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Do Take Compliments To Heart
Give them double the value of criticism
Humans are criticism magnets and compliment repellants. It makes absolutely no sense.
Author, podcaster (and keen surfer) Srinivas Rao said this :
I’ve had hundreds of 5-star reviews. I can’t remember any of them. But on my first book I had one 1-star review and I can remember every single word of it— “I hope this guy can surf better than he can write, because his writing sucks.”
We’re like metal detectors for criticism. If there’s a negative judgement of us out there, we’ll find it. And if we find nothing, we criticise ourselves!
Worse, we miss compliments — brush them off, don’t let them settle. We dismiss, qualify or never even notice.
Take compliments to heart. Let each one be a little lego brick sticking to the one before it. Build yourself a positive, valued, resilient, you.