TUESDAY · THE SMALL INVITATION
You are not good at letting people be kind to you.
You know this. You may even be a little proud of it.
Someone pays you a compliment, and you answer before the sentence is even finished. You are already handing it back.
The words vary, but the motion is always the same. “Oh, it was nothing,” you say, or “anyone could have done it,” or “this old thing, I have had it forever.”
You call this being gracious. But look at what happens when someone offers you a kind word.
They hold something out to you, and you hand it right back before it has a chance to stay. The kind word never reaches you.
Agreeing with praise felt too close to bragging, so you learned to refuse it gently. Politeness became the only response you had.
SPONSORED
Fatal heart attack at 71.
Her father took statins for 9 years.
Every visit he told his doctor the muscle pain was getting worse.
Every visit the doctor said: "That's normal."
He died of a heart attack at 71.
Cholesterol… Perfect.
Drug… Worked exactly as designed.
But he died anyway.
His daughter is a heart health researcher. That funeral was the day she started asking the questions her industry didn't want her to ask.
What she found has a name.
Almost no doctor screens for it. Almost no patient has heard of it.
She finally said it on camera:
If your parents took statins, or you do, or someone you love does…
P.S. Watch her face when she gets to the part about her father. She's not a person who shows emotion. It still gets her → Almost no doctor screens for this
After years, the refusal covers everything. Even a compliment from someone you love and trust gets the same treatment.
It is the same shrinking we caught in your handwriting, a self kept small enough not to be noticed.
Today, try one thing.
The next time someone says something kind to you, say “thank you” and then stop talking. That is it.
It will feel like standing still while someone looks directly at you. You will want to fill the space with more words.
The discomfort fades. What takes its place is a small warmth, the feeling of a kind word that was actually allowed to land.
You do not have to agree with the compliment. You just have to stop sending it back.
ONE THING TO NOTICE
Today, notice what happens in your chest when someone says something kind about you. Just the feeling, not the response.
WHAT SHE SAID
"Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart"
Brené Brown wrote in The Gifts of Imperfection. Every compliment you return unopened is a small door closing between you and the people trying to reach you.
See you tomorrow.
If someone came to mind while you were reading this, send her these letters. The Permission Slips are yours when she stays.
