Last week we began a discussion on the power that comes with adopting The Habit of Paying Compliments.

It seems a number of readers agreed with the positive force behind this habit as I received many calls, texts and emails from folks wanting to share their stories of how being either a provider or recipient of a compliment brought great meaning to that particular moment in their lives, and sometimes well beyond.

From stories of complimenting restaurant servers on their appearance to complimenting others on their professionalism, intelligence, general niceness or politeness there was a common theme contained within each of their stories.

The theme that seems to prevail throughout is that whenever we take the time to sincerely compliment or praise a fellow human we experience an immediate uplifting of our own spirit which spurs us on to seek opportunities for doing more of the same.

There are few of us who do not enjoy being on the receiving end of complimentary words.

A long time ago I read an expression that said “human beings are nothing more than recognition seeking missiles.”

While we can argue that statement to be somewhat extreme and exaggerated, contained within those words are the seeds of truth that remind us that we do enjoy hearing of our own awesomeness.

Among the discussions I had this past week was one with Evelyn who reminded me of something that I believe to be an absolute truth.

She said the biblical saying “seek and ye shall find” represents absolute truth. Sadly, according to her, many of us, all too often, set out to seek the wrong things and we are never disappointed.

She mentioned how we label people and those labels never betray us. Once we have labelled someone as “stupid” then every word out of their mouth sounds idiotic and when we label somebody as being “brilliant” we see the genius in everything they say.

The point she was trying to make was blindingly obvious. If we truly set out to find authentic, sincere occasions each day to compliment others, we will be overwhelmed by the opportunities to do so for in seeking those opportunities, they will present themselves to us in abundance.

There is great wisdom in her words. When we set out to find fault – read the writings of professional fault finders posing as media editorialists – we will not have far to look.

It is so much easier and makes us feel so much better if we direct that energy into making someone else’s day and simultaneously make our day too.

The Habit of Paying Compliments never steers us wrong. In fact it will help us bring into our lives many of the events and experiences we wish for ourselves.

It costs absolutely nothing and makes two (or more) people feel really good about themselves.

It’s kind of like BOGO; Buy one, get one free.

It’s called a twofer and in my book that’s a heck of a deal.

Let’s make a habit of meeting like this.