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Note 81: Stop Deflecting The Compliment · Notes to Her

• 0:14
  Yaya: Hey, girl. Hey. Welcome back to Notes to Her, the daily pep talk. I'm Yaya, your confidence and mindset coach, here to help you take the compliment without handing it right back. Now have you ever had somebody tell you that they love your jacket, and before they've even finished the sentence, you've explained that it costs $12 and you found it on the clearance rack.
• 0:34
  Mhmm. Or how about somebody saying that you handled a meeting so well, and you hear yourself answer, oh, it was a team effort. Somebody tells you that you look amazing, and you threw a compliment right back at them so fast that neither of you have time to register what was just said. Have you ever noticed how quickly you hand a compliment back? It happens before you've decided whether you agree with it, before it has a chance to even land.
• 1:02
  Now I used to do this for years, and the reason behind it surprised me when I finally figured it out. Stay with me on this one, because the fix takes about two seconds, and those might be the most awkward two seconds of your week. You probably have a whole collection of lines for this and you don't even hear yourself saying them. Oh, this old thing, it was on sale. Stop, you're being so nice.
• 1:37
  I just got lucky. I just threw it together. You're too kind. And my personal favorite, the boomerang. Thank you.
• 1:47
  But look at you. I love your hair. Now before I build my confidence, I had a full routine. Somebody would tell me that they love something that I was wearing, and I would immediately tell them that it only cost $3. $3.
• 2:00
  As if the price tag was what they were complimenting. As if the right response to you look great was a receipt. And the brain, I could do that in my sleep. Somebody would say something kind to me and I would fire it right back at them before I even really heard what they said. And the woman that I coach, they have their own version and some of them are funnier than mine.
• 2:20
  But it happens to strangers too. A woman at a grocery store says she loves your coat and you tell her it's about ten years old and you got it at their store, as if she had asked for the whole history on where you got the coat. Those lines all do the same thing. The compliment arrives and before it lands anywhere, you shrink it or you pass it along. You never get to hold it, not even for a second.
• 2:45
  Imagine a coworker walks up to your desk and hands you a wrap gift. She picked it out, she wrapped it, and she walked it over to you. Will you push her right back across the desk and be like, oh no, it's too much. Really, you shouldn't have, take it back. Some of you might, but most will say thank you and they will open it.
• 3:04
  But when that same coworker hands you a kind sentence, something she noticed about you and took a moment out of her day to say it out loud, you slide it right back across the desk. Think about what the other person hears. They said that presentation looked great. And you answer, no, it wasn't. They said, you look beautiful tonight.
• 3:26
  And you said, no, I don't. This dress is old. You told someone who was being kind to you that they were wrong, and then you said, it's a smile. Now a lot of us has picked up the idea somewhere along the way that taking a compliment means that you're bragging, myself included. Maybe you were the girl who got praised in school and then got teased for it at recess.
• 3:47
  Maybe somebody called you stuck up once and the word stayed with you for years. Maybe you watched a woman in your family raw her eyes at another woman who said thank you a little too confidently and you made the quiet decision that you were never gonna be her. So you learned the safer script, shrink it, credit somebody else, laugh it off, or hand one back. Everybody in the conversation stays comfortable, and nobody can accuse you of thinking too highly of yourself. At work, the same script follows you into meetings.
• 4:19
  A woman leads a project from the first kickoff to the final delivery, and when her boss congratulates her, she says, oh, it was really the whole team. Now sometimes it was the whole team, and when it was, give them credit out loud. But I'm talking about the times when you did the work and you passed along the credit anyways, just to get the attention off you. The script is polite, and it works for everyone in the room except you because you're the one who walks out without the compliment. So over my years of coaching, I have learned that women who have the hardest time accepting compliments usually have a low opinion of themselves.
• 4:59
  It makes sense when you think about it because a compliment says one thing about you and the voice in your head says something completely different. Both of those cannot be true, so one of them has to go, and most of the time it's the compliment that gets kicked out. Picture it from the inside. Somebody says, you're so talented, and the voice in your head says, if they only knew. Somebody says, you're so smart, and you think about the email you misread on Tuesday.
• 5:29
  The compliment doesn't match the file that you have been keeping on yourself, so it gets turned away at the door. A woman who already believes that she is capable hears the same sentences and says thank you without a second thought, because the compliment matches what she already knows. Same words, completely different reception, and the only thing that has changed is the opinion she holds of herself. Now underneath it, a lot of women don't feel like they deserve the compliment. They don't feel worthy.
• 6:03
  The praise comes in and it feels like it was meant for somebody else, somebody who has earned the right to hear it. You've probably believed a mean thing about yourself for years without asking for a single piece of evidence. Nobody has to prove it to you, But when somebody says something kind about you, suddenly you want receipts, a signed statement, and a second opinion. So try reversing the question. Instead of asking why anybody would say something so nice to you, ask yourself what the person gets out of lying to you.
• 6:37
  Your coworker who says your presentation was clear, your friend who says you look beautiful tonight, do they have an angle? Are they running a scam? Are they hoping they could borrow some money from you? They noticed something good about you when they said it, and that's the whole story. So your only job is to let it be the truth and simply say thank you.
