Amazing what a little contraction can do.  I don’t mean the childbirth kind of contraction, (thank goodness!) but the power of the apostrophe and the “t”.  It can completely change the direction of  a life.  Spoken out loud and directly to someone can mean the end of a dream, the chance of doing something innovative, the opportunity to do what nobody else has done.  Why would someone do this to another person?  I believe it’s not so much about the other person as it is about themselves.

Let’s take a toddler.  It is expected that a toddler begins to, well, toddle.  Parents encouraging their child with words like “you can do it!” as they take their first steps.  Maybe the child is learning to play a sport for the first time and as they’re up to bat or shooting a basketball, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a parent yell “you can’t do it!”.  We all encourage our children to do whatever they set out to do, right?  Especially if it’s something we want them to do or we believe they can do.  Or because everyone else we know does it.

And why do we believe?  Chances are because we’ve either done it ourselves or someone close to us has done it – we’ve witnessed it. Why do we encourage the toddler?  Because it’s the norm for a toddler to walk.  It’s unusual if they don’t.  But if a person steps outside of our experience zone and tries something new, maybe something we’ve never seen done before, our first response can be something like, “well, go ahead, but I don’t think it will work” or “you can’t do that”.  It’s a powerful thing.  And when the “can’t” comes from an important person in someone’s life, it can be life changing.  A parent or a teacher telling you that you can’t do something, especially if you hear it over and over can make you believe that it’s true, no matter how capable you may be.

But I don’t want to just limit this to physical attributes.  How many parents give the gift of the arts to their children?  Maybe providing music or dance lessons or spending money on art supplies.  Encouraging, even insisting on classes and practice.  And then it comes time to go to college and the parent says “you can’t major in music.  You’ll never make a living doing that.  You’ll end up in the food industry asking “do you want fries with that”?  The arts are impractical, you’ll end up poor, yada, yada, yada.  You’ve been encouraging all along – why do you stop encouraging just because it isn’t your dream or it may be improbable?  Improbable doesn’t mean impossible.

Sports are encouraged in the same way.  We encourage kids to play all kinds of team sports, spending sometimes thousands of dollars to travel in leagues and then the kid says, I want to be a professional sports player.  We immediately go into the statistics.  Do you know the percentage of college players who actually go to the pros?  You need a back up plan.  You’re only 5’4″.  What makes you think you can play basketball?  I’ve seen some pretty quick little guards zip around the legs of the taller guys and score on them.  Improbable?  Yes.  Impossible?  Not necessarily.  Again, if the person is told they can’t by someone they trust, it probably won’t happen.

But here is where it really becomes dangerous.  It’s when the person you’ve said “can’t” to believes it as much as you do and THEY begin to say it.  About everything.  Because once you say “I can’t”, you begin to look at life a little differently.  You begin to analyze everything through the lens of fear and disbelief.  I can’t do “A” so chances are I can’t do “B”.  And the next thing you know they’ve gotten a degree in something because it’s practical and they’re stuck in a dead end job they hate because they did the same thing that everyone else does.  What is it they say – it’s better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all?  We can apply that to following your dreams.  I would rather have given it everything I’ve got and failed than to not ever try and wonder what if.  I will still have gone further than someone who immediately said “I can’t”.  And you never know where the adventure might have taken you in the meantime.

The saddest thing I hear as a teacher is some of my youngest students saying “I can’t”.  They haven’t experienced nearly enough life yet to even be thinking that, much less living it.  Part of my job as a teacher is to help them see that they can do whatever it is they set their mind to.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  It probably won’t be the first time they try, but as they keep working at it eventually they’ll be able to say “I can”.  Building up a child’s belief in themselves, not building up a false self esteem through false praise or meaningless trophies, can change the trajectory of a child’s life.  Being truthful and teaching a child that they can do anything they set their mind to with hard work and a little grit is a life skill that will take them far.  There will be mistakes, there will be failures, but instead of taking those as proof that they “can’t”, it is only a sign that they need to ask for help or look for another way to do it.  It can be done.

When was the last time you encouraged someone by telling them “you can do it”?.  Maybe they’re struggling through a hard time in their lives, maybe they’re stepping out on a new life adventure or maybe they’re just getting ready to take a test in school.  All you and I have to do together is believe and say “you can”.