Several years ago I had a neat experience that impacted me and taught me the true power a compliment can have, even with a stranger. Listen to the episode to hear my story (I promise it's pretty cool!) and why I think complimenting others can be a great act of service.
Several years ago I had a neat experience that impacted me and taught me the true power a compliment can have, even with a stranger. Listen to the episode to hear my story (I promise it's pretty cool!) and why I think complimenting others can be a great act of service.
Melissa: Hello. You're listening to the Do Something More podcast. And this is episode 22 the Power of a Complimentary. Welcome to the Do Something More Podcast, a service oriented show where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more. I'm your host, Melissa Draper. Thank you so much for being here. Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. So excited to have you here today because I'm going to be sharing a really cool story, something that happened to me a few years ago that really, I think, illustrates the power that a compliment can have and shows how it can be an act of service, something good that you can do for someone else. But before I share my cool story, I would like to invite you, encourage you, ask you that if you've been listening to this podcast or you've heard a few of these episodes and you enjoy this content, enjoy what you've been listening to, to do one of two things for me. The first can be to follow the podcast or leave a review on the listening app that you choose to listen to it with. That would be a great help. Or the second is if there's a particular episode you listen to and you thought of someone that would benefit from that episode, from that subject, to send them a link to the podcast and let them know and say, hey, I thought of you. I thought you would enjoy listening to this podcast episode. If you can take a few moments, those really just only take you a few minutes to do it would mean so much to me and I would so appreciate it. That's how a podcast like mine that's starting from the ground up, gets to be heard and seen and listened to by other individuals. So means a lot to me. Thank you so much for doing that and for being here today. So I want to start with this story that, again, shows the true power that a compliment can have. I think many of us are familiar with compliments. We've probably all given them. We've probably hopefully all gotten some at times and many times. Sometimes we think of compliments as being about physical appearance or physical things, but they can really be for anything. They can be noticing someone's gifts and talents, or noticing the contributions they're making, or noticing something they did that you particularly liked or that touched you, or even noticing the time that someone is devoting to something. So there's lots of different things that we give compliments for. And I think sometimes those physical compliments kind of get a bad rap. But I think there is still a place for them. And many times they're the kind of compliments that we give to strangers, someone we don't know as well, but we want to compliment them. And that's my story. This story had to do with a more physical compliment, but it was a really neat experience for me, and I really wanted to share it today. So it happened a few years ago. I was running some errands at the mall, of all places, and I decided to stop in a store and just browse around, I think because I was childless and didn't have any children with me. So that was one of those things we love to do as mothers, right? Steal those little moments away. So I stopped in the store, and I was browsing around, and as I was in there, I noticed there was just one girl that was working in there, is kind of the salesperson, the worker. And she was moving around this kind of small store, just kind of arranging and fixing things. And for some reason, I immediately noticed her hair. She had curly hair that was very similar to mine. I have curly hair. But her hair was cut pretty short, almost in a pixie cut, and it looked so cute. It looks so good on her. And if you've had curly hair, you know that sometimes it can be an adventure, I will say, or maybe even a challenge to learn how to style it, make it look cute. And so I think it's common for those of us that have curly hair to notice other curly hair and to like or notice the things that we like about other people's curly hair. That's something I still do. So I noticed this girl's shortcut, curly hair and just how cute it looked. And I also thought, man, I wish I could pull off shorter cut curly hair like that. Mine's a little longer, more kind of chin length. And I just was like, oh, I wish I could pull that off. That looks so good on her. And as I had that thought, I had another thought that immediately followed it that said, tell her. Tell her what you just thought. And at first, I give people compliments, but this was a complete stranger, and I'd kind of been obsessing a little bit over her cute hair. So I was like, I don't know if I want to tell her what I thought. I don't want to sound like a creeper or like I've been staring at her this whole time because I just admired her curly hair. But then it came again, tell her the thought you had about her curly hair. And that thought came back a few times as I was there in the store. And then I decided to buy something. I think it was a simple accessory that I picked out, and I took it up to check out with her. And as she started checking me out at the register, I thought, okay, right here, we're the only ones in the store. I'll tell her what I thought. So I looked at her and I said, I just wanted to tell you that I love your curly hair, and I love the way you have it styled so short, so cute. I wish I could pull that off with my hair, but it looks so good on you. And after I said that, she kind of just stood there for a minute and looked at me, didn't do anything. And my first thought was, oh, great. See, I told you. She thinks I'm weird or creeper because she's just staring at me, and this feels a little awkward now. And then her eyes kind of got a little glossy, like she was going to get a little teary eyed. And then she paused and said, thank you so much for telling me that. And I was like, oh, well, you're welcome. I meant, it really does look good. And she was like, no, really, you don't understand how much I needed to hear that today. Thank you so much. And then as I continued to talk with her and have a conversation, she proceeded to tell me that just the day before, she had gone and gotten a haircut in preparation