There are about two dozen of my book covers in frames of all shapes and sizes hanging on the office wall behind my desk. A friend suggested I hang them up to remind me of who I am and what I’ve done when I doubt myself.
I was hesitant to take ownership. “They belong to someone else,” I told her.
“No they don’t,” she said. “They may be about someone else but they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for you.”
She was right. Today, they don’t make me feel like I’m flaunting my
accomplishments. They remind me about what I’m capable of and the work that shaped me. They help me when I hit a roadblock in my writing. The inner critic goes to town, telling me I don’t know what to do and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to do it so why bother. I believe that voice at first and I lose my sense of self, but when I stop and look at my wall of fame, I get the courage to move forward. I tell myself, “You can do this. You’ve done it before and you were successful. You can do it again.
For some reason, the inability to embrace and appreciate who we are and what we’ve done is an unwelcome trait that many of us have.
“What a nice dress that is,” someone says.
“Oh, this old thing?” you answer.
We seem to be programmed to think the worst about ourselves. I remember being a little girl and looking in a mirror in the hallway of my childhood home. I liked what I saw. “I’m so pretty,” I said to my mother.
“Don’t be vain,” she said harshly.
From then on, it became difficult to appreciate how I looked. A similar thing must have happened to my mother. My father thought she was beautiful. She was, but if he complimented her in any way, she gave him the wrist. Once I heard him tell her she looked like a movie star and the expression on her face looked like someone had just assaulted her. When anyone told her that I looked like her, she said, “She’s the improved version.”
Ram Dass said, “Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
We can use someone’s appreciation as encouragement to keep moving forward. Or we can use it to feel unworthy. When someone expresses admiration about me or something I did, my work is to tell them, “Thank you.” I was in a spiritual retreat some years ago, when the facilitator said, “Everyone talks about giving. I think what the world needs is good receivers.”
I know a kind woman who goes out of her way to help her friends. She doesn’t do it because she thinks she should. It just comes naturally to her. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and when we did, she looked filled with light. “You’re so beautiful,” I said.
“So are you,” she said.
Her answer made me feel hollow. If she had just thanked me, the idea that she liked what I had said about her, would have been a compliment in itself. Her refusal to accept what I said hurt me. I felt disappointed that my gift wasn’t received. That my sentiment wasn’t valued.
In my writing class, I gave my students a prompt that said, “What is beautiful to you? What makes you smile?” When it came time to read our pieces out loud, one of my male students had written about a female student. About how much he appreciated what she had to say and how lovely she looked. She cringed throughout the reading. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. She couldn’t meet him in the eye and he looked deeply disappointed. I asked the
woman why she had such a hard time hearing wonderful things about her. It turned out that her mother had been so dismissive of her when she was growing up, she thought she was worthless. And that had followed her all throughout her life.
Any time my sister or I gave my mother a gift, she sent it back. We tried giving her flowers and she told us never to do it again because they were a waste of money since they died. We felt terrible. We wanted our gifts to make us feel connected to our mother but they had done the opposite. So if you can’t accept a compliment or a gift for yourself, try doing it for someone else. I once received a scarf from a friend for a birthday gift and I didn’t like it. The material was scratchy and the color was not becoming for my complexion but all
I did was say thank you. My friend lit up with pride. I wasn’t being dishonest.I may not have loved the gift but I loved that she wanted to give me something. That was enough to make me feel appreciative.
The grace that comes with acceptance is golden. To give and to receive in equal measure creates the balance of a good life. When we acknowledge and accept a compliment with graciousness, we are blessing the person who just blessed us.
“Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.”
– – – Brene Brown
Recent Comments