Unlearning the Ubiquitous

I remember the moment I first witnessed a woman truly receive a compliment.

It was 2015. I was 26 years old, and training to be a movement teacher. A fellow trainee, in a moment of tearful vulnerability, exclaimed to our trainer: “You are so beautiful!” Our trainer met the gaze of my fellow trainee, smiled, and took a deep inhale. It was as if she were taking in the compliment with her breath, and savoring it like it was delicious to her. As she exhaled, she blissfully and simply said, “Thank you.”

I was stunned. There was no brushing aside the compliment, which I’d come to see so frequently. There was no diminishing of it with a follow up of: “Aw, so are you!” There was no self-deprecation of: “Stop it!” or: “Oh, you should see me in the morning!”

There was simply the gift of a reflection offered, and that gift received with grace. There was an energetic exchange that happened there which had a lasting effect on me.

In our culture, it is ubiquitous to practice and maintain low self-esteem. It’s expected that we are supposed to criticize, mistrust, and undermine our instincts, appetites, appearances, our ideas, our voices, and our perspectives. Masquerading as humility, this phenomena is instead corrosive and keeps us from stepping into our full facility.

Recognizing this issue is a valuable thing, but what can be done about it?

First, small and consistent action can have profound and permanent effects. A good place to start with self-deprecation patterns is to cultivate the opposite action of just one of these patterns.

Perhaps the next time someone says something kind about you, you might notice what your patterned response is. Maybe you notice a rejection of a compliment immediately after you do it, or maybe you notice in the moment that you were about to do it. From there, you can determine if you want to perpetuate it, or if perhaps you want to try to practice something else. It may take many tries before you presently catch the pattern and change it, and it might feel “fake” at first. Eventually, it won’t feel fake.

Eventually, you might find that honestly given compliments are a bid for connection. You might that they are a form of currency that we give to one another to express appreciation, admiration, reflection, and love. And when we have the humility to accept them, we decondition ourselves a bit to step into a worthiness which can touch every area of our lives.