How to Accept a Compliment
Historically, I’ve struggled to accept compliments. When someone would tell me “I like your outfit” I would say, “This old thing?!? I’ve had it forever!” If someone said, “Wow, I like your hair!” I would say “My stylist did a great job, didn’t she?” If someone complimented my singing, I would say “I guess all those lessons really paid off!”
Did you recognize a pattern to my comments?
Essentially, when I got compliments, I would deflect the attention from myself to something or someone else. I did that because it made me feel more comfortable with “receiving” a compliment. But in reality, I didn’t actually receive the compliment at all, I pushed it away.
I’m not unique in my discomfort over receiving compliments. When I started noticing, I could see others’ patterns, as well, and I noticed that many people shared my form of deflecting compliments rather than receiving them.
Why is this a problem, though? Isn’t it fine to be humble and to attribute the “success” of the thing you’re being complimented for to someone or something else? Yes and no.
If there is someone or something that needs to be acknowledged, then by all means, do so. But most of us aren’t deflecting to give someone else the glory. Most of us are doing so because we’re uncomfortable with the feelings that the compliment arouses within us.
If indeed there is benefit to deflecting compliments, who benefits? No one gets “credit” by me saying my clothes are old. If my hair stylist isn’t in the room, it does her no good when I give her credit for my hairstyle.1 Even if voice lessons were the most significant factor in my singing well, there is no “voice lesson” entity that gets uplifted by me saying so.
For me, the root cause of my reluctance to accept compliments was because I didn’t want to appear arrogant. That seems like an excellent reason to deflect a compliment, doesn’t it? Isn’t it best to try to not appear arrogant? It might seem so at first, but let’s examine this situation from a different angle.
Have you ever given a compliment to someone and had them deflect it? If so, how did that make you feel? Perhaps you weren’t bothered by it. After all, our tendency to deflect compliments is so common that we’ve come to accept deflection as the natural way to “accept” a compliment. But if you walked away with a vague sense of disappointment, it was probably because your compliment didn’t land as you had hoped or intended.
When we give compliments to others,2 we want to feel the joy of the fully accepted compliment. As the giver, a deflected compliment doesn’t feel good to us because we know that it didn’t hit its target properly. In this case, we only control half of the equation about whether the target was hit or not. Essentially, a deflected compliment means that we put in effort but got little or no return on our investment.
When you are given a compliment, remember that the giver of that compliment wants the compliment to land solidly with you. They want to share in the positive feelings that the compliment was intended to arouse.
When you deflect someone’s compliment, you are taking away their joy.
Admittedly, you may not care about taking away someone else’s joy.3 I realize that it can feel like a burden to “have” to bring joy to others, but there is another — perhaps even more relevant — reason for learning to accept compliments well:
Accepting compliments well increases YOUR joy.
That is the very point of a compliment, after all, to make the receiver feel good, to establish a connection (however brief) with the other person, and to share positive feelings that arise in that moment. In other words, compliments present a valuable opportunity to receive joy from another. When you learn to receive compliments well, you benefit both yourself and the giver of the compliment.
Eventually I learned that when I deflected compliments, not only was it a slap in the face to the giver, but I was also missing a significant opportunity to make both of us happier. I took time to observe my behavior and gut reaction when a compliment was given to me and I ultimately found ways to accept compliments with grace.
You might be stymied by how to receive a compliment well, but once you begin to observe yours and others’ responses, you’ll see what works well and what works suboptimally. If you need a place to start right now, you can try what I’ve learned:
Begin by realizing that if someone is giving you a compliment, they want you to feel good about it. Give them that gift by allowing the compliment to land with you. You don’t need to add anything or to give them anything back except a “thank you.” Even though it may feel awkward at first, simply offer the most sincere “thank you” that you can and leave it at that.
Essentially, just say “thank you.”
After some practice, when I now say “thank you” to a compliment, I can’t help but smile. :) If that happens to you, as well, just let it happen! :)
After you’ve mastered saying “thank you” without qualification (aka deflecting), you can then learn how to lean into a compliment. Take a beat to fully receive the compliment. Be comfortable with a moment of silent joy.
When you become even more proficient at accepting compliments, you might want to add more details. For example, in response to “I like your outfit,” I might respond with “Thank you! <pause to take in the compliment> That really means a lot to me because I had difficulty deciding what to wear today and your comment has really made my day!” :)
“I like your hair” might result in a similar “thank you” with a pause to drink it in, followed by: “Thank you for noticing. I really wanted a new haircut but I was unsure whether this one works for me. You’ve helped me to decide that I like it, too!”
Finally, if someone compliments my singing, I might say (in addition to the “thank you” and drink-it-in pause), “Singing brings me so much joy. Thank you for listening and for sharing in what makes me happy.”
The next time someone gives you a compliment, use the opportunity to bring joy to yourself and to the person who gave you the compliment. Compliments, like many things in life, are contagious. Once you begin to accept compliments well, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to give more compliments, too.
Together, we can increase the world’s happiness, one compliment at a time! :)
In the example of my hairdresser, it is worth acknowledging that there might be some benefit to her. Some physicists and mystics theorize that according to the laws of quantum physics, the positive energy that I send out when I credit my hairdresser for her fine work actually does reach her energetically. But this only works, I believe, if the comment is truly said with a grateful heart and not simply to prevent me from having to deal with my feelings of awkwardness in being given a compliment.
If we’re giving compliments with ulterior motives, such as to compel someone to do what we want them to do, that’s another situation. Let’s assume for this discussion that you truly wanted to compliment the other person.
To be more accurate, you cannot actually “take away” anyone’s joy. You can create an environment where it is more difficult for the other to feel joy, but we are each ultimately responsible for our own feelings, so you cannot “make” anyone feel a certain way.