Your Raise Me Up

I have been reflecting on Motivate, the second M of the 4M model in "Becoming a Person of Influence" talked about by John Maxwell after our LPG meeting this Monday.

Maxwell says one of the things we do when we motivate others is to encourage them. At our LPG meeting, however, there was some concern as to when encouraging someone becomes giving false hope, offering flattery, or building someone up to fail.

Tonight for some reason the song "You Build Me Up" kept coming up in my head. I even tried to hum it and played a few bars on the piano. Then I turned on TPT. There it was, Daniel O'donnell was just getting ready to sing that song. How much more a co-incidence can that be?

The song's lyrics speak precisely to what encouragement would do for someone.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.


Here is a link to Josh Groban's rendition.

I believe the habit to encourage others is to consciously act to raise them up so they can indeed climb mountains (small or large). It's having the attitude of focusing on other people's strengths and not their weaknesses.