
called Giants, where in we have been periodically organising programmes to
appreciate and honour people. Every year on World Woman’s day, we honour 5
outstanding women of our town, from different fields. Similarly, we honour
outstanding police officers, teachers, postal workers, outstanding students of
Corporation school and people from various walks of life, by giving them awards
and appreciating them. The type of impact it creates on them and the onlookers
is tremendous. The person, who gets the award and recognitions, feels motivated
to perform better and the people who see that such outstanding work is being
recognized strive to become like that.
There is good and bad everywhere
around us. By giving too much importance to the bad, we miss out to appreciate
the good in people. In every Govt department, there are honest officers and
also corrupt officers, but we tend to generalize that all Govt. Officers are
corrupt and fail to recognize the honest officers, who are righteous in their
deed. This further diminishes the morale
of the righteous people. So, let us appreciate and reward positive behaviour. What
gets rewarded, gets repeated.
This works perfectly well with
everyone. Leverage the power of appreciation, to bring about a positive change
in your children, employees, friends and society. So, instead of catching
someone wrong, let us cultivate the habit of catching someone right. By feeding
people with appreciation for the good things they are doing and starving people
of recognition for the bad things they are doing, we will create better people
and better society.
Which wolf are you feeding? Remember,
you always have a choice…
D. Senthil Kannan,
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