The Power of Encouragement

In this episode of the Managing Difficult People Podcast, Adam Holbrook explores the life-changing power of encouragement. Drawing from personal experiences of burnout, struggle, and business growth, Adam shares why encouragement is one of the most powerful tools for leadership, relationships, and personal development.

He explains the difference between appreciation and encouragement, why people need support more than criticism, and how encouraging others can strengthen teams, build trust, improve mental well-being, and create lasting impact.

If you want to become a better leader, teammate, friend, or family member, this episode is a powerful reminder that a few encouraging words can change someone's life.

Stronger leadership starts with better communication.

Learn how to manage conflict, set boundaries, and lead with confidence.
Listen now: https://managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com/

Transcript

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If you deal with someone who talks over everyone, claims credit for everything, and still gets invited to the leadership retreat, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook of Managing Difficult People Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Managing Difficult People Podcast. My name is Adam Holbrook. I had a burning desire to do today's episode on encouragement. And I really wanted to dive into this encouragement because not everyone understands encouragement. A lot of people think that we shouldn't encourage people because it's all about ourselves and becoming a better person. And when we start encouraging people, then they're going to rely on it and they are going to just constantly need more encouragement. I want to stop you right there, and I want to start off telling you a story when my life was spiraling out of control. It was 2005. At the time, I owned a commercial office cleaning business. And I started this commercial office cleaning business because I wanted to be rich. I wanted to make lots of money. My family, we grew up very poor. We didn't have much. We struggled to pay our bills. Money was a constant stress factor in my family. I would constantly be hearing about the money struggles. So as I got older, I said, I want to make something of myself. I put myself through college. And after college, I started this commercial office cleaning business. And the reason I picked the commercial office cleaning business was it's the only thing I could afford. All I needed was a mop bucket, cleaning supplies, you know, the vacuum cleaner. And I was off to the races. And luckily for me, I was a great salesperson. I was able to make lots and lots of business. But I wasn't a good leader. I wasn't a good person to manage an operation. I was just a good salesman. I didn't have any encouragement as well. But all of that lack in my life led for my life to spiral out of control. And I pictured it. I was working 100 hours every single week for more than three years. I didn't have anyone in my life that I could look up to, anyone that I could get encouragement by. Yeah, I struggled. And I was working 100 hours a week, plugging holes and thinking that the next day would be better, but it got worse and worse. And I started picturing it all the time, taking my car, driving it off a cliff, and ending my life. Christmas Eve 2005 is when it all went down. I was drunk. I'm in my car. I'm ready. I'm numb. I'm there. And that night, my dad called me that night. And it was late. And he told me he loved me. It was the first time he told me he loved me in a long time. We were fighting at the time. I don't even understand it. I look back on that day so many times. And the only thing that makes sense to me is I believe that God reached out to me through my dad's voice that night. And he told me he loved me. That was the only thing that made sense. The next day was Christmas Day. After my 17-hour straight shift, I start researching how to sell a business. I decide I'm going to post my business for sale on this random website. And within four months, my first business sold for $220,000, which was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life. For the first time in my adult life, I had a break. I had a little bit of my money in my name. I still didn't have the encouragement from other people, and I wasn't a good leader at that point as well. And I just look back on that day over and over again. And I look back on that time in my life, and I realized that I didn't have any encouraging people in my life at that point. And it's not about putting blame on my past circumstances, putting blame on others. It was recognizing that I wasn't a good encourager on my part either. I wasn't doing any encouraging, and I didn't have any good people around me. But that said, I wasn't becoming any better. You know, I lied, I judged, I didn't have empathy for others that didn't see the world the same as me. I was constantly frustrated. I didn't forgive others. And you wonder why I didn't have any encouraging great people around me. But as I started to make myself better, and I started working on myself, treating people better, becoming better, things around me started to change. And that's when I started my second business. I started a bottless water cooler company, and I grew that business into three different states. And I had more of an encouraging attitude. I was giving out a lot of encouragement and I was getting encouragement back. And it just felt right. Now, a lot of times people will say we don't want to give encouragement out because we don't want people to rely on encouragement. And there's some truth to that because if we give out too much encouragement, people will always feel the need to get it. But I do believe we do not have an ego problem in this world. We have a mental health problem in this world. And in order to overcome it, it's all about encouragement. Part of the solution is encouraging yourself and encouraging other people in your darkest moments. Yeah, you know what? If you encourage someone too much, they may need to be humbled. They may get full of themselves. And that's okay. That's okay. But I don't think that we are full of ourselves as much as we actually could use a little encouragement every now and then. Now, if you're with somebody and they say to you, Well, I don't even know how to encourage you. What should I say? Well, if you have to ask somebody else what the encouragement the other person needs is, it's not true encouragement. Because if you're gonna tell the other person the words that they need to be saying, you're not even buying it yourself. Where to start? If you're saying that you have a lack of encouragement and lack of good people in your life and you're constantly dealing with difficult people, I'm gonna say to you number one, start encouraging other people first. Keep working on yourself second. Read books, keep coming to this podcast over and over, keep reading, keep working towards something bigger in your life. Try to be honest as much as you possibly can. Now, the only person that was a perfect person, because I need to say this too, is a lot of times people think that we shouldn't need encouragement because we all should be able to become that great person on our own. And we shouldn't need that. Well, the only person that's been perfect in our history of our world has