Want more confidence?
Learn how to gain confidence by deeply receiving a compliment.
Strengthening and weakening confidence is very complex, yet there’s one simple way to build it: learn how to gain confidence by learning how to deeply and fully receive a compliment.
Hardly anyone fully takes in compliments. I catch myself blocking compliments often, and I teach this stuff. Blocking compliments runs deep in our culture and starts at a really young age.
For example, when my daughter, Chelsea was five years old, I was driving her home from kindergarten and wanted to give her a compliment. I had been teaching her for some time to receive them when they were given, because, when given, compliments were just bouncing off her little body like super balls off concrete.
So I said, “Chelsea, I’m going to give you a compliment.” When I did, she raised her hand to her heart, closed her thumb and forefingers together and mimicked unzipping a zipper. When I asked what she was doing, and she said, “Dada, I am opening my heart.” I had a rush of emotion and my eyes welled with tears.
After I gave her the compliment, she raised her hand to her heart again and made the zipping motion in the opposite direction. When I asked again what she was doing, she said, “Dada, I am zipping my heart back up.” This time, the emotional rush overcame me and tears rolled down my cheeks. At only 5 years old she had already learned to close up and protect herself!
I bet you’ve been through a lot of emotional experiences in your life and you are pretty good at protecting your heart. Next time you are given a compliment, ask yourself, Do I want to block another compliment, or do I want to build my confidence. If you want to build your confidence, unzip your heart and fully take the compliment in?
If you learn how to receive to receive a compliment, how to take a compliment in. You will build your courage, confidence, self-esteem and self-image … let the good stuff in.
