Praise Your Family to Success

By Teresa G. Lusk

Most of us are familiar with the name Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. This inspirational woman had wisdom in many areas of life including business and family.
As I read her book recently titled, Mary Kay: Mary Kay: You Can Have It All: Lifetime Wisdom from America’s Foremost Woman Entrepreneur, a motivational read, I became familiar with life principles she ran her business by. Mary Kay mentioned that at her company, they made it a point to praise women so much that they would eventually believer in themselves and would become successful. Now I am sure that Mary Kay applied this to her family life as well.

Through this book I was challenged to become more aware of the praises that I am or am not giving my children. We all want our kids to be successful, and I am hardly talking about financially as the rest of the world defines success, but personally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Not only can we praise our children to success but also our husbands who are sent out into the world day by day to deal with rejection, competition, and disappointment and are expected to deal with it unemotionally, unlike women. What about the women who are taking on several roles in one day as mothers, wives, friends and employees or business owners? They need praises too!

What if as a family we made it a point to speak one or more uplifting comments to each family member per day? If each person said one nice thing daily, we would have a collection of encouragement to live by in our day to day life,  therefore, driving us to the likeliness of success.

When we hear from others that we are doing great at work, school, or home, we become encouraged to do a better job or to keep up the good work we are already doing but didn’t recognize. For some, just realizing and acknowledging that we are good enough in what we were called to do brings a sigh of relief and allows us to accept ourselves for who we are.

One great principle that can lay the foundation for giving this praise is to apply the Golden Rule as Mary Kay mentions throughout her book. This is the driving force of that company. If we treated our kids and spouses like we would want to be treated, literally, we would praise them day and night.

The challenge for today and the coming days is? Praise your family more than you criticize or correct and see what walls of self-conceived limitations will break apart in their lives and yours. Success can look that good!

Teresa G. Lusk, is the author of Good Enough to be a Homemaker and CEO, a motivational speaker and founder of the non-profit organization, Homemaker CEO. Teresa has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Religion, and Christian Counseling. www.teresalusk.com or www.homemakerceo.com.

Resources:
Mary Kay Ash: You Can Have It All. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.