for her wedding that was going to be in just three weeks. Her wedding was three weeks away. And so this had been kind of a preliminary styling just to prep and have her hair just right for her wedding. And for some reason, the stylist that was working with her was either sick or not well or having a hard day and had just totally butchered her hair and had made it look not good at all or like she even knew what she was doing. She was devastated. And so the manager at the salon she had gone to had told her she could come back a little later and she would fix her hair. And so she did that, but in order for her to fix all the choppiness and things that had gone on, she'd had to cut off quite a bit of her hair. And now her hair was a lot shorter than what she had wanted, especially with her wedding coming up in three weeks, right? Any woman that's been married, we all know how important that is. We want to look good on our wedding day. It's a big day, lots of people we know and love. And so she told me this story, and I was like, oh, my goodness, I am so sorry. And I've had a bad haircut. So I totally can relate to being upset or even crying over a bad haircut. I think there is no shame in that because I've been there. And she then proceeded to tell me, she said, Seriously, this happened just yesterday. She's like, I was talking on the phone with my mom. I was crying to my fiance and my roommate. She's like, they all told me it looked good and I looked fine. But she's like, I didn't feel like I looked good. I didn't feel like I looked beautiful. So she said, thank you so much for telling me you liked my hair. And then again I said, well, you're welcome and you are going to be a beautiful bride and you really do look beautiful and I hope you can fill some peace and joy on your wedding day. And that was it. And I went on my way. Really simple experience and it has not left me. I have remembered that every detail almost of it because of the impact it had on me, of just opening up my mouth, of just saying what I already thought. And so there's actually two things that stuck with me from that experience. The first was I was a complete stranger. I couldn't even tell you this girl's name. I don't know her name, how old she was, where she was from. I don't know anything other than that she was getting married soon. And it was my words, it was a stranger's words that she needed to hear because I'm sure she shared that. She'd talked with her mom and her fiance and her roommates and her friends. I'm sure they did all tell her she was beautiful and it was fine. But you know how that is. As women we don't always believe the people that are supposed to tell us we're beautiful when we're feeling that way. And it was a complete stranger that she needed in that moment to reassure her. Someone who had no investment in the situation at all to out of the blue say you look beautiful, your haircut looks beautiful. That's what she needed. And that is something I remembered because I think sometimes we think to be able to lift someone, to be able to make a difference for someone, that we have to know them, we have to have a relationship with them. And very many times that's true and we should be lifting the people that we have relationships with and we interact with. But I think we sometimes discredit the real power that our words can have as a complete stranger. That sometimes that is exactly what someone needs. They need your words, your perspective, your smile, the few moments you'll take to give them that encouragement or upliftment. It's sometimes a stranger's that we need. And so we shouldn't discount that. We shouldn't discount the power of our kind words even to someone we don't know or we've just barely met. So that was the first thing that stuck with me with that story is to not discredit the power of my words as a stranger. And then the second is that this experience was completely genuine. There was nothing crafted here, there was nothing thought about. It was just all in the moment. I sincerely thought the thought that I had as another curly haired woman, it was sincere, it was genuine. And so all I had to do was to open my mouth and share what naturally was there, the good thought I had already naturally had. And so that was the other thing that stuck with me is sometimes I think we overthink things a little bit in how we can help someone or the kind words we can say. And yes, sometimes we do need to think about what we say. We shouldn't always just say everything that pops in our head. I for sure have learned that from personal experience. But many times when we have a good thought, when we have a good encouraging thing that comes to mind, we can just share it. We can just open our mouths and share the good thought that we had about another person. And sometimes it might be someone we know and we just send them a text and say hey, I had this thought after I interacted with you or I was watching this situation and I was so impressed with DA DA DA DA DA and it does not take a lot of effort to do that. And when we share those thoughts that are just so genuine, it's just an easy, really simple thing to do. We don't have to think about it or stew over it, we just have to have the courage to share it. So those are my two biggest thoughts from that story, is your compliments, your words can have effect even upon strangers for the good and that we don't always have to overthink it, that we can just sometimes open our mouths with the good thought that we had. And that's what I wanted to share here today. So as you're going about the world or doing different things, I know it's that time of year now that many are getting ready to start a new school year or different things in your lives, don't discount the power of a compliment. Take the time, do a simple act of service and say the good thoughts that naturally come to you, to another person. And really many times in this instance, I got to see a little bit of the difference that it made. Many times. We don't always know the difference that it can make, but I truly believe that when we take the time to share goodness, to encourage, to uplift, it always can be used for good purposes and to help and assist another person. So that's an easy way to serve, it's a simple way to serve. And I think it's something that regularly happens to all of us. We're always noticing good things and we can tell the people around us what we notice and share those compliments. So that's my thought with you today. Take the power of compliment to serve those around you. So thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next time. Close.