To Becoming

Last year I wrote about the lost art of accepting compliments. Since then, my friends and I remind each other to gracefully accept the kind things people say to us. A few weeks ago, a friend mentioned that he also struggles accepting compliments, often because they feel too finite: you are a great soccer player, you are very smart, you are kind, you are very handsome. To him, it sounded like he'd already achieved each of these things, which he didn't think was completely true. Knowing that self-talk is critical to success, he developed the habit of putting "becoming" before each compliment he gives himself: I am becoming a great soccer player, I am becoming a kind person. Instead of adding a little sugar to make the medicine go down, he adds a little medicine to make the sugar more believable.

Many of us struggle with this. Because we are not at the finish line, but also no longer at the start, we forego giving ourselves much needed credit for all that we've accomplished. We only see the areas where we still need to improve and the length of the path left to walk. Maybe our compliments should be more like our lives then—in motion and in progress. By adding "becoming" to each thing we want to believe about ourselves, we satisfy the part of us that needs encouragement to keep going and the part that needs to feel the deficit so we'll continue working hard.

So here's to living in the becoming—the fabulous gray area that celebrates who we once were and who we one day hope to be.