Misha Thomas and I talked for the entire weekend.
Hours spent walking and baking under the turgid Austrian sun.
Hitting the cobblestones, taking in the architecture, meandering through galleries, but the focus was not on this wonderful city.
The focus was on a powerful Socratic discourse.
Misha told me I was his teacher and mentor, but the entire time he was teaching me.
Speaking with Misha was like reading a book, one of those thick Russian ones, the pages curling under the weight of understanding the human condition.
I learnt a lot from Misha and I’ll be writing up everything we discussed to the best of my ability, but today I’m thinking about one golden nugget.
Accept praise and compliments as calling.
Most people don’t handle praise well.
If you’re like me, you may fall pray to mock-modesty.
- Refuse the compliment.
- Try to balance the books by giving yourself an insult.
- Turn the light back on the person who complimented you.
According to Aristotle, this behaviour is a vice.
Mock-modesty is the extreme of pride (the other extreme being boastfulness) and it is undesirable as a character trait.
Some people get flustered when receiving a compliment.
They’ll blush, fumble their words, shake their head, stammer awkward words of thanks.
But there’s an art to accepting compliments.
There’s also a price to pay, an obligation, when receiving praise.
Here’s how Misha Thomas handles the art of receiving praise:
He looks you dead in the eye, connecting with you as a human, connecting with you as one should who gave a gift to another, he pauses to take you in, appreciate you, and he sincerely, genuinely, from his heart says, “thank you.”
This is a thank you that means something.
He is not thanking you as a courtesy because you gave a compliment.
This is not a cursory thanks because society dictates it.
This is him thanking you for being you and being with him and for giving him a gift.
What’s the price you pay when receiving praise?
The price is you treat praise as calling.
This humbles you.
This eradicates awkwardness.
Just this one mindset will completely shift your behaviour.
You’ll hold your head high.
Feelings of nobility and honour will wash over you.
You’ll naturally thank the person who complimented you in a sincere way.
And then you have to live up to it.
Misha and I visited the Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna together.
Frankl bound us together.
Frankl was the impetus that kicked off Misha’s trip around Europe.
So it was only fitting we should visit the great man’s former office together.
And you know what he said to me in that museum?
He said he sees Frankl in me.
Why does Misha give such heavy compliments?
Because, having established and accepted the premise that praise is calling, he now wishes to embolden and ennoble others to do great things.
The only reason I even applied for Oxford University during my teenage years is because a handful of teachers saw the best in me.
When Sandra McCurdy, my Religious Studies teacher, asked me what I’ll do after secondary school, I told her I was going to work in a warehouse.
She became irate.
The kind of shock and anger one gets for those they love.
“How does someone who reads Schopenhauer go and work in a warehouse?”
Then she took me aside and for the first time in my life it felt like aiming high was the correct course of living.
“No,” she said. “You will go to Oxford.”
She told me what to do.
She told me as though it were my calling.
She said I need to do two things with my life.
Go to Oxford and help others in need.
How often do you receive praise on such levels?
How often do you have people telling you to go to one of the greatest universities in the world?
How often do you have people telling you they see Viktor Frankl in you?
What do you do with that?
To ignore and disregard such praise is vulgar.
It’s rude.
It’s a waste.
The only way you can repay such kind souls who give you those sorts of compliments is by living up to them and striving with all of your being to be the best you can be.
From now on, take praise as calling.
And not only that, give others true, sincere praise that they feel obligated to accept as calling.
See the great in others.
And overshoot the mark.
If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him […] if we seem to be idealists and we are overestimating, overrating man […] you know what happens? We promote him to what he really can be.
This reminds me of Frankl’s lecture where he uses flying a plane as a metaphor – if you want to get to one location, you actually have to aim much higher because of the wind.
So will I become the next Viktor Frankl?
A resounding no.
But imagine what one could be if they aimed after that lofty ideal and failed.
Even falling short would result in you becoming a wonderful human being.
What I write here was just one nugget from my conversation with Misha Thomas, a conversation still ongoing and that I pray will continue long into the future.
You can check out Misha Thomas’ writings over at Quora here.
I will be working hard to make sure Misha gets his own writing out in the public more.
We want him to speak in a capacity that could reach the whole world.
What form should that take? Video? Podcast? Articles?
All three and more hopefully.
So watch this space, as we’re going to bring him further into the light so he can be a light unto the world. And I’ll be writing up more of what I learnt from Misha.
Read Part 2 here:
You have experienced Misha as I have. I would love your description of a compliment as a calling. I will be following you. Misha does need to have a blog, and a TED talk, and a Moth story performance, etc. So do you.
Thank you, Miriam