The World Needs More Cheerleaders

As we go through life, we will all encounter many opportunities to criticize or chastise people for incompetence, stupidity, rudeness, mistakes, bad customer service, or a host of other things. Many of these criticisms are even justified! Whenever I get frustrated with someone and I get tempted to respond to my frustrations in a negative way, I bring to mind this quote I heard years ago. I have never forgotten it:

The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”
― Margaret D. Nadauld (former general Young Women's President)

I think to myself, "you know, Anna, you don't know what their life has been like. You don't know if they just had a terrible day. The world has enough hardness in it. Be soft. If someone needs correction (and some people do!), that can be someone else's job (and many people are happy to oblige). Your job can be to do your best to help them feel loved." So that is and has been my goal. I am not perfect in it, but it's the ideal I am working towards, and it's some advice I'd like my posterity to thoughtfully consider. We need to be each other's cheerleaders!