Winning human heart!

Chapter 28: Giving Others Pride

The rich admire success and rich,

the poor complain and envy the success of others.- Aysa Angel

In Memories of My Life with Maeterlinck (Souvenirs, My Life with Maeterlinck),

Georgette Leblanc tells of the miraculous transformation

of a Belgian “Cinderella” as follows:

“A waitress at a nearby hotel brought me food.

People call her “Marie washing the dishes”

because she started her career with this much despised job.

Moreover,

she is ugly,

cross-eyed,

bow-legged.

In general,

in the eyes of the world,

she is a Cinderella,

both literally and figuratively.

One day, when she brought me a plate of pasta,

I said, “Marie, you have a lot of lovely things about you,

did you know that?”

Marie stood still for a moment, barely breathing.

Then she put the plate on the table and said,

“Ma’am, I never thought of that.”

She didn’t say anything more,

but just quietly retreated.

From that day,

strange changes began to appear in that quiet girl.

Believing that she has many good things that people do not know,

she began to take care of her face and figure carefully.

And then the youthful beauty

that had been buried

for so long suddenly surfaced in her.

Two months later, she announced

that she was going to marry the chef’s nephew.

She said, “I will become a lady!”

then she thanked me.

I am deeply moved to think that with that one short sentence,

I changed her life.”

Georgette Leblanc gave “Marie washing dishes” confidence and motivation to rise up.

And Marie took that belief

and motivation as a fulcrum to change her life.

In everyday life,

giving others a reputation is important;

but criticizing a person while preserving his

or her honor is many times more important.

The story goes that,

one morning,

dentist Martin Fitzhugh of Dublin, Ireland,

was complained by a patient that the metal bottle

of mouthwash was not very clean.

In fact, the patient uses a paper cup,

not a vase,

but it is clear that leaving an unhygienic object in the clinic is not a good idea.

After work, dentist Fitzhugh writes a note to Bridgit,

whose maid often comes to his office twice a week to clean.

He wrote the following:

Dear Bridgit!

I rarely see her.

So I thought I should take the time

to thank her for the great cleaning job she did.

By the way,

I would like to suggest this:

Currently,

two hours of cleaning,

twice a week is too little,

please feel free to come and work an extra hour

whenever you feel convenient

to do so things like cleaning bottles,

jars,

cups.

Of course, I’ll pay you overtime.

“The next day, when I walked into the office,”

Mr. Fitzhugh said,

“the tables and chairs were shiny,

but in the dental office,

everything including the water bottle was clean,

bright and in place of them.

This effort goes beyond her usual expressions.

And she didn’t work an hour at all.

You want to appear worthy of my trust, my praise.”

Ruth Hopkins, a fourth-grade teacher in Brooklyn,

New York, faced a big challenge.

This school year,

her class will have Tommy,

the student who is considered the most famous rebellious boy in the school.

His third grade teacher was always complaining about him.

Not only was he naughty in the usual way,

but he also fought,

teased his girlfriend, and defied his teachers.

Every teacher said that the older he got,

the worse he got.

His only advantage is his ability

to learn quickly and do homework very quickly.

Ms. Hopkins decided to confront the “Tommy problem” immediately.

After greeting the new students,

she praised them one by one:

“Rose! Your shirt is so pretty”,

“Hey Alicia! I heard you draw very well.”

When she got to Tommy’s side,

she looked him straight in the eye and said,

“Tommy! You know I’m a leader.

I’ll ask you to help me make this the best class in fourth grade this year, okay?”

She emphasized this in the early days

by praising Tommy in everything he did

and that this proved what a good student he was.

Having this praise and honor, the nine-year-old boy was determined to preserve it.

And indeed, he did not disappoint his teacher

and everyone at the end of that school year.

Almost everyone in the world is like that,

not just boys or girls.

A simple way to awaken the good qualities in you is to believe

that you have at least one good quality.

So, even though we don’t actually have it,

then we’ll act like we already have it.

“If you want to encourage something in someone,

do it as if it were that person’s dominant trait.

They will definitely make an extraordinary effort to be like that.” – Dale Carnegie

“In dealing with people,

if we treat a person as he is,

he will become like that” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Principle 28: Praise makes others live worthy of that praise.