This morning I squeezed in a coffee date with a great friend, we don’t see each other often, but it’s always great when we do.

As usual I was working on getting emails sent and text messages answered when I should have been getting dressed.   With 10 minutes to go before I needed to head out the door, I started searching for the pair of dark blue skinny jeans that I wanted to wear. They were no where to be found. This isn’t much of a surprise as I haven’t put my laundry away more than once this summer. ( it’s not one of my strong points)

I then pulled on my boyfriend jeans, but I just wasn’t feeling those.

The clock was ticking, so I put on the next two things that I saw laying in front of my face. A sheer black maxi skirt, and bright, woven crop top. When I arrived, she told me how nice I looked. Instead of simply saying thank you and accepting the compliment, I brushed it off, said thanks, this was the first thing that I could find.

While this was true, I should have just said thank you. Why is it so hard to accept a thank you.

Someone says that love your top, and you right away jump into explaining how you got it on sale and had a coupon….. just say thank you

Your told that you did a job well, and respond, well this and this and this could have been better…. maybe…. but just say thank you

Your client tells you that they love the color palette that you created… and you respond, well I wasn’t sure if that shade of green was totally working with everything else

Your girlfriend tells you that you look extra skinny these days… you say ,a recent study showed eating chocolate, esp dark chocolate, helped lower body mass indexes! People who eat chocolate 5 times a week were 5 or more pounds thinner than those who didn’t.

Bring on the chocolate!!!

Or  you could just say thank you We spend so much time pushing off the compliments, not letting them sink in. Not allowing them to lift our spirits, renew our energy, and to carry us through all the days that will be filled with lists of what we’ve done wrong, or forgotten to do.

“I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.” -Ranier Maria Rilke

As women, often we try to shrink ourselves, to run from the spotlight, to get smaller, weaker, until we forget who we are. We forget how strong we are We forget that we have a voice We forget that we can say no We forget that we are more than how we look

In her book, Red, Hot and Holy, Sera Beak quotes Teri Degler who said,

“Even of all those women who are comfortable with emotions, very few are comfortable with the feeling of wild, surging power…the trick is to realize that we do indeed embody this power and then to become comfortable with the way this feels. We need, in other words, to come to a place where we can sit and quietly hold this great power in our bellies.”

Are you shrinking or shining?

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