I think many people are uncomfortable with compliments, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people’s compliments are insincere. I’ve finally learned how to graciously accept a compliment without discounting it or doubting its sincerity. I guess I realized it was actually a bit internally rude of me to jump to assuming someone is insincere; that in order to respect others, I have to take my own embarrassment or insecurity off the table and allow others their own emotions, including when those emotions involve positive perceptions of me.

It was so hard to break the habit of discounting other people’s praise and acknowledgements, but a simple thank you, I realize now, is so much less caught up in my own personal baggage.

I’m not sure how that changed for me, but I think some of it was seeing how my own son had developed the same habit. I saw he deserved so much those compliments and his knocking them down was so evidently tied to his own lack of confidence which I really had to own as partially due to my own poor modeling.

Fortunately, we have all found ways now to graciously give and gracefully receive praise in our family now, and it has actually been rather changing for all of us. A little kindness and willingness to accept that kindness goes such a long way.