It may not sound like a compliment, per se, but it was!  The thoughtful words rolled off the lips of my, then, three year-old, along with a few drops of milk from her bowl of cereal.  Children love cheese crackers!  There is hardly a better morsel to be found on planet earth.  So, for her to tell me that I smelled like her favorite food…well…now that was something special.

That same three year-old errupted into applause one year when her grandpa finished a Christmas Eve speech, yelling, “Bravo!  Bravo!”

Compliments.

They are good for the soul.

Robert Orben once said, “A compliment is verbal sunshine.”

The best compliments seem to stick, don’t they?  They linger in our minds – sometimes even edging out space an unkind word might once have inhabited.   Often the more unexpected and unique a compliment, the more staying power it has.

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.” ~Mark Twain

I remember a dreary day at the grocery store.  Dreary because of my mood, not the weather.  I felt discouraged, sad, blue…

until…

a woman passing by whom I had never met said, “You have cute hair.”

All of a sudden, the cheese aisle became the sunniest place in the whole store.  Someone noticed me.  And what’s more, she took the time to share a kind word.  Oh, how I needed that.

There is one chance in a million that she would remember that exchange as our carts passed.

There is no way I’ll ever forget it.

A compliment – like a ray of sunshine – changed my day.

Who’s day can you change?

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 at 6:35 pm and is filed under BillionClicks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.