taking a compliment

I have a hard time posting "testimonials" about my work.  I'm pretty sure it's a learned behavior from a family of undersung Quaker-ish sorts.  Self-promotion is suspect; bragging makes me queasy.  It's probably the most generous move, in the face of a compliment (even one as simple as, "You look good in that shirt!") to simply accept and be grateful.

Marianne Williamson said, in her famous prose-poem, "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." I run into this sometimes when people write to thank me after our work together. Someone I worked with in higher education wrote this to me.  I post it with trepidation about being regarded as a show-off (the worst sin!), so much so that it's hard for me to absorb.

You have a curious spirit and an expansive mind, combined with an incredibly intuitive understanding of people and a practical, problem-solving bent.  This ability to move between vision and practice, and your comfort in being in "spaces" intellectually and emotionally that are unfamiliar makes you an extremely effective thought partner for motivated (if temporarily frustrated!) professionals who find themselves at crossroads in the development of their careers.  You rapidly absorb a wealth of information and swiftly cut to the core of an issue.  You can fearlessly challenge an assumption or wrongheaded perception without threatening a person's sense that you respect them, and one leaves the interaction never feeling judged, even while having their thinking perhaps radically tested.  And your totally fun-loving and adventurous nature leads you to offer unconventional and sometimes surprisingly simple solutions to situations that seem initially mired in discouragement and impossibility.

I recognize that this scares me because it forces me to recognize my own power. What scares you?