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There are some things which are difficult to compliment.
Your reasons for attempting to remain positive in the face of being asked to comment on something negative are yours to make. There will be times when you simply want to keep things light, and not voice your criticisms about a person or thing for others to hear.
The Benefits of Having a Good Thing to Say
As a general rule of thumb, criticizing something / someone is more stressful to us than being positive about it. There is a greater chance of your criticism being contended against than your positive words being disproved by others. The chances of you undergoing some sort of social stress are higher when you voice negativity about people or things.
The effect you have on those who listen is smooth, easygoing, and light, when you remain positive in your day to day speech. As you may already know, keeping things light and positive encourages people to open up, show their true colors, and be comfortable around you.
This article is not suggesting that you should always have a good thing to say about everything and everyone. It simply aims to suggest ways for you to always have a good thing to say, if you decide on adopting that frame of mind.
Segmentation
Mentally breaking down things which are widely perceived to be negative into smaller pieces, is the key to having something positive to say about them. Though something may truly be bad, negative, and wrong as a whole, deconstructing it down to small pieces allows you to genuinely compliment some of those pieces.
For instance, it is widely-perceived that candy bars are bad to habitualize kids toward. They cause cavities, spike blood sugar, and are contributing factors to poor health habits.
However, if you decided to voice something positive about candy bars, what would you say? Segmenting a candy bar down to its ability to motivate a child to clean up their room or finish their homework allows you to keep things positive. You can voice just how good candy bars are as an infrequent reward for kids who behave themselves. By segmenting the notion of a candy bar down to its ability to act as a reward, you’d be able to find something positive to say about it.
Segmentation is your key to finding something good to say about anything in life. Break it down into pieces, not just physically, but situationally as well. Begin to view the individuals you interact with as whole sums of many segmented pieces. Each person has great and horrid pieces about them. They have bad habits, but also possess noble traits.
Practice breaking their personality down into those concise segments, and focus on the good ones. You’d be surprised to find that many people who you’ve labeled as bad, wrong, or immoral, actually do have some good about them. They may be great conversationalists who simply use that skill for things you’re not a fan of. They may be great at putting in hard work, day in and day out, whilst building things you’re not a fan of.
Get into the habit of complimenting their conversation skills and work habits. Rather than focusing on the negative segments of a particular person or thing, simply choose to focus on the positive ones.
Trust the fact that you will find something positive to say about someone if you simply segment granularly enough. If you’re struggling to find something nice to say, segment further, until you find a segment about which you can honestly say something nice.