“When you belief in people, you motivate them and release their potential.”
John Maxwell.
The TEN QUALITIES of A POSITIVE INFLUENCER using the simple acronym INFLUENCER are: I – Integrity with people, N- Nurtures People, F – Faith in People, L – Listens to People, U – Understands People, E – Enlarges People, N – Navigates for People, C – Connects with People, E – Empowers People, and R – Reproduces other Influencers.
FAITH IN PEOPLE is our teaching this week. There is nothing like having faith in people, especially before they get to prove themselves. We all can remember vividly the people who first believed in us when no one did.
One day a small boy named Tommy came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He said to her “Mom, my teacher gave this paper to me and told me only you are to read it. What does it say?” Her eyes welled with tears as she read the letter out loud to her child…
“Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.”
Many years after Tommy’s mother had died, he became one of the greatest inventors of the century. One day he was going through a closet, and he found the folded letter that his old teacher wrote to his mother that day. He opened it…The message written on the letter was…
“Your son is mentally deficient. We cannot let him attend our school anymore. He is expelled.”
Tommy became emotional reading it and then wrote in his diary:
“Thomas A. Edison was a mentally deficient child whose mother turned him into the genius of the Century.”
Such is the power of a mother, to change the destiny of her child.
This childhood story of Thomas Edison widely in circulation is mostly true, but the sensationalized “teacher’s note” never actually existed in real life. During his few months of attending school, Edison`s teacher called him an “addled child” – (unable to think clearly and confused). His mother was furious and took him out of school and taught him everything herself.
Thomas Edison gave the actual course of the event himself in an interview published in a newspaper called T. P’s Weekly in 1907:
“One day I overheard the teacher tell the inspector that I was ‘addled,’ and it would not be worthwhile keeping me in school any longer. I was so hurt by this last straw that I burst out crying and went home and told my mother about it. Then I found out what a good thing a good mother is. She came out as my strong defender. Mother’s love was aroused, mother pride wounded to the quick. She brought me back to the school and angrily told the teacher that he didn’t know what he was talking about, that I had more brains than he himself, and a lot more talk like that. In fact, she was the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had, and I determined right then that I would be worthy of her and show her that her confidence was not misplaced.”
French mathematician, inventor and philosopher, Blaise Pascal said, “I bring you the gift of these four words: ‘I BELIEVE IN YOU’” People experience a peak performance when important people that they respect expressed without reservation their faith in them! To become a POSITIVE INFLUENCER, you must become intentional in using the gift of the golden four words prescribed by Pascal, I BELIEVE IN YOU!
