Chapter 30 Replace criticism and reprimand with praise and encouragement

We all know how to praise when it comes to dog training—even if it's a small improvement, why don't we change the way our pets behave when we want to change others?Why not use praise instead of reprimand? I have a friend named Pat Barlow.He's been doing dog and horse shows all over the place with circuses and sideshow companies.Pat's dog training is very interesting. As long as the dog has made a little progress, Pat will pat it to praise it, feed it meat, and then play with it for a while. In fact, there is nothing strange about this.For many years, animal trainers have been doing this.

I often wonder, can the same approach be applied to humans?Use encouragement and praise, and people will improve accordingly. In a book called "My Child, I'm Not Perfect, But I'm Real," the author, renowned psychologist Jess Wren, says, "Praise is like sunlight that warms the human heart. We can't grow up without it. But most people are always very sensitive to other people's irony and sarcasm, but rarely praise others." In my memories of the past, those praises and encouragements that changed my destiny are still very clear.Have you ever found the same thing from memory?Those praises and encouragements will often touch your heartstrings inadvertently.

There is such an example, many years ago, there was a 10-year-old boy who worked in a factory.He has a dream, that is to become a singer.But the first music teacher he met said to him: "You can't sing, your voice is too bad." This shocked the boy very much. The boy's mother, a poor country woman, put her arms around her son and said she believed he could sing well and felt he had made progress.Mom worked very hard to save money and sent him to music lessons.The mother's encouragement changed the life of this child.This kid later became the greatest singer of that era, and his name was Enrico Caruso.

In the early 19th century, there was a young man in London who wanted to be a writer.His experience was very rough, his studies were interrupted for 4 years, and his father went to prison because he could not pay his debts.The youth is often hungry.Then he found a job labeling shoe polish cans in a rat-infested warehouse and sleeping at night in a small dark house with two other boys.The two boys who lived with him came from the slums of London. They didn't think his work was very good at all, so he always quietly went out to post his manuscripts late at night.His manuscripts were returned one by one.Finally, he was appreciated by an editor. Although he didn't give him any money, he was still very excited. He shed tears and walked and walked on the street excitedly.

It was the editor's praise that changed the fate of this young man.Without that praise, he might have spent his life working in a rat-infested warehouse.You probably know this boy, he is Charles Dickens. There was also a boy who worked in the grocery store. He had to get up at 5 o'clock every day, and then he worked 14 hours a day. It was boring and tiring. He hated everything here.After persisting for two years, he finally couldn't bear it anymore. One morning, without having breakfast, he walked more than ten miles to find his mother who was the housekeeper. He was in such a bad mood, he cried and begged his mother, and said that if he did that job again, then he was finished.Then he wrote a letter to his former headmaster, describing his situation and saying that he himself was very hopeless and didn't want to live anymore.The headmaster comforted him, praised him as being very smart and should do something better, and let him come to the school as a teacher.

This incident changed the fate of the young man's life, and also wrote a glorious page in the history of English literature.This boy later became the author of many best-selling books and became a millionaire. He was Wells. The great psychologist Shkinner advocated that praise should be used instead of criticism. Through experiments on humans and animals, he came to the conclusion that when more praise and encouragement are used and less criticism is used, the good things people do will increase. Good things will diminish. In many families, parents often reprimand their children, which gradually makes the relationship between parents and children sour.John Lindepoff of North Carolina once did this to his children and went through this process.

Mr. Lindepov decided to use some methods learned in our classroom to treat his children while participating in our training.He reported: "We decided to use praise instead of criticism and reprimand. It is very difficult to praise them when we see that they are not doing well. So we carefully look for things that they should praise, so that they often do things before. Those bad things gradually decreased or even disappeared. They began to act according to our praise, and later we couldn’t believe that they would be so obedient. Although they still make mistakes occasionally, compared to before But it's so much better. Now we don't have to worry about it like before, because most of the things they do are right. It's all praise, and even a little improvement is far better to reprimand them for their mistakes."

The same principle applies to work as well.Keith Robb, owner of a print shop in Woodland Hills, California, used the same principle.His printing factory took jobs, some of which had high requirements for printing quality.But the printer is a newcomer, and he is not quite used to the job yet.The production supervisor was very upset about this and wanted to fire him. Mr. Rob knew about this situation, and he came to the factory to talk to the worker.He told the worker that he was satisfied with his performance on the job, said that the work he did was one of the most beautiful jobs he had ever seen, and clearly stated the good things.Finally he told the worker that he was important to the company.

This greatly boosted the worker's enthusiasm for work, and within a few days, the quality of his work improved rapidly.Can this not affect the young man's attitude towards work?After a few days, the situation changed dramatically.He told his colleagues that Mr. Rob appreciated his work very much.From that day on, he became very, very attentive in his work. We all crave praise, be appreciated, and strive for it, but no one wants something that isn't genuinely phony. Let me stress once again that the truths in this book only work if they come from the heart.I am not telling people how to play with their minds, what I am advocating is a new attitude towards life.

Speaking of how to change people, if we are good at motivating people to realize their inner potential, then we are not just changing him, we can make him completely transformed. This is not an exaggeration.William James, the most outstanding psychologist in the United States, said: "Compared with our inner potential, we are like half awake. We only develop a small part of the inner potential of the body. People are far from realizing his Humans have various abilities, but most of them have not been developed and used.” And praise and encouragement are the best ways for people to develop and use their potential.