If you’ve ever been given a compliment, especially by a random person, then I’m sure you’ve noticed that it can be quite difficult to simply say ‘thank you’. Many of us humans feel awkward about compliments and we often don’t know how to respond. This is really common in our society, especially among women, reciving compliments is hard.  With men it’s often that giving a compliment is the hard part, when complimenting women how to avoid seeming creepy and how to make sure it’s not ‘weird’ when complimenting a man. So it doesn’t really matter who you are, compliments are difficult.

With that in mind I’m writing this post to inform you on sevral tips that will make a compliment stimulate converstation, reduce the akwardness and make it harder for the person you’re complimenting to simply brush off the comment.

Number one;

Really obvious but first you should think about what you want to compliment. It’s okay to have preplanned something you want to say to someone before you walk over to them or bring it up in conversation. If it’s about something they’re wearing or something they’ve made you’ll have to see the object before you can compliment them but having some ideas ahead isn’t a bad thing. Eg. hair, shoes, bags, paintings, drawings, singing voice, style..ect..

 

Number two;

One thing that is really common is that rather than accepting a compliment people will brush it off. If you say someone has a nice bag they might tell you it’s really old or they have better ones at home, ect. This slows down the conversation and makes it a little weird. So number one; Be specific.

When you tell someone ‘I like your bag’ or ‘That’s an awesome painting’ you need to tell them why you’re saying that. Being specific adds weight to the comment and shows your actual interest and understanding in the topic.

‘I like your bag because it matches your shirt really well.’

‘That’s an awesome painting. The colour choice works well.’

You can see that already the statements mean more and have more things to talk about. Don’t go overboard and mention ten different things about the one thing you’re complimenting becuase that might seem a little weird but deffinitly do have a conversation and slowly bring up other things you like or think could be improved. A long conversation might not always be possible but with artwork it’s really easy as long as you know a little bit about the techniques involved.

Examples of specific aspects; Colour, suits you, shows (blank, eg, compassion), effort, the effect is difficult to create,

Number three;

Ask questions. Don’t end the statement and leave them time to respond just yet. If you do there’s still a huge potential for them to brush off the compliment or assume your intrest isn’t genuine. If they have time to tell you it’s an old bag or they don’t really like the painting they made, it becomes really hard to continue talking about it and you feel a bit awkward.  So if possible make sure you’ve got a question in mind before you start the compliment.

Things to follow up with;

Where did you get it? Was it a gift? How did you make it? Is they your favourite?

Obviously you want the question to make sense, if you’re complimenting their hair unless you know it’s dyed don’t ask them where they got it, it’s their hair they were born with it. A no-brainer really.

Number four;

This is really important when complimenting how someone looks or the clothes they are wearing. Do not put ‘today’ at the end of a compliment. Eg. ‘your hair looks nice today’

Then their thoughts become ‘was my hair messy yesterday? do I normally look really bad?’  and it’s a really negaitve thought. You do not want that weird passive agressive/backhanded compliment associated with you.

You can say somehting like ‘you’ve been loking really good lately’ if they’ve been making changes to their wardrobe or hair. However I would be very careful in this type to statement it’s still pretty borderline.

 

Alright that’s it for now, hope you enjoyed/ found it useful. A lot of this is based off either personal experience or tips I was tips I was told a long long time ago and I can’t remember who said them. Thanks for reading.

~Mavi