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How to Receive a Compliment Without Being a Self-Centered Idiot

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Most Folks Have Been There

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It was a one-person project and one you fell in love with. You put your heart in it and delivered beyond expectations. The project was elegant. Every minute you worked meant every detail came together with the highest quality.

This morning you presented it to the executive team. Just now, the president of the company came up to you in front of your coworkers and said, “Congratulations, your project and your presentation were outstanding.”

Suddenly it seems as if all eyes are looking at you. What do you say?

You’re pretty sure that saying, “Damn right, it was!” is probably not the right thing.

How do you answer a compliment without denying it or looking like a self-centered idiot?

How to Receive a Compliment Without Being a Self-Centered Idiot

The idea of accepting a compliment has come up in conversations with Ann Michael, Phil Gerbyshak, and Allan Cox this week. The discussion with each of them centered on the dynamic of why people have a problem accepting a compliment and how to handle the self-conscious feeling that is often attached to the attention a compliment brings.

Receiving a compliment with grace and feeling good about it is easy if you remember to do three things.

Compliment: “Your presentation was outstanding.”

  1. Don’t make it about you.
    Example of a response to avoid:
    Let me tell you about it. I was up until 3 a.m. every night this week. My computer crashed last night and my kids have the flu.

    A compliment is conversation. A speaker tells a offers a listener information about his or her opinion in the form of praise. The content of a compliment — even when it’s personal in nature such as You’re a wonderful human being. — is simply a statement of a point of view. Keep yourself out of the response.

  2. Don’t discount the speaker’s gift.
    Example of a response to avoid:
    It wasn’t much. I just threw something together.

    The speaker has offered a personal thought in your favor. To deny it or discount it is to say that the speaker has made a mistake in judgment. Value the speaker’s words in your response.

  3. Acknowledge the speaker’s words and stop there.
    Examples of a response that works:
    Thank you for saying that it means a lot to hear it from you.

    Focus on the speaker and the value of the speaker’s words. That guarantees your response will be graceful, respectful, and not about you.

That sentence in Step 3 was my default answer for the first few tries. Now I no longer freeze when I hear a compliment coming toward me. So I listen, focus, and respond even more thoughtfully. I enjoy compliments now that I no longer make them about me.

It’s not a hard habit to develop these three steps in receiving a compliment. Try them once and you’ll most likely be ready to put them to use every time. The exchange that occurs is so much more natural. It’s normal conversation without the “spotlight” glaring in our eyes.

It’s nice to let someone know that you heard and value their compliment. Sometimes it even allows you a chance to offer an authentic compliment in return.

You’re irresistible. Thank you for stopping by.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

The How to Happiness – Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo Credit: Liz Strauss

Everyone Gets the Same 24 Hours

“I need to get a life.”
I want to start a new life.”
“Tell me the how to happiness.”

You don’t need to get a life, you’ve already got one.

Life — it’s what we do between the time we get here and when we go. We only get one, and despite what other folks might suppose, it’s ours to determine what to do with it.

We don’t measure life in hours and minutes. We measure life in memories and moments.

What do you think of when you read this sentence?

 

It was the time of my life.

We don’t say that often enough.
What would it take for you to live life saying that?
Isn’t that idea the how to happiness?

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it.
Here are the top 10 ways to get a life and start living it.

  1. Give yourself permission to claim your life. That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and musts”, and the rules that didn’t come from you.

2. Define what living means to you. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?

3. Stop living in the future. Every time you think “someday” or “when I have time I will,” stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?” Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.” Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose to start a new life every morning. Plan one thing you will do today to feel alive.

4. Surround yourself with people who enjoy living. They’ve obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?

5. Lay down your pain and your anger. Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn’t bring anything, and it steals a lot. Choosing what fuels you is how you start over in life.

6. Let the losers win. Don’t argue about things that you don’t care about. Unless there’s some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what’s wrong with them?

7. Create energy. Jump to forgiveness and love, then figure things out. Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they’re negative. Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn’t living. It’s hiding from life.

8. Learn the physical symptoms of when your head and heart become disconnected. We know when we’re having a knee jerk reaction, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we’re being blind to people’s feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won’t be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.

9. Take small risks that push your boundaries in every way. The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.

10. Value and protect the people and the places you care about. A job isn’t a life. It’s just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do. Re-read numbers 1 and 2.

These are the top 10 ways to start living life.
It’s not starting your life over. It’s claiming the life you have and living it.
It’s claiming the how to happiness.

We come into life with whatever we’ve got. It’s ours to do with. It took me a while to figure that out — that my life isn’t just what happens to me, that I could take hold of it. I choose to live life saying that …

I have the time of my life.

You’ve already got a life too. Are you living it?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Ideas? 20 Questions to Kickstart New Thoughts

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(Updated in 2020)

Get Curious – Ask 20 Questions

What are you thinking right now? Are you thinking about your answer to that question?

We’re good at answering questions. We learn that in school. Sometimes we get so busy preparing our answers that we miss what’s going on around us.

10 Questions to Kickstart New Thoughts

Imagine you just landed on this planet. You’d have a passel of questions and a totally beginner’s view. The key is not to fix things, but to find new reactions to what you encounter.

Take that beginner’s view. Get curious. React and respond to what you encounter. Ask questions about everything and the ideas start showing up. Start with these 20 questions to kickstart new thoughts.

