Compliments

“I can live for two months on a good COMPLIMENT”

Mark Twain confesses.

When was the last time you gave and received what you consider a “good” COMPLIMENT?

I have always been the type of person that finds it difficult and immensely awkward to receive and believe a COMPLIMENT. I personally find it easier and oddly more appropriate to believe and receive an insult.

When we minimise, refute and sometimes blatantly disagree with our COMPLIMENT giver it is like giving a heartfelt gift back to them and saying as you do ….

“You got it wrong”.

I have been taught by wise elders (specifically Beautiful Barb) to discipline myself in recovery to just instead say …

“Thank you” when COMPLIMENTED, instead of playing COMPLIMENT tennis and slamming the COMPLIMENT ball back at them.

My husband Mr. Delicious has been a great teacher for me over recent years as he COMPLIMENTS me often each day. Since we met in 2003 I have progressed in honouring his truth as he gives these verbal gifts from his heart to mine. I make myself remain emotionally present and say thank you. I feel beautiful when he tells me I am beautiful to him. I see his truth in his eyes and feel it through his hands. Allowing myself to receive his COMPLIMENTS has nurtured my femininity and truly made me want to be a better woman. Sometimes his gentle and kind words sting my heart like disinfectant on a wound and I wince and get tears in my eyes from the tender pain that sometimes accompanies healing our heart.

I have had little practice however receiving COMPLIMENTS by women. Maybe I’ve just been too absent with women, maybe female delivered COMPLIMENT’s have been absent, maybe it’s a bit of both, not sure yet. I’ve had other women COMPLIMENT my shoes, the colour of my lipstick or my glittery eye shadow before and I find those COMPLIMENTS easy because they’re not about me. I freely respond to this style of COMPLIMENT by sharing where I found the treasure and openly discuss my mutual delight in the designer’s style … I do not take the COMPLIMENT personally.

However, empowered Queen style COMPLIMENTS are popping up now in my life more frequently these days from women other than Barb. This new style of COMPLIMENT is not about what I am wearing but about me as a woman. Yep, fucking awkward to put it mildly!

When an empowered woman that wants nothing from me gifts me with what feels like an unwarranted COMPLIMENT, my fight, flight or freeze survival instinct still kicks in. My first reaction is to be on guard and wonder what she may want.

When you receive a same gender compliment from an empowered King or a Queen how comfortable are you?

For some of us COMPLIMENTS have felt like a seductive bribe, because they have been. We have dared to believe those in our past that have been kind and it has been used later against us. I noticed when I first met Beautiful Barb and she started to COMPLIMENT me anger would surface.

“What does she want from me?”

This was the knee jerk question I often suspiciously asked myself. I had yet to learn that a true COMPLIMENT is a gift of love from one heart to another that requires nothing more than to be received with a simple response of acknowledgement by saying thank you.

I sometimes deflect by ignoring it or minimizing it, or I may emotionally regress and resort to playing COMPLIMENT tennis. I pick up my racket, sometimes I bash it back over the fence using backhanded humour, or perhaps I just gently tap it back to them. Game on. You want to play games with me? Lets play!

I ensure my clients endure receiving my heartfelt COMPLIMENTS in every session to improve their Emotional Fitness and disinfect past deep insults that have wounded their weary hearts. I see their tender tears as they heal and have great compassion for their awkwardness, feeling such admiration and respect for them. I would be being dishonest with myself if I withheld my truth from them and did not acknowledge and COMPLIMENT their wholeness.

When we give a heartfelt COMPLIMENT, it is a gift from our heart to their heart. We so appreciate our present reaching their heart and not having it rejected. So as I type my confessional here and now on COMPLIMENTS I observe I still have a more work I need to do on receiving sincere COMPLIMENTS from empowered Queens.

Hmmmm. How about you?

I invite you to review how Emotionally Fit you are at giving and receiving genuine COMPLIMENTS about the whole of our person without denial, deflection, a game of tennis or feelings of guilt, suspicion and unworthiness.

One quicker question to ponder ….

How often do you privately give yourself a heartfelt COMPLIMENT?

To improve our Emotional Fitness in this area, lets deliberately pump more emotional weights and try giving at least two more genuine COMPLIMENTS out each day. One to ourselves, and one to another.

Instead of discomfort let’s work on becoming more grateful to all those men and women who champion and COMPLIMENT other men and women generously for it reflects their own relationship with themselves.

We become secure men (Kings) and women (Queens) when we champion not insult ourselves, so let’s do a little more of that from now on.

Lots of love Cynthia xxx