My best friend of fifty years and I have a running exchange that has become a joke. When I compliment him on his children, he immediately responds, "Well, what about your children? Aren't they great?" When I congratulate him on his career as a labor lawyer, he routinely says, "Hey, you were the great lawyer and how about your terrific career running hospitals?" When I tell him how lucky he is to have a great family he says, of course, "Your family is fantastic."

   I now call this "The Boomerang Compliment Syndrome." You toss out kudos and they fly back, never appearing to reach their mark. My dear friend, in all of his modesty, is great at giving compliments but has trouble receiving them. Maybe he's afraid he will sound vain.

   Is this true of you? Someone gives you a compliment and you deflect it.  Maybe you do the "Aw-shucks-I-don't-deserve-it" dance. I've done it thousands of times.

   The great novelist John Steinbeck offers us wonderful wisdom: "Receiving . . . requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness," he wrote. "It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving, you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well. It requires self-esteem to receive – not self love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself."

   How can you practice this art? Maybe it starts with a simple, "Thank you. I appreciate that." If you jump immediately to say "I don't deserve that" than are you dishonoring the person who gave you the praise?"

   Because it's an art, receiving well is trickier than a few scripted responses. At the core is our need to truly accept the gifts of kindness that come our way. Of course, it doesn't mean we can't share credit. Instead, it touches the heart of humility. It is because I am not better than you that I can receive your compliment as a way of honoring both of us.

   Like all aspects of Radical Loving Care, the art of receiving requires conscious re-thinking. It means changing patterns. 

   Through the odd world of cyberspace, I send compliments to you for dedicating your lives to caregiving. 

-Erie Chapman