Someone tells you the thing you built is really good.
And you say, oh, it was mostly the library. Or, it still needs a lot of work. Or you just laugh and change the subject as fast as you can.
I watch people do this constantly, and it always looks like modesty from the inside. From the outside it is doing something quite different.
Start with what it does to them. Someone chose to walk over and say a kind thing. That takes a small amount of courage, more than you would think. When you bat it away, you make them mildly wrong for having said it, and you teach them that praise is awkward with you. They will do it less. Then in a year you will privately wonder why nobody ever notices your work.
Then there is what it does to you. Confidence is not built from a lecture you give yourself at three in the morning. It is built from evidence, and compliments are evidence. Every time you deflect one, you refuse to file it. You will happily keep every piece of criticism you have ever received, in full detail, indexed by date, and let the good stuff bounce straight off. That is not humility. That is an accounting error, and it slowly builds a picture of yourself that is not true.
The fix is embarrassingly small. Say thank you. Then stop talking.
That is the whole practice, and I promise it is harder than it sounds. Your instinct will be to add the qualifier. Resist it. Let the sentence end.
If you want to add something, add a fact rather than a discount. Thank you, the caching part was the piece I was most unsure about. That accepts the praise and keeps the conversation open.
And if it genuinely was a team effort, say so as an addition, not a denial. Thank you, and Priya did the hard half.
None of this makes you arrogant. Arrogant people do not worry about becoming arrogant.
You are just letting the true things about you actually reach you.
Say thank you. Then let it land.
– Asael Shinder
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