Is it worth giving encouragement when you don’t know if the other person is going to take it to heart?
Yes
Is it worth accepting encouragement when you don’t know if the person giving it really means it?
Yes
That’s the beauty of it. Encouragement is inherently good. It doesn’t need to be taken to heart in order to make a difference…and it doesn’t need to come from the heart in order to make a difference.
»» Two sidebars worth noting…
We might hesitate giving encouragement because we believe our encouraging words are very important and superior…and if we think the receiver might not see them that way, we don’t want to ‘waste’ our valuable words.
We might hesitate accepting encouragement not because we second guess the motives of the giver…but because we second guess our own worthiness of the encouragement...thinking to ourselves, ‘Even if they really mean it, if they knew what an imposter I am, they wouldn’t bother’.
