There are a few compliments that I’ve received throughout my life that have meant more to me and stuck with me for longer than any others.
The first was my junior year of high school. I was working as a hostess in a restaurant, and one night one of my coworkers, a server who had a young daughter, told me that she hoped that her daughter would turn out to be just like me someday.
The second was my freshman year of college, when someone in one of my classes with whom I had just done a group project, told me that I seemed like the start of a success story to them.
The third was my sophomore year of college, when someone who had lived in my hall with me freshman year, who I didn’t know very well and didn’t talk to much, reached out to me over social media and said, "Thank you so much for always being so nice to me last year - a lot of people weren’t nice to me and I remember you as someone who was always kind and friendly".
None of these comments came from people that I was super close with.
Obviously, your friends are going to hype you up.
Obviously, your family is going to hype you up.
But when someone who isn’t expected to hype you up says something really nice to you, it feels different. I'm sure that none of these people remember who I am, but I will always remember who all three of these people are.
The other thing that all of these comments had in common is that none of them had to do with my looks. Of course it feels good when people tell you that you’re cute or pretty or beautiful, but that’s genetics. When someone compliments your character or your accomplishments, something that you’ve built for yourself, it means so much more.
I suppose the moral of this story is that I think that we should all give more compliments to strangers and people that we don’t know very well. If you feel something nice about somebody, you should say it out loud, because you never know who your comment is going to hit, whose day it’s going to change, whose week it's going to change, and how that's going to impact them for days, months years to come.