I've had two nice things happen to me in the last two days. Yesterday I made one of my rare appearances at church... we had a meeting afterwards, so it made sense to show up. Last weekend at Con a woman named Tanya went as our nurse, who goes to our church. We have a time called "Joys and Sorrows" when you can get up and say whatever you would like, which I've always thought was one of the cooler parts of being in our church. I mean, if you can't share (or overshare) with your church, what can you do? And I've always been particularly fond of the nutty ones who do go on for five minutes. It's wonderful.
Anyway, Tanya got up there and said, "There's someone we don't hear a lot about, and I think she's kind of shy, but she deserves to be recognized. Could you please stand up Anne-Marie?" And then she proceeded to talk about my work with youth and have the congregation recognize me.
Hmm. I'm not sure if I'm shy. I do know I've never been particularly comfortable with praise. I appreciate receiving it, or being told, "job well done," but public recognition has always made me feel odd. I do appreciate what she did - really, really, but I also wish it wasn't in front of everyone. Let's just say that when there are teacher recognition days... I always skip them. Lori tricked me on the last one and didn't tell me it was happening. Grr.
On the other hand, I got to work today to find out I had won a knife set! Last week we had a new food vendor start at REI and it is HEAVENLY! So as part of their first week kick-off, they had prize drawings, and I won Thursday's raffle - a knife set!! Sweet! I was very happy to tell everyone about that.
So, luck: okay. Praise: privately okay. Keep that in mind.
1 comment:
I used to think that people who were modest/shy/quiet/whatever really would appreciate public praise, but didn't want to put themselves forward. It took me a long time to figure out that sometimes, they just don't want the attention.
Which is funny, because I'm uncomfortable being praised. My instinctive response is to say, "Wow, thanks, but ..." and then explain why I really shouldn't be praised in that instance. It's a response that can be kind of insulting to the person giving the praise, so I've struggled and worked at it and now can usually manage to limit myself to "Wow, thanks."
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