“Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and the thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.” ~Edmund Lee
Someone emailed me the other day about a project we are collaborating on and in her note she said, “Thank you for being so fabulous.” I kind of sheepishly blushed to myself for half a second, and then moved right on to my next task.
A little while later, my mind occupied with some heady thought or other, I felt a tiny little shift in my gut… a teeny, little smidge of awareness seeping into my heart. A sleepy but unstoppable awakening. And then: THUNK. It landed.
Thank you for being so fabulous.
It landed, deep within me. My colleague had meant it. And my inner wise self had to do some work to ring my bell about it. My wise self was not about to watch me further delay the life-giving, soul-connecting act of letting the acknowledgement in. Into my heart, into my mind, into my spirit.
We can so easily go on autopilot and mechanically deflect compliments. Even if we say a polite “Thank you,” sometimes our ego usurps the moment with a poke at us about how unworthy we are of the compliment. Thank you, we say, while thinking, “If they only knew how incompetent I really am…”
So, let’s make a pact: Let’s Stop It!
We have a responsibility to hear another’s gift to us and then to let it in.
Yes – it’s your responsibility. When someone believes in you and expresses their faith in you, they are seeing the real you and they vulnerably put that expression out there. They toss it to you and your job is to catch it. To hold it. To let it in. And to let it live within you.
It’s more than a “thank you” that you owe them. Your job is to fully, 100%, all-the-way receive what they have given to you. And that means feeling the impact and shooing away the critical voice.
It’s your job. Are you up to it? Because you, too, are fabulous. And we all need you to let that in. Because, guess what? When you do, you expand your fabulousness, which is your gift to the world.
Are you with me?
