The Unexpected Power of Encouragement

Top 5 Learnings from 100+ Real Life Stories

“You got this. Keep trying! I believe in you. You’ll figure it out!” 🙌
These are all examples of encouraging phrases that most people have heard several times in their life — well, hopefully!

Why am I hoping for this to be true? Because how much we are encouraged can make an enormous difference. It can change how we evaluate challenges, how willing we are to take risks, and how often we give permission to ourselves to go after our dreams. Lots at stake!

However, if you’re skeptical about how much power encouragement actually has, I’m not surprised. I was too. But then I decided to dig deeper into the topic and learned some pretty amazing things, which I now will share with you.

What got me interested in researching the impact of encouragement?

My friend, Liane Cafarate, and I had a common interest in women empowerment, and we wanted to break down what factors play a role in how confident a woman is. We realized that a significant factor could be courage: that inspiring itch that makes us try out new things and take risks with the hope of gaining something and evolving as a person.

But how does courage happen? What’s the impact of others encouraging us?
How can we encourage ourselves? How can we deal with discouragement?
Whose encouragement matters?

We had so many questions…

So we started collecting stories and interviewing people, eager to learn from their experiences and get closer to answers. We’ve gathered over 100 stories of encouraging and discouraging real-life experiences. I’d like to say a special thanks here to everyone who told us their stories! 🧡

Hoping that this can be useful for others, we wanted to share some of the exciting things we’ve learned from this research.

Here are the TOP 5 learnings:

1) Encouragement can make a big and long-lasting impact

“You got this!” — we’re all familiar with the warm feeling that such a shout out can give us. In reaction, we usually say thanks or just smile, and then we go on with our day, a bit happier for a while, but no biggy — and that’s already awesome. But many of us also have memories of encouraging or discouraging words that stayed with us a lot longer than a few minutes. In fact, more than ¼ of the stories we heard were going back many years (as far as early childhood) and had a significant influence on the person’s life.

This highlighted two important things:

• We shouldn’t hold back on encouraging others. We never know how far our positive words can take someone, so if encouraging words pop into our heads, let’s say them out loud!
• It’s very useful to have a technique we can use to deal with discouragement, so we don’t let somebody’s negative comments stuck in our heads and influence what we think we are capable of.

2) Pure encouragement has no risks

When we first started talking to people about the topic of encouragement, some of them were skeptical about its positive impact. The typical doubtful thinking went like this: “Yeah, I see how encouraging others, in general, is good, but what if I encourage someone to invest time in something they are not good at and they will fail?” Now, after collecting so many stories, we can confidently say: chances of this are very, very low. We’ve heard only one story in which a family member’s encouragement led to a negative outcome, and the only reason it did so because it was combined with crap advice. So here’s the golden rule we learned:

Pure encouragement has no risks. If you don’t combine it with any kind of advice, your words can only lead to one type of impact: you will make that person feel better.

3) Small things matter

Encouragement can come in many different forms. It doesn’t have to be a major effort and can still make a massive impact. We’ve heard many stories where a small act or few words meant the world to someone simply because they came exactly in the moment of need.

4) The closer connection we have with someone, the more their encouragement matters

The stories we collected covered many different topics from several life periods, but only a few were related to people whom the person didn’t have a close connection with. In the vast majority of cases, it was immediate family members, close friends, and people of authority (managers, teachers) whose encouraging words and behavior made a difference.

What surprised us, though, is that it doesn’t seem to matter if the person is an expert in the topic or not.

For instance, let’s say you’re planning on starting your own business and your parents encourage you by saying they believe in you. The probability that you will also believe in yourself is much higher compared to if you hear the same encouragement from someone less close to you. You will be encouraged not because your parents are any kind of experts on entrepreneurship but because you have a close connection with them. Hence, their encouragement means a great deal to you.

5) We have the power to control how others impact us

We’ve heard several stories in which people felt encouraged because others encouraged them with their words or actions. Similarly, a lot of people felt discouraged as a result of somebody discouraging them. No surprise here, right?

However, in over ⅓ of the stories, our interviewees didn’t let discouragement stop them. They managed to ignore it, or even took it further and turned the negative words into fuel and encouraged themselves to keep going! These people had the ability to encourage themselves, sometimes inspired by a role model, sometimes by an uplifting book.

They all demonstrated having a growth mindset:* they knew that they can learn new skills and they have the power to forge their own paths.

It’s incredible how much we can learn just by listening to people’s stories!
I wrote this post, hoping to bring attention to how important it is to encourage others and ourselves. But, honestly, these 5 points highlighted are just the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we will continue to share other interesting things we’ve learned from our research.

Next week we’ll be writing about how you can create an encouraging environment for yourself — stay tuned!

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*According to Dweck, “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work — brains and talent are just the starting point.”
Carol S. Dweck: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, 2007