The full title of this prayer is "I Reassure My Beloveds Through Praise," and was written to improve family relationships.

Yet training yourself to praise and encourage co-workers and employees instead of criticizing them is also a great way to improve productivity and office relations.

You may feel an initial reluctance to do this.

That's because we have been taught that criticism is constructive and, without it, we will not improve.

Yet because we naturally tend to focus on what we do not like, it is common to deliver criticism on a routine basis while delivering very little praise or gratitude to others.

Consider how common it is for parents to ask a child to do something and then become critical when the child does not do a "good" job at it.

Delivering criticism under this circumstance is almost always counter productive.

It is almost sure to have the result of convincing the child to exert even less effort next time he or she is asked to do something.

But what if the parent delivered appreciation?

What if the parent said, "I know you didn't want to do that, so I appreciate your doing it," and went on to talk about what he or she liked about the way the child did the task.

Contrast that with delivering criticism. You know yourself how bad criticism feels.

The irony is that criticism is almost always based upon the personal preferences of the critic and is, therefore, completely subjective.

This is why criticism is so often resented. The recipient knows it is an opinion and is not based on any kind of universal truth.

One thing we know for sure is that, when a person is criticized he or she often shuts down or becomes resentful.

Rather than helping the person to be better, criticism works against his or her positive expansion as a human being.

A better approach is to express gratitude to those around us.

We all like appreciation and gratitude.

Give appreciation and praise to a person for making an effort at something and the recipient is far more likely to keep trying or do more in order to get more appreciation and praise.

Criticize and the recipient will, most likely, feel reluctant to even bother doing anything at all.

This is why, if you train yourself to offer praise and appreciation at every opportunity presented to you instead of delivering criticism, you will see your relationships and life transformed in marvelous ways.