"We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled."
~ Mason Cooley
I received three compliments this week. Each have been on my mind for much longer than it took the person to think of and deliver them. The first was from a friend, a comment that I looked great, like I had lost weight. I think it's safe to say that in most cases, a woman wants to hear that she looks great, and loves the idea of having lost weight. But who doesn't walk away from this compliment wondering if the person who delivered it thought that she needed to lose weight and perhaps needs to lose more? And how many times has the person who delivers this compliment backtrack and say, "Not that you needed to, of course." Of course. I think that for this compliment, I would prefer a simple, "You look great!" Let me be clear, though - I fully understand that I'm looking a gift compliment in the mouth, and that the way I perceive it has nothing to do with my kind friend's intentions.
The second compliment was exactly the same as the first, but from a different friend and on a different day.
Here's a weird thing about these compliments: for about a month now I've been pretty sure that I've gained weight. So how is it that I'm sure I've gained weight, and have thought about it rather negatively every single day, and then in one week two different people tell me they think I've lost weight? Is that the universe yelling at me to shut the hell up already about my weight? And how hard would I have to work to accept it as that, instead of focusing on the quiet and probably nonexistant subtext of that compliment?
The third compliment I received was from a complete stranger at the mall. As I stood looking at a delightful display of assorted Pillow Pets, a woman came up to me and said something I didn't quite catch. "Excuse me?" I said. She repeated herself, the expression on her face open and warm, "You have great eyebrows!" I admit, this one caught me off-guard. Who compliments someone else on their eyebrows? Well, probably someone who doesn't like her own eyebrows and spends an inordinate amount of time checking out other people's.
This leads to me to a theory that people compliment others on things that they themselves value.*
Unlike the first two compliments, this one didn't fill me with any sense of dread about what the person really thought of me and my eyebrows. Like the first two, this compliment seems to be some cosmic reflection of something I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about. Yes, I think about my eyebrows a lot. You would, too, if you were born with a unibrow that threatened to take over your face and many of the faces around you. From the time I was about 16 I have plucked, waxed, trimmed, gelled, brushed, shaped, contoured and generally fretted over my eyebrows. Some of this I do on a daily basis.
So, for a complete stranger to compliment my eyebrows? That's the compliment jack pot. That compliment is wearing an Olympic gold medal right now. And what does it take for a compliment to go Olympic? I think it has to meet certain criteria:
- It should be from someone you aren't expecting it from (not necessarily a stranger; for example, in the eyebrow situation, this compliment would carry the same weight coming from my dad, the school janitor, or my doctor)
- It should have no possible negative meaning (for example, "Your eyebrows look so much better now!" is not such a great compliment)
- It should be about something that you highly value or feel insecure about (a compliment about my lip gloss is still a compliment, but not an Olympic compliment because my ability to pick out a color that someone else likes isn't really so important to me. A compliment about my parenting skils, photography, baking or eyebrows are all highly rated.)
I don't think all compliments have to be Olympic gold. Olympic bronze is awesome, too. Hell, an Olympic qualifying compliment could turn my day around. Actually, a compliment sitting in the Olympic stands is always welcome.
All of this pondering about compliments, how they're delivered, received, perceived and processed, has led me to think about how I compliment others. To be totally honest, sometimes I hold back because I'm actually jealous of what the other person has. Recognizing that and letting go of it is very freeing. For example, there's a woman in my community that I don't know from Adam, but I see her many times a week. She runs. She runs and runs and runs what must be dozens of miles a day, and she looks really, really fit and beautiful. One day I saw her at a local coffee shop, and in some fit of spontaneity I walked over to her and told her that although I don't know her, I see her everywhere, that I think she looks awesome, and is an inspiration to me to get my own ass in shape.
She was shocked. Do you know what she said to me? She said, "Oh... I wish my boyfriend felt the same way." I can't imagine why her boyfriend doesn't tell her the exact same thing, but if for the rest of the day she felt beautiful, then I'm happy.
What if I looked for and delivered sincere compliments to the people that I encounter throughout my day? If nothing else, won't I be spreading positive energy and smiles? So, that's my self-challenge for this week. To really look at people, to find something that I admire about them, and to tell them so. If you are so inclined to join me, come back and let me know how it goes.
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*It would have made too much sense for me to research Complimentary Theory before writing this post. Instead, I did some reading after setting out my own haphazard thoughts. I liked this article by Erin Berman quite a bit, and this article in "Psychology Today" in which Hara Estroff Marano writes,
"There is only one way to receive a compliment—graciously, with a smile. The art of receiving a compliment teaches us an important lesson about life. It tells us that how we feel is highly subjective, known only to us. And it isn't necessarily observable to the world. And often the world is better off without knowing how we personally feel. And so are we. Because the positive atmosphere created by a compliment, if we allow ourselves to inhale it, can be powerful enough to transform our feelings."