One of my favorite things to both give and receive is a compliment. I mean, they are free to give and wonderful to receive so I believe they should be traded frequently (and most importantly, honestly.) It is also a very fine practice to look for the positive in people and praise it.

So, I had a discussion recently about various compliments that I’ve received in my life that really struck me and stuck in my memory. Several came to mind, but one stood out for its sheer uniqueness. A guy I worked with had been delivering a diatribe about attractive people vs. unattractive people. His premise (which I will not critique here) was this; often, kids who are attractive get a lot of attention and positive reinforcement so they aren’t as moved to develop interesting and pleasant personalities, whereas children who are different or physically less appealing are motivated to work harder at developing a remarkable personality of some sort. Often these children focus on humor, intelligence, helpfulness, or any combination of a variety of positive attributes to cultivate within themselves. In the middle of his hypothesis he turned to look at me, paused for a moment, and very plainly stated, “You must have been a really ugly kid.” He then looked at me a bit longer and sort of nodded his head, as if to conclude that this final bit of evidence pushed the entire discussion into the world of fact and he was satisfied.

Strangely enough, I left the situation feeling flattered.

What are the most memorable compliments you have received?