• 6:58
  Now I hear a particular version of this from the corporate women that I teach, and it feels completely different from the inside. A manager compliments her on one thing, say the way she handled a difficult client call, and instead of feeling good, her stomach drops. Now she has to be good at that thing every time. She can't slip, she can't have a week off because if she does, they'll figure out she doesn't deserve to be in the room. So she'll wave it off, oh, it's nothing, anybody could have done it.
• 7:27
  She's trying to lower the expectation before it turns into pressure. That version has the same root as a $3 jacket. The belief underneath it is that she hasn't earned her spot, so any praise feels like a role or a standard that she's always gonna have to live up to. A woman who treats every compliment like a high standard she has to live by will keep turning them down. And if that woman sounds like you, consider the compliment was accurate.
• 7:54
  You handled the client call well and waving it off only costs you the credit for it. Now, there's always a cost whenever you deflect. The first cost lands on the person who gave the compliment. Somebody took a small risk when they told you something kind and you told them they were wrong. Do that enough times and people will stop offering, and you'll end up wondering why nobody ever has anything nice to say to you when plenty of people did and you handed it back to them.
• 8:24
  Now the second cause lands on you. Your brain hears, oh was nothing about the project that you spent three weeks on, and it believes you. You can't build a good opinion of yourself while you correct every good thing that anybody says about you, because the evidence keeps getting thrown out before it ever gets filed. The third one shows up in the rooms where it matters. The woman who says, oh, I just helped out about the project she led is the same woman wondering why nobody mentioned her name when the promotion came up.
• 8:56
  People believe what you tell them about your own work, so when you describe it as small, they're gonna file it as small. And then there's a fourth cost that is harder to see. The habit of pushing things back across the desk doesn't stay in the compliment lane. It shows up when a friend offers to help, when your partner brings you a gift, when somebody holds a door and waits for you to walk through it. You start saying, oh no, I'm fine, I got it, about the things that you would love to receive.
• 9:25
  If the reason behind the reflex is worth, then the real work is building a better opinion of yourself and the confidence starter kit is a good first step for that. It's a free web based kit made for women who are building confidence and want somewhere to start. The link is in the show notes, grab it while you're listening to this note. And let's talk about something that you can use this week to help you. So complimenting somebody back is fine.
• 9:51
  If you love her earrings, tell her. That's not what I'm telling you to do here or not do here. Compliments are supposed to move in both directions and giving them feels good. Some of them go back because you've been thinking the same thing about her and part of that is what makes a friendship feels warm. The one to watch is the automatic one, the compliment that leaves your mouth before you've even heard what they said to you.
• 10:14
  You can test it in a moment with a quick question, do I mean this or am I trying to get attention off me? If you mean it, say it. If the real reason is that the spotlight makes you feel nervous, you just caught a deflection. Then say thank you and give it a minute. If you still wanna tell her how much you love her earrings, say it a couple sentences later when it comes from real appreciation.
• 10:39
  Okay, so I also wanna give you a shift that you can make, and it only takes you about two seconds. If somebody gives you a compliment, you pause, you say thank you, and then you stop talking. Now the stopping part is hard, I know. After the thank you, your mouth is gonna wanna add something, a price, a disclaimer, a compliment back, a reason why it doesn't count. But let the silence sit there.
• 11:04
  It will feel awkward and you can survive two seconds of somebody smiling at you. Picture a networking event, somebody walks up and says, I heard your last talk and it was great. The old version of you says, oh gosh, thank you, was so nervous, I'm sure I rambled. The new version of you says, thank you, I'm glad you thought it was useful, and then stops. Both answers take the same amount of time, and only one of them leaves you standing there with the compliment.
• 11:36
  Now we'll work the same move sounds like this. Thank you, I put a lot into that one. That's a complete sentence and you are allowed to say it. Your boss says the project went well and you say, thank you, I'm so proud of how it turned out. You can still credit your team when they earned it, you just say it after you accept the compliment for your own part.
• 11:58
  When the O line show up, and they will because you have practiced them for years, notice them. Let the thought happen and say thank you anyway. You're building a new reflex and a new reflex takes repetition. This is confidence in practice at its smallest. It happens in the middle of a regular day, in a hallway, at a checkout counter, and you get a rap each time somebody says something nice.
• 12:25
  The first few times, it's gonna feel like taking something that belongs to somebody else. Give it a few weeks, and it's gonna start to sound like a normal conversation. So the next time somebody gives you a compliment, resist the urge to compliment them back. Pause for a second, let it land, and then say thank you. Complimenting somebody back is fine when you mean it.
• 12:48
  The goal is to catch the automatic ones, the reflex that fires back before you've heard what was said. When you feel it coming, take a breath and say thank you first. Now you might hear the voice in your head argue with it, but let it argue, you've already said thank you. Pay attention to how it feels when you do. If it feels strange or like you're taking something that isn't yours, that feeling tells you how long you have been handing things back.
• 13:17
  If this no hit a little close, you probably have your own $3 jacket story. The compliment you keep deflecting is something another person already picked out for you. They noticed it, they said it out loud, and it belongs to you. You can keep sliding it across the desk or you can take it and say thank you. So the next time somebody says something kind about you, what are you gonna do with it?