***Turning Point

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‘A moment of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success’ ~ Unknown. In this Mother’s Day special clip from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint receives encouraging words from his mom right when he needs them. Have you thought about how tremendously powerful words and the timing of words can be in a person’s life?

Young Flint had just experienced embarrassing failure in front of people, from whom at the time, approval was important. Mom could have told him that his inventions were nonsense, and that he shouldn’t waste his time on them. And, if she did, do you think he would have become an inventor? Probably not. Instead, she encouraged him by giving him the gift of a lab coat. That lab coat helped him to see himself as a great scientist like the ones he most admired. She encouraged him with words like: ‘the world needs your originality’ and ‘I know that you are going to do big things someday.’

Flint had a turning point at that moment. He was a scientist, and scientists have failures until they make successes. But, if his mom thought he had something to offer, then, he was going to offer something. The interesting thing for me about the rest of the clip is that he kept inventing things and they would each fail. But, that didn’t stop him. He was growing older, trying new things and they kept on failing. But, he never gave up. Eventually, he did invent something quite remarkable.

It’s all how you choose to look at your failures. We all fail, but some of us allow those failures to stop us from finding the success. Others look at failures as one step closer to success.

Some of us have people in our life like Flint’s mom who will be the encouraging voice in our lives, while others have voices of negativity. But, the choice is ultimately yours and mine to decide to let those words limit us or have them drive us on toward our dreams. What choice will you make?