Series: The Power of Compliments

Giving and receiving compliments are very important communication skills that boost our self-confidence and the confidence of the people around us. We grow up in a society that struggles with giving and receiving compliments. People are stingy at the giving end and uncomfortable at the receiving end.

What many people don’t realize is that complimenting others is a projection of a trait, skill or beauty that we see in ourselves. It is a gift of kindness that when we give, we also receive.

Recently, I ran leadership training with a group of high school students and we talked about compliments. It took us 10 hours to change the lives of all those students and increase their self-confidence ratings by 20% to 50%. Yes, in just 10 hours of a very busy training day, we change their attitude towards themselves and other people.

One of the leaders came to me in the evening, after the session with the parents, to say “Thank you”. She said that the part about compliments was very meaningful for her. She felt that it was a shame they didn’t teach communication skills in primary school and that it was important to give compliments to others, and even more important to accept compliments. On the ride home, I thought about it and realized I had never written about compliments in my blog, so I thanked this girl for bringing it to my attention.

Read Compliments: Give to Receive »

As I said in Compliments: Give to Receive, most people don’t receive many compliments, because they don’t give many compliments to others, and this is caused by not feeling good about themselves. I hope everyone started the compliment challenge and that you already see the impact on your own confidence and sense of wellbeing.

Not feeling good about yourself also makes you feel uncomfortable when someone else gives you a compliment. As you might expect, an awkward response to a compliment will discourage the other person from giving you any more compliments.

In this post, you will learn how to accept compliments with grace.

Some people are not used to compliments, so they are shocked when someone says something good about them. Most people say something that reduces the compliment, like “It was nothing”, “You should have seen me do it last time” or “This time was not that good”, which is just like getting a gift from someone and saying, “Sorry, I can’t accept your gift, because I don’t deserve it”…

Read How to Accept Compliments with Grace »

Since I wrote the first chapter of the compliments series, I have received some requests from readers to give them some ideas about compliments, so I thought it may be a good exercise to make a list of 100 compliments we can give others that will cover different areas of life.

By limiting myself to phrases that only focus on the other person and not on myself (because complimenting is giving, not taking credit and focusing on yourself), I got to 182.

Here’s my list of compliments. I suggest that you mark the compliments you find useful, change them to suit your needs and keep them somewhere handy. Then, refer to the examples when you need a compliment idea.

Read How to Encourage: Ronit’s List of Compliments »