  1. What do you see what you look at me? What do you see when you look at yourself?
  2. What do you hear when you listen to all of the sounds around you?
  3. What is it that everyone wants to know, but is afraid to ask? What are the silly things we don’t tell people that they should know?
  4. What do we do that is touching or ridiculous?
  5. What do we take for granted that seems to have no logic?
  6. What would you do if you had only one day to spend here?
  7. What of our ordinary buildings, machines, and gadgets would stymie and fascinate you?
  8. What about our planet would amaze you?
  9. What about humanity would inspire you?
  10. If you had a conversation with yourself, what would you talk about?

The ideas are waiting in the details. Twist your view; add a dash of imagination; and take a look.

10 More . . .

I have 10 more questions. They’re all about you.

  1. Do you do stuff like keep your ketchup bottle upside down or choose songs based on what others are listening to online?
  2. Do you find money that you forgot about in a jacket pocket?
  3. Do you get nervous when a boss starts a friendly conversation for no apparent reason?
  4. Do you know a story that people ask you to tell over and over?
  5. Do you wonder what else you might have done with all of the time that you’ve been blogging?
  6. Do you know the most important thing you’ve learned?
  7. Do you know what gadget you would invent if you could?
  8. Do you have a secret for dealing with folks who cause stress wherever they go?
  9. Do you know what you want to be if you grow up? Will you share an idea or two?
  10. Do you wonder what it’s like to be me the way I wonder what it’s like to be you?

If you answered “yes” to any of those, and you decide to write a post, I’d read your answer. I bet that lots of folks would.

Remember react and respond to what you encounter. Ask questions about everything and the ideas start showing up.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash

10 Sure-Fire Ways to Stop Making Writing So Hard

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Why Do We Make Writing Harder Than It Needs to Be?

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It’s amazing how often we undercut our own progress, cause a power failure, make things hard on ourselves. We set up roadblocks and wonder why the path is hard to travel. We take the long way home, because we fear the easy way. We shoot ourselves in the foot, and we don’t know that we’re doing it.

In training writers, I’ve seen people talk themselves out of writing in so many ways. Most are easy to stop if you know that you’re doing them. If you think you might be making things harder than they need to be. Hang on. I’ve got the list for you. [Read more…]

10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments

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My Secret

My name is Liz and I have a secret. I read your blog almost every day, but you you wouldn’t know that. That’s because I hardly ever leave a comment.

I know the value of a well-placed comment. I’m pretty good at writing down what I think. Yet, when it comes time to writing a response to what you wrote, some days I can’t quite get my fingers to the keyboard. I start to write something . . . then I leave without posting it.

There are more readers like me than ones who are not. I know. I’ve talked to them. I’ve been talking to them about why they don’t comment. It seems that we have the same secret reasons for not leaving our calling card. We want to leave our thoughts, but things get between us and that comment box.

It’s time we came clean and let you know what they are.

10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments

I don’t suppose this is all of the reasons folks choose not to comment. This is only a list of 10 +1 of them that I’ve heard over and over again.

  1. What you write is so complete, that I don’t know what to say except good job. I feel silly writing that, so I read and move on.
  2. You’ve taught me something I didn’t know, and I need to think about it before I even have a question. Much like number 1, I don’t want to embarrass myself. I’m better off moving on.
  3. I get ready to type a comment, but I notice you only respond to a few friends who mostly share inside jokes. I won’t take the risk of being overlooked in public.
  4. The folks who comment on your posts like to argue and I don’t. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to fight my way into the crowd.
  5. You rarely respond to comments. So, there’s no point in writing one.
  6. Your blog has geeky attitude and I’m not geeky enough to keep up.
  7. I really like your blog and your post, but I’m too tired, busy, or any one of a number things that you can’t control. I’ll comment the next I come back to read.
  8. You end your posts with a giant general question like “What do you think of the Big Bang Theory?” That question is such a big one. I don’t have time to answer it. I feel strange answering with a lesser comment.
  9. You put up a fence by making me login to comment. I have too many passwords already and I don’t know you well enough to add one to my list.
  10. Your content wasn’t fresh and exciting, and I couldn’t find anything YOU inside it. It seemed the same post that I’ve read on 10 other blogs. If I commented, I would have to tell you that.
  11. PLUS ONE: Your post was negative. Negative is scary. Most folks don’t like negative stuff, because they know they could be next to be the recipient. I don’t comment, because I don’t want to be part of it.

Sometimes I don’t comment because I’m self-conscious about new groups and fitting in. I suppose most people feel that way now and then. I’m working on that.

Yet when the content is rich and compelling, I lose all self-consciousness. My fingers can’t wait to share what you’ve started me thinking. My hands literally jump to the keyboard and start typing out the words. Other readers have said that is true for them too.

Compelling content causes comments.

Did I miss the reasons that keep you from commenting?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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6+1 Traits of Effective Blog Writing

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Effective Writing Traits Kids Know that We Don’t

I’m writing a writing program again. Writing programs are like other products. They have their individual nuances. They offer particular features and benefits, but all solid writing programs offer certain things in common. The engine of any well-built writing program is the 6+1 Traits of Writing.

If you’re reading this post, it’s unlikely that you encountered the 6+1 Traits as a student. You could find plenty about them on the Web now. Unfortunately, what you found would take the form of lessons and research for teaching school children. Why should school kids and their teachers be the only ones with direct access to the information and the rest of us have to adjust our thinking?

I’ve decided a simple action is in order. [Read more…]