been Jesus Christ. He's been the only perfect human being that's ever walked on this. And he actually enjoyed encouragement. He would accept the encouragement by saying thank you. A lot of times he would smile at the encouragement he was given by others. So he received that encouragement and he loved receiving it, just like we all need it at some points in time. I'm not saying you have to make a habit out of encouraging people. And if you don't have these people in your life, continue to make yourself better. Keep working on yourself. Because as you make yourself better, more encouraging people will come into your life. Because we all want to be around people that are gonna inspire us, make us feel better. And if it's a one-way street and you're only in giving encouragement and you're not getting it, it may be because that other person is struggling in their own life. And just continue to give to them because let's face it, you used to be there too. You used to be struggling more so than you are right now. So we need to give encouragement out more to other people. And you say, Well, I want better people around me. Well, help them become that better person first. But if they don't believe in encouragement, because there's a lot of people out there that don't believe people should be encouraged. It's just their duty, they shouldn't feel this way. Well, there's so many people out there that are on these mental health drugs out there. And one of the reasons is because they just can't find themselves in life, and maybe they're not feeling supported. And that's not anybody else's fault other than yourself. And we should be able to find people around us that can encourage us. And if we can't find them, just continue to work on yourselves. And those people start showing up. The most encouraging people in this world, the personal growth gurus of this world, the leadership gurus, John Maxwell, Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie, they all write about encouragement. And yeah, sure, we all need to be humbled at some points. Sometimes we all think that we're better than we actually are. And sometimes I need to come down from my high horse. If I have a great event and I crushed it, I'm like, yeah, man, I crushed it. I absolutely crushed it. Sometimes I need somebody to say, you know what, you're not that good, Adam. You're not that good. But in the meantime, let's continue to support one another, love one another, be there for one another. And one of the ways that we can encourage people, because if you say, I'm not getting encouragement, is just keep working on yourself. And how do you work on yourself? Be aware of what you're saying, be aware of your mood. And if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. It's easy to scroll past the negative post that somebody's posting about the world. We all have different perspectives on life, but what we really truly need is encouragement. And my next episode is going to be about perspective because we do have those different perspectives in life, but how do we deal with people that have those different perspectives than us? But we can still love those people, we can still encourage those people, we can still be supportive of those people. But here's the thing when you have people around you that encourage you, that they believe in you, that they trust you, that they love you for who you are. Oh man, because you can only go so far on your own. But if you have supportive people around you, that's when everything changes. Now I need to have a clear distinction here between appreciation and encouragement. Appreciation is appreciating one and being grateful for somebody that's did something for you or did something that they were supposed to do. And that's saying thank you, that's being grateful. Oh, I'm so grateful that they were able to help me and get to the spot. I'm so grateful that they did their jobs and they not only met their expectations, they exceeded their expectations. That feels good. And that's important. But encouragement is the next level. Because if I'm just saying to say thank you and I really appreciate everything you do, it's honestly, it gets a little bit, I don't know, old. I wouldn't say old, but I did say old. It doesn't feel as real as encouragement. Encouragement is like, you crushed it. I totally love everything that you presented on, and I think you're on the right track. And I love the way that you did X, Y, and Z. Now, does that mean we're gonna give a false premacy to somebody and say things that they actually aren't or they need to work on things? No. But when you give encouragement to other people, they're gonna be more receptive to listen to you and be able to have those critiques of where you need to improve in your life. And a lot of times we don't want to give fake encouragement, right? So if we don't have anything good to say, we probably shouldn't say it. But if you're gonna give consistent encouragement, people admire that person. And then when you finally have something to critique them about or something to help improve them upon, oh man, they're gonna take it and they're gonna run with it. You ever try giving somebody advice? Most of the time they don't take your advice. But if you connect with them first and you connect with people by encouraging them, telling them how they did a project successfully. Now, appreciation is part of it, thanking them and saying how much that they appreciate that they were able to do X, Y, and Z for them. But encouragement, it's a life changer. It changes everything. So keep working on yourself, keep believing in yourself, keep encouraging other people. And as you encourage other people, people will start encouraging you back. People will start feeling love back. And if they're not, keep making yourself better. Those people will start showing up in your life. Thank you for being with me today. It's been my pleasure to be with you on the Managing Difficult People podcast. I'm excited for our next episode, which will be on different perspectives. But until now, keep encouraging other people around you, keep showing support to other people. People will start coming into your life. People will start being more receptive to you when you start encouraging them. Just like Tony Robbins, just like Dale Carnegie, and just like John Maxwell say, encouragement is the key to success because you can only go so far on your own. You can go much farther with more people, better teams. And if you think you can go really far on your own, you're kidding yourself. We all have different skills. We all need different people in our lives to be successful. It's the only reason why this podcast is successful because I can only do the speaking well. I can only do the episodes well. But I need a whole team of people in the back to help market this, to help put it in the right people's hands, to show them that I can't do this alone. Other people, I need them. Keep encouraging, sending love to everyone. Thank you for joining us on the Managing Difficult People Podcast. So that's it for today's episode of the Managing Difficult People Podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or iTunes wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $10,000 private VIP day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to Managing Difficult People Podcast dot com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.