“You are beautiful, kind, patient and creative.”
A coworker popped into my office one day to tell me this, then walked out the door. Another coworker was sitting with me and she said, “I used to think that was weird, but now I don’t.”
And I did too. I mean, let’s face it, how often does someone go out of their way to compliment another person?
How many times do you go out of your way to compliment someone?
I thought about this all day… and I was thinking about writing this blog post to put up this week…
And then it came up again that evening.
I’ve been attending a church group that’s going through a program to help women strengthen their leadership skills. That evening the topic was communication. We talked about how we can use our words to hurt others, but we can also use them to lift someone up.
At the beginning of the night, two women complimented one of the leaders and you could tell it made her evening. As we went through our discussion questions later, another woman said, “We don’t always tell people that we appreciate them enough and sometimes when someone compliments you, it comes right at the time you need to hear it. You never know when you might say something that someone else needs to hear. So why don’t we do that more?”
My coworker regularly goes out of her way to compliment everyone she works with–that’s why it’s no longer weird to us to hear it. But it doesn’t diminish the fact it always puts a smile on my face; it always gives me a little boost of self-confidence.
On that particular day I was pretty down on myself creatively. I was focused on how much I felt like I was failing as a creative. I hadn’t written enough, the words weren’t flowing freely enough, my writing wasn’t good enough… Am I really creative just because I say I’m creative? To have someone else tell me I’m creative gave me a little boost. (And this weekend I actually worked out a solution to one of the issues that was slowing me down in a story! 👊🏼)
Our words have power. They have the power to tear someone down, but they also have the power to build someone up. They have the power to give them a boost of confidence in different parts of their life.
My challenge to you (and to me!) is to compliment someone this. It might just be the boost they need.
Tell me about a time someone complimented you when you needed to hear it!
