"Be yourself..Because there's nobody like you."

One word. One small suggestion. One opinion. Things like these can change a life. I never realized until today how powerful of an effect the things you say to a person can be. Things like:
telling someone they look ugly, that their too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too blunt, or too nice. At the time you might be saying it as a joke, or giving a small suggestion but the mind of most humans don't take it that way. Most of us over think everything that is said to us about who we are. For example, I will be the first to say that I was for the longest time and still am on occasion one of the biggest push overs. I will let people take advantage and walk all over me. I saw that happening to someone that I care about very much, so I made the suggestion that they stand up for themselves a little more, thinking that it was just advice at the time that would make them see that they had someone on their side that saw what was happening. Little did I know that one opinion I shared added to many opinions this person had already heard. As time went on I noticed a change in this persons whole demeanor, that light and happiness about them had slowly begun to to burn out. Finally this evening we talked about it, and to my surprise all the changes I had seen in this person fell back to that one suggestion I had given them. You don't need to be over the top blunt to get your point across when someone is doing something you don't like, and I guess thats the advice I failed to give. This is definitely a lesson I'll hold onto for the rest of my life. I'm sorry I was one of the people who made you feel like you needed to change who you were.