It’s a lively party. You are meeting friends of friends and introducing yourselves to each other. Your friend says you are beautiful and spectacular. You look away shyly and deny it slightly.
She keeps insisting, but then you conclude the convo with a shrug. This encounter is making you uncomfortable.
Do you think it is rude or immodest to agree with these compliments of you?
Why are you selling yourself short?
I am one of these people. Well, I used to be, trying not to be anyway. I distaste public praise. I find it immodest at times, but I’m starting not to. It is in my best interest to represent myself in the best light possible, whether with words from another or myself. I need to make sure that the version of me in people’s minds is me. Well, the best version of me.
In my life, I have found that it is women mostly who have a problem with receiving praise openly and try to dilute it. Like it’s a wrong thing to do. We’re perceived, or society makes us feel unworthy throughout our lives. So we try so hard to be good instead of just being ourselves, our true selves in our uniqueness and fullness. This is what I believe the world needs most.
Going back to praise and feeling unworthy of it, I have become careful about how I talk about myself. The words I use are thoughts I plant slowly, and they do grow in people’s minds. I may not be great all through, but it doesn’t hurt to agree that I am. It doesn’t matter if it’s true because it is something that I aspire to be, and so I will.
We all have moments of doubt. It happens to us at some point. Having battled low self-esteem for years and thinking that only certain people are warranted that praise, I have learned that it is something we all need to be aware of. These words we use on ourselves are the basis of what others think about us.
The ‘I know you don’t like listening to me’ or ‘My face is just the worst,’ are not the harmless statements you think they are. Those words hurt you and the image of you. If you keep saying them often, they become facts. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re true.
I think it’s better to be quiet than muddy your name. Be careful of how you speak about yourself. You are your first representative, your first relationship, and people, including you, will believe and see that.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
