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Health & Fitness

Compliments

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Today I am grateful for compliments.  Not so much getting.  Although that’s fun, giving is better.  I love to give compliments, but I never give them gratuitously. As in, I like your hair, I like your shirt, I like your car.  I like your jewelry.  I like your makeup.  I like your house, etc., etc., every day, all the time.  No, not me.  I wait.  And wait.  And I always know when it’s the right time to throw out a compliment and where.  It makes it worth it, for both the receiver and me, the sender.

 

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First of all complimenting hair, shirts, cars, jewelry, makeup, and houses puts the power on the object not the person.  I start with. . .”You look great with that haircut, (shirt, makeup, jewelry)“  Or. . .”Wow, how awesome do you look in your new car?”  And. . .”Your house is a perfect expression of who you are.”  It takes a little more word gymnastics to re-phrase from the way I was taught, but it’s worth it.

 

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One of our water aerobics instructors is teaching elsewhere on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so one of the lifeguards is taking over the class.  She’s pretty new to the process and has worked hard to get up to speed.  We are like lemmings so we’ll follow whatever someone does, but she is anxious to get it right.  It’s hard to be the leader on the pool deck, without benefit of cooling, forgiving water.  She felt she flubbed it up a little but she really did great.  Hey, we all flub it up.  Thankfully you can’t see what happens under the water.  It ain’t purdy.

 

In the locker room, she passed me and I said, “You did really great today.  Really great!”  Her face lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.  “You think?” she said.  “Really?”  I assured her she had.  “Wow,” she said.  “That means so much to me. Especially coming from you.” 

 

A compliment served and whapped right back at me.   It was the perfect ying-yang of compliments and I am grateful.  Compliment someone today.  Anyone.  Make it a stranger.  Make it an old person.  Be ready for that “Bing!  Heartprint!” feeling that comes with it.

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