You’d be surprised how many people find it hard to accept a compliment.

They squirm, smile awkwardly, mutter a thank you and move the subject on as quickly as possible.  But if a compliment is intended as a good thing, why are they so hard to accept?

The first reason is our old friend insecurity (say hello, but say it quietly coz he scares easily).  If you’re busy thinking that you’re not good enough there’s little or no room for a new thought telling you that you *are* good enough.  There’s nowhere to put that compliment where it makes sense, no way of integrating it into your insecure thinking.  So you squirm until the moment passes, then get back to feeling not good enough.

The second reason is about trust.  If someone’s complimenting you, how do you know you can trust them?  This is particularly the case if your trust has been abused in the past or if you’ve been lied to in a previous relationship.  It’s also probably familiar to you if you’re a woman who gets complimented by guys who are just after one thing.  While there might be a thread of truth to these compliments, the getting-into-your-pants ulterior motive creates room for mistrust.

Regardless of whether it’s sexually motivated, you wonder what the other person wants from complimenting you.  You end up thinking that there must be another reason for them complimenting you, that they must want something.  So you reject the compliment because you don’t want to enter into the deal.

The third reason is that for some it seems immodest to accept a compliment.  It feels egotistical or too trumpet-blowing-y to accept a compliment, so you reject it.  Your reasoning says that it’s big-headed to accept a compliment and big-headed people are bad.

That’s some deeply flawed thinking right there and comes from flawed expectancies – you expect that you should behave with modesty and you assume that means you can’t accept a compliment or you break that expectancy.  You’re allowed to acknowledge your strengths openly.

Natural self-confidence removes these three reasons straight away.  It takes away the insecure thought processes that leave no room for a complimentary idea.  Even if you don’t fully trust someone or their motives, natural confidence allows you to make choices of behaviour that you can trust implicitly.  And it strips out the flawed expectancies and assumptions that govern a large part of your thinking.

Natural self-confidence is not needing someone to give you a compliment, but smiling when they do.

You look fantastic, by the way.