Acknowledgement

Have you paid attention to what your response is when someone offers you a compliment? What does your body do?  Where do your thoughts take you?

Maybe you openly disagree with the person offering the acknowledgement - your eyes cast downward, chest sunken.  Maybe you politely say thank you and act as if you are taking it in, however, your mind takes you running in the opposite direction.  Do you feel compelled to tell the person something negative about yourself in order to sabotage the moment?

These ways of reacting are not good or bad.  And you don't have to give them up.  You may have more practice with bashing yourself and that's ok.  However, violence against yourself is always optional and there are other possibilities.  First....

Allow yourself to be a beginner.

What might shift if you were to begin to allow yourself to receive acknowledgement without attaching a negative label to it or the person offering it? If you are going to label it, you might as well give it a label that serves you.  For example, you can imagine the kind words of others as nourishment.  Much like the food we take in, the water we drink, the rest we give our bodies, the air we breathe, we need to receive kindness to be well.  When we close our hearts to this nourishment, we are missing an opportunity to quench the need that we all have as humans to feel recognized and loved.

The next time you hear genuine acknowledgement come your way, have courage to pause, and experiment with the following steps:

1. Feel your feet on the ground.
2. Imagine the words, just like your breath, filling your chest.
3. Allow yourself to be moved.

You can reinforce this new way of being by asking the person to repeat their words until you have fully taken them in. This may seem uncomfortable and strange, however, when you are a beginner at anything, repetition is necessary.  Another option is to apply these steps while imagining a time when someone offered you acknowledgement and you didn't take the time to receive it fully.

Remember that kindness is a gift, pure and simple.  Taking it in may inspire you to more readily give it away.

With a deep bow of acknowledgement,
Dawn