Learn to Accept Compliments - Strengthening Emotional Muscles

Here’s Aang, learning how to think outside the box and accept compliments. He’s in one of the early stages here.

I’m a big fan of the four stages of competence as a model of the process of learning a skill.

If you’re unfamiliar, the four stages are Unconscious Incompetence—where you don’t know how much you don’t know, Conscious Incompetence—where you know what you don’t know, but still aren’t quite able to do it, Conscious Competence—you can now do the thing, but you have to work hard at it, and Unconscious Competence—you can now do the thing easily, without thinking about it.

Mainly when this model is referenced, it’s being used to refer to a physical skill, but I believe that this applies perfectly to mental and emotional skills as well. It perfectly combines with ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’

The example that I’ll use today is accepting compliments.

Many of us have had modesty and self-deprecation deeply ingrained. There’s some societal norm that deems it polite to reject praise. As if you’re somehow arrogant if you allow someone to say something nice about you without protest. We’re getting away from this, but I feel that for many people it’s still difficult. I had a discussion about this recently. A group of friends were all trying to praise a friend’s certain skill, one that she excels at, and she continued to put herself down. She would not let us get the last word in. One of the group mentioned that I was good at taking compliments because I would just ‘own it.’ I told them all that it took a lot of work to get here.

When deflecting a sincere compliment, consider this; if I’m telling you that you’re good at something, and you continue to argue me, not only are you putting yourself down and ingesting your own negative narrative, but you’re implying that I don’t have good judgement. You don’t want to do that, right? But it is a muscle that needs flexing. it can be very uncomfortable to accept a compliment when 1. you haven’t had any practice and 2. there’s a big part of you that doesn’t believe it.

But there are benefits to this skill. It’s valuable. You do yourself a disservice when you don’t allow yourself to hear and internalize the nice things people tell you. Constructive criticism is valuable also, but you need both sides of the coin. If you’re only internalizing the criticism, your soul isn’t getting a balanced meal.

Start small, just say ‘thank you.’ Sometimes that’s difficult enough. Just try not to argue with the person paying you the compliment. Say thank you and let it go. It will be hard if you’re not used to it. You’ll feel embarrassed and insincere. This is where the ‘faking it until you make it’ comes in. Don’t argue, say thank you.

Now look at him. Busting out of rainbow boxes and accepting compliments like the tangerine tiger that he is.

Then you can look at the compliment itself. The person who gave it to you. Do you like this person? Do they know you? Do they know what they’re talking about? Usually this is a yes. Internalize this compliment. They were sincere, they didn’t have to say anything to you. And yet they did. You were good at a thing. Accept it.

You’ll mess up. Especially in those middle areas of conscious incompetence and conscious competence. But you’ll catch yourself more and more. You’ll start recognizing and accepting sincere compliments like you’ve been doing it all your life.

It will be easier for you to give them as well.