Can you receive a compliment without it getting to your head?

Receiving compliments gracefully isn’t as easy as it should be for some people.

How about you: are YOU ready for someone to give you a pat on the back?

To be pushed to doing more?

To have someone give you a supporting hand? T

o be picked up when you fall?

Sure, we may think that’s what we want.

But is it what we need to develop, to grow, and to get better?

If someone complimented you on every little improvement you made while learning a new skill, would you not start to feel a bit marginalized?

That perhaps they didn’t think you could do it?

What about doing something that seems pretty easy and everyone made it into a big deal?

Receiving Compliments When You Are Not Ready For It

Developing new skills is never free of trouble.

We all know the level of foundation that must be built to get from being a novice, before reaching greatness.

In the learning process, we all know when we are in that frustrating stage of not being quite as good – but we know what we have to do to get there.

It’s in these moments that receiving compliments on your every action could minimize your efforts.

That’s because if they truly knew you, people would be holding out for when you make that big, defining leap. 

As we overcome hurdles in our learning and development, friends, family members, and colleagues will know when the time is right to provide encouragement.

They know that when that moment comes, those words will have the right amount of impact on you.

Think back to when you were growing up, playing some elaborate game.

Perhaps you spent hours creating this game: building a fort, and putting together things that the rest of your characters in the play could use.

You pushed through despite the trials and problems.

It would have served no purpose for someone to congratulate you on every step (and misstep) along the way.

You would have lost your flow as you worked through the problem, constantly being interrupted – all while you were still trying to figure it out and understand where you needed to go.

When Receiving Compliments Makes You Content with Present Achievements

You might never have finished if someone patted you on the back early in that moment, content in the knowledge that you “thought up” the idea, and that was enough.

If everyone said you did great simply for thinking up something new, would it have compelled you to stop?

Maybe.

Perhaps you would have stopped with that compliment.

As a parent, you learn when to encourage your children.

Usually, it’s not when they show up, and not when they do what kids around them can do as well.

It’s when they push themselves to do more.

When they pick themselves up and still lose, when they try something new for the first time, fall over and fail, not sure if they should do it again.

Those are the moments when kids should be receiving compliments – NOT when they have done the same thing repeatedly, or when they didn’t try their best but won anyways.

Kids know this.

They can feel it when people give false compliments or encouragement because they did something they’ve always done.

But when it is something meaningful, something they have worked hard for, they know the encouragement will be there to help them.

The reason you might not be receiving compliments or encouragement when you want to is that you haven’t earned them or don’t deserve them yet.

Maybe your coaches, leaders, parents, or other people who support you know you are not ready for it.

Perhaps they need to see you making that next big leap in your growth and development.

Those compliments might not come today, tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.

But look at those around you – the great people you have chosen to surround yourself with – and you’ll see that they are waiting to give you that push.