Today I am thankful for the ability to accept and extend compliments. This may seem like a minuscule thing, but you might be surprised to discover just how many people have a hard time accepting a compliment. This could be due to many different factors – they might not have been the recipient of many compliments as a child (or even as an adult for that matter), they may have been hurt by people who did not extend genuine compliments to them, or they may even have difficulty trusting people overall. Whatever the reason is, many people do not accept compliments well, and that is not good. I must admit that at times I have experienced my own challenges when it has come to accepting compliments. No one is immune.
With that said, the irony is that it is imperative that we as human beings learn how to accept compliments, as the ability to accept compliments aids us in our development of healthy levels of self-esteem, security and confidence. And, yes, we may on occasion encounter someone who pays us a compliment that is less than genuine because that person has an ulterior motive, but I believe that the majority of people with whom we come into contact when paying us a compliment do so genuinely. And one should not allow the fear of the possibly of being hurt by the few people who do not compliment genuinely to detract from their ability to accept a compliment from those who do compliment genuinely.
And for the same reasons that it is important to be able to accept a compliment, it is equally as important to be able to extend compliments to others. This can also be something that is hard for some people to do, oftentimes because of the same reasons that it is difficult for people to accept compliments. But that is no reason to resist the urge to extend a compliment to someone else. A kind word shared with another person has the potential to completely redirect their whole day. If you do not believe me, give it a try. It’s also essential to note that the extension of a compliment to another person also carries with it some intrinsic benefits, such as the ability to diffuse a potentially volatile situation, encourage a reserved person to open up, and to break the ice so to speak when encountering new people.
So, for those of you who are pretty successful in this area already, kudos to you for hopefully leaving each person whom you encounter better off after having been in your presence than they were before encountering you. To those of you who have yet to make substantial progress in this area, please do not give up; we have all experienced our share of difficulty concerning this. Stay firm in your resolve to accept and extend compliments, and let me know how things progress. #lovebythedrop
love by the drop 