Loving Monday: Detour to the Friendly Voice
There are a lot of voices around us.
The boss voice telling us to get busy. The employee voice asking us to make a decision. The co-worker voice requesting assistance.
We hear critical voices second-guessing our choices. We hear fearful voices resisting our initiatives. We hear angry voices attacking our motives.
Each voice articulates something worth listening to and much more that needs to be ignored. We spend a lifetime learning to discern between what has substance and what is the speaker’s personal issues spilling out all over us.
Getting our week off to a good start involves beginning with a friendly voice or two.
Someone who believes in you. Someone who is already on your side. Someone who has demonstrated that they want good things for you.
These people are a rich source of encouragement, affirmation, compliments, and confidence.
Not that we are going to these people in search of the unsolicited pat-on-the-back. (Though that is certainly an idea worth exploring.) We are choosing, however, to begin our weeks with the truth about ourselves. A positive truth about ourselves that we can do something with.
We are setting our perspective for the week in terms of our capabilities, our strengths and our potential. Beginning with a friendly voice in our ear, we are better situated to face the obstacles, the conflict, and the mistakes we encounter along the way.
We cannot inoculate ourselves from the dark voices or the difficult events that arise in the course of a week. But we can be well-grounded in all that is solid and constructive in who we are.
Why start the week with someone yelling at you or complaining to you, if you can take a small detour and find a friendly voice to enthusiastically greet you, affirm you, or appreciate you?!
On your side,
– Karl Edwards
