The Power of Compliments Series

Compliments: Give to Receive

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.

This post is part 1 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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How to Accept Compliments with Grace

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”…

This post is part 2 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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Ronit’s Compliment List

Since I wrote the first chapter of the compliment 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 compliment list with 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.

When you read the list, you will find there is a formula. Phrases like “You are so…”, “You are very…”, “You are such a…”, “You are good with…”, “This (behavior) is inspiring…” can be attached to any good description.

You will also find that you can use adjectives by themselves, like: Brilliant! Awesome! Great! Fantastic! Amazing! Perfect! Inspiring! Beautiful!

Here is my compliment list. I suggest that you mark the compliments you find useful, change them to suit your needs and keep this list somewhere handy, so you can refer to it daily when you need a compliment idea.

This post is part 3 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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