Ouch. Such behavior is so uncommon you may (thankfully) never have witnessed it or done it yourself. Yet the majority of us regularly do something very similar when it comes to accepting another kind of "gift": compliments.

Even though we should all be offering more compliments, many of us struggle to do so. And yet graciously accepting compliments can be a challenge as well. We're eager to get them and so pleased when we do, but then we utterly fumble their receipt. Instead of accepting compliments with pleasure and appreciation, we look for ways to downgrade, reject, and deflect their significance and value.

Learning how to best take a compliment is pretty easy (even if changing an ingrained behavior takes some practice). You simply have to understand 1) how you dismiss compliments, 2) why you have trouble accepting them outright, and 3) why and how you can graciously acknowledge and accept the praise of others.