The universal game changer

“I can’t believe they lost,” I moaned after my favorite college football team went down in defeat. “Now they for sure won’t make it to the new four-team playoff system,” I continued to grumble.

Sensing I was descending into a sports fanatic’s funk, my wife suggested we rent an uplifting movie, “Million Dollar Arm.”

Good movie, but it was about baseball, which reminded me that my favorite major league baseball team had been eliminated from the National League Playoff Series earlier in the week.

I was still working through the grieving process.

“Why don’t you go get the mail?” Lori asked. (Yes, I know, she was trying to get me out of the house.)

Bills, bills, political flyer, advertisement, personal letter addressed to Lori and me.

I opened it as I walked back toward the house.

“Just a little note to let you all know how much I appreciate your devotion, service, and prayers for my family and all the families of our church,” the letter began. The writer then shared a Scripture and closed by asking God to bless us.

Simple, to the point, and a game changer for my day.

I immediately thought of something I had read years ago about Dr. R.W. Dale, the nineteenth century Congregational minister in Great Britain.

One day Dale was in the doldrums and couldn't seem to get out from under his dark cloud of gloom, (serious stuff, I’m sure, more weighty than that his favorite sports team had lost a game) so he decided to take a walk.  Along the way, a woman approached him and declared, “God bless you, Dr. Dale.” She quickly told him how his sermons had helped her hundreds of times. And then she slipped away.

The encounter took less than a minute.  But it had a long lasting effect on Dale. He later wrote, “The mist broke, the sunlight came, and I breathed the free air of the mountains of God.”

The psychologist and philosopher William James once wrote, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

When we feel like we are appreciated, we are encouraged. And when we are encouraged, we are more likely to face life boldly.

I like to think of encouragement as the universal game changer.  A game changer changes the way something is done, or made, or perceived. It can change the landscape of a situation. It’s the transformational magic that can take a relationship or situation from average to excellent, from ordinary to extraordinary.

With encouragement, people blossom; without it, they shrivel.

Mark Twain once said he could live for two months on a good compliment.

I've found that when I show my appreciation to others, encouragement, like a boomerang, returns my way.

“What are you grinning about?” Lori asked  as I walked in from getting the mail.

I noticed she automatically returned my smile.

Handing her our letter I said, “My teams may have lost, but this is a game changer for me.”

For at least two months.