A few weeks ago, we heard from David about the power of giving somebody a sincere compliment. You can find that article below!
There’s an aspect of ego that plays into the act of giving/receiving a compliment that isn’t what you’d expect: the person receiving the compliment should humbly accept it.
Often times, we are very hard on ourselves. When we work towards something we’re passionate about, it becomes easy to overly criticize yourself in order to keep growing and get the best results. Striving for greatness is one thing, but being too critical of ourselves leads to a slippery slope of defeating your motivation. It’s the reason my instructor always told us, “never say can’t”; if you believe you can’t accomplish something, it will make it impossible to.
It’s because of this, you must be gentle with yourself. Instead of thinking you’re terrible at something, just acknowledge it’s not your strongest skill yet, and promise yourself to work on it. A good practice is also taking a compliment; if somebody tells you something nice about yourself, believe them! Whenever someone would compliment my karate I would always feel a little awkward; I confused my passion with perfection and always would find something to improve when I looked at my skills. I never thought of myself as “good” since I would always look for flaws in my technique to improve on. I’d negate people’s compliments by immediately responding with “I still need to fix xyz”, “I could get so much more height on that kick”, or something along those lines where I wouldn’t acknowledge the fact someone was complimenting my skill. I didn’t think it deserved a compliment, so I always felt bad about my skills.
One day I just decided to start saying “thank you” after a positive comment, even if I had those immediate negating thoughts still I’d keep them to myself. After a while, those thoughts get quieter, as you’re not speaking them into power. Grandmaster Jae Chul Shin used to say, “The greatest killer of black belts is ego”. I thought I understood this completely, but then I realized there is the opposite side of ego. You of course don’t want an inflated ego, but you don’t want to get rid of it completely. Keep a healthy dose of ego where it keeps you motivated, but where you’re still kind to yourself.
