Compliments

A guy walks into a bar and notices he's the only one there, apart from the bartender, who's on the phone. The bartender signals him that he'll be with him in a minute. The guy nods and bellies up to the bar to wait.

Suddenly, he hears a little voice say, "Hey, you're looking pretty sharp today. New suit?"The guy looks around but can't see anyone else in the place.

He hears the voice again. "Seriously...you are looking good, man. Have you lost weight?"The guy looks around again and still doesn't see anyone.

"Hello?" he asks. "Is someone speaking to me?"

"You bet! I just had to say that I thought you were looking just super!" A bunch of other tiny voices suddenly rose in agreement.

The guy realizes now that these voices are coming from a bowl of beer nuts on the bar in front of him. He stares at them as the bartender comes over to serve his only customer.

"What'll you have?" asks the bartender.

"What?... Oh, a draft beer, I guess", mutters the guy, still staring at the nuts.

He finally looks up at the bartender drawing his ale. "What's the deal with these nuts?" he asks.

The bartender brings the guy's beer over and sets it before him.

"The nuts? Oh,they're complimentary", he shrugs.

(My apologies if you have heard that joke before....)

After receiving a lovely compliment the other day, I found myself hurriedly trying to disprove the flattery. This happens quite often and it made me stop and think about why I react this way. Why can't I just graciously receive praise from person? I think that a lot of us naturally do this when faced with accepting compliments.

If you watch a conversation between two women, many times you will hear something like this: "I love your outfit. It makes you really look slim."

Reaction: "Oh, this old thing? I've had it for years. I like it because it does a great job of hiding all of my ills and there are plenty of them, believe me!"

Even if we do secretly think that we look great in the outfit, we almost become defensive as if to say, "How dare you say something nice about me!"

I love the book, Notes to Myself by Hugh Prather. It is full of great insights that have helped me think through things with 'different eyes'.

Here is what he has to say about compliments:

"There is something about compliments that scares me.

Part of the reason may be that I am afraid of getting something that can subsequently be taken away. I put myself in the hands of this other person if I let my emotions lean on his statement.

Another reason: I am being put on the spot and now must watch my actions to keep him thinking this way about me. There is a part of me that knows I am not as good as his compliment implies."

The more that I thought about how I reacted to the lovely statements made to me yesterday, I wished that I had just been able to kindly say,

"Thank you so much."

Maybe next time...

: )