In the past 6 months, I’ve had a number of people describe me in ways I had never thought of myself. Each time it happened it was in the most casual of manners, just a thought or observation thrown into the flow of conversation and just as quickly gone. Each time it happened I was just as caught off guard as the time before it (and the picture above is a time someone said something surprising and funny to me and my facial response was caught on camera, I added here to provide you with an idea of what I looked like when I heard what these lovely people had to say about me).

It got me thinking and I realized that this is one of the beauties of having people in our lives. No matter how long they stay or how quickly the pass through, for that length of time they can and will provide insight into ourselves. An odd concept, isn’t it? That someone else can make us realize things about ourselves that we’d never thought of or spent too much time considering? However odd it may be, though, it happens. Take my experience for example, if you can’t think of your own off the top of your head: These people were able to (in individual conversations, so it’s not like this was one random event) allow me to see myself how they see me. I must say, it’s an unique experience because, for the most part, I tend to have an idea of how other people see me, yet these people managed to surprise me, shock me even.

They described me as selfless, kindhearted, logical, good at giving advice, extroverted, and a better person than [whoever said it]. I can say that “logical” made sense to me and “good at giving advice” wasn’t out of the question since people tend to ask it of me and do so more than once, but the rest of these descriptions? I never would have even ventured to describe myself as such. For instance, in one of those ice breaker games that we are inevitably forced to participate in at some point in our lives, if someone had instructed me to, “Describe yourself in a word or a short phrase,” the descriptions that came to my mind (strong-minded, loyal, brutally honest) would have taken me down a long list before reaching these surprising descriptions of myself – if ever – which is why they took me by such surprise. But to know that these people in my life, who mean so much to me, think of me in such positive ways gives me hope and comfort that maybe they can see things about me that I don’t or can’t always see in myself and that maybe I’m doing a better job at being a better person than I’d thought. Either way, these were some of the best compliments I have ever received and mean even more to me than they’ll ever know.

Now, I urge you to think to yourself about a time when someone described you in a surprising manner, in a way that made you go “hmmm” and see yourself in a different light. Perhaps it will give you a much needed confidence boost or learn something about yourself you never knew or maybe it will just give you another attribute to use in those god-awful ice breakers.