Why, Thank You!

Why, Thank You!

You are so smart. You are good looking, and talented, too. You do good work, you are a nice friend, and I like your shirt.

How do you feel about that? Happy and easy, with a little “thanks” on your lips? Or are you feeling a little embarrassed, or like you want to push the words away?

Accepting compliments can be an opportunity of a challenging nature for some of us. We seem to want to push them away, or deny them, or turn them around, or, sometimes, we just wreck ‘em.

How sad.

It’s not just sad for us, the ones who can’t accept them, but also sad for the one who would give the compliment. It’s always sad to have a gift rejected, even if it is a small one.

So what happens?

We get the idea that we don’t deserve to have people say nice things about us to us. Or that the person paying the compliment wants to get something from us. Or that for some reason, the person is lying to us, making up qualities we don’t have. Isn’t that strange?

But then, mislearning makes us do strange things.

Do you remember that, at our cores, we are perfect? Do you remember that the feelings or ideas that we aren’t are all based on mislearning? We have the responsibility to clean up our mislearnings as best we can, to clear the way to our perfect selves. And one the ways we can do that is to learn to gracefully accept a compliment.

That means, say, “Thank you” and that’s it. Don’t add, my shirt is old or cheap or second hand. Don’t add anything about needing to get fit, or build muscle, or lose weight, or that what you did was “nothing.”

This can be very challenging. As I practiced accepting a compliment, sometimes I would actually have to hold my tongue with my teeth to stop myself from turning the compliment away.

Feeling valued and appreciated by our communities is one of the feelings that help us thrive, helps us feel inspired and motivated to achieve wonderful things. But all the nice outside stuff counts for squat if we don’t value and appreciate our own self.

Like so much of what we want to change in our lives, we can learn to treat ourselves with love, we can practice kindness and respect for ourselves. We can allow ourselves the space, the patience, and attention to allow our own love for our own self to emerge.

As our love and respect for our own self grows, our ability to love each other grows. As our ability to value and appreciate our own self grows, we feel valued and appreciated by our communities. And, almost magically, the depth of our love and appreciation for the people in our lives grows, too.

How have I changed from deflecting compliments to accepting them graciously?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 07062013