Thought 29MAY2008

ENCOURAGEMENT
Some of the greatest success stories of history have followed a word of encouragement or an act of confidence by a loved one or a trusting friend. Had it not been for a confident wife, Sophia, we might not have listed among the great names if literature the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne. When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell his wife that he was a failure and had been fired from his job in a customhouse, she surprised him with an exclamation of joy. "Now," she said triumphantly, "you can write your book!"
"Yes," replied the man, with sagging confidence, "and what shall we live on while I am writing it?" To his amazement, she opened a drawer and pulled out a substantial amount of money. "Where on earth did you get that?" he exclaimed. "I have always known you were a man of genius," she told him. "I knew that someday you would write a masterpiece. So every week, out of the money you gave me for housekeeping, I saved a little bit. So there is enough to last us for a whole year."
From her trust and confidence came one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Scarlet Letter.
Nido Qubein - extracted from "Chicken Soup for the Soul', Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen, Health Communications, Inc., 1993.
Hope is the pillar of the world - Kanuri