Contents:
The more success you achieve in the pursuit of your goals, the more comments you’ll receive from others. The people around you are privy to success of any sort. Humans’ underlying need to compete as well as improve play themselves out in interesting ways. Anybody who comments on your success wouldn’t mind experiencing it themselves at best. At worst, they would take everything you worked for if they could. People will react to your success in various ways. Some people will downplay your successes and formulate elaborate excuses for why you’ve been able to achieve your goals. Others will over-compliment you in an effort to gain something in return. The latter is what this article aims to highlight.
Feeling authentic happiness for others does exist, and you shouldn’t automatically assume that anyone complementing you about achieving your goals is looking for something in return. However, you should be prepared for the fact that a subset of the population will falsely compliment you in the face of your success. Should you encounter someone who utilizes over-complimentary tactics for their benefit, it is better to recognize their motives and react accordingly than be blind to their schemes.
Karma Is a Powerful Motive
Though you may not label the notion of ‘karma’ with that exact word, the idea behind this word’s meaning is a belief which is alive and well. The people who over-compliment you are placing their bet on sending good vibes out into the world in hopes of those good vibes coming back to reward them. The important distinction to make is whether their quest for ‘good karma’ is motivated by feelings of envy or genuine happiness for you. Be wary of the people who over-compliment you in an effort to channel their feelings of envy in this manner. The people who over-compliment you in the face of your success as a way to channel their feelings of envy, will attempt to place themselves closer to your success as a result. Should you let them into your world, they will strive to leech off your work without providing valuable returns.
The people who over-compliment you in an effort to place themselves closer to success are dangerous because they use deceptive methods. Rather than offering something of value to build your success further – and thereby grow themselves as a result – they offer empty compliments in hopes of taking the easy path to tasting a piece of what you’ve become. This selfish behavior will spread to other actions they take, should you let them peek into the inner workings of your quest to achieve goals. A habit of being overly complimentary can be a habit rooted in deception. The roots that deception spreads though, don’t just stop at infecting one’s compliments.
Your distinction between those who offer up empty compliments in order to benefit themselves and those who are genuinely happy for you should be tuned to perfection. The people who use over-complimenting tactics to serve their own needs tend to not let go of the topic of your success. They will bring it up to soften you toward their approaches, and will hope that you let them into the secrets that brought forth your successes.
Do Not Soften Under Compliments
Stay tuned into your reactions to compliments in life. Do not allow compliments to affect how much you trust people around you. Always question the motives of the compliments you receive from others, and do your best to make educated judgments on whether the people giving them are honest. Notwithstanding the honest nature of the compliments you receive, you should not soften under any form of love shown towards you by others. Treat compliments the same way you treat criticism. Do not take them personally and do not allow them to affect your way of being. Stay unmoved by all words that come your way and focus on the actions people who speak those words are taking.
Simply thank the person for their kind words, and try to not interpret their words as objective truth. By doing this, you’ll numb yourself towards the attempts of others to leech off your hard-earned success. It will also serve to lower any chances of being deceived by those who use compliments as weapons. Make sure you are honest with yourself when you’re doing a good job in achieving your goals. The only compliments that should matter are the ones that you tell yourself. You are the only one who knows what exact steps were taken to achieve the goals that you have achieved. Thereby the only one capable of delivering a truly honest and objective compliment towards your work, is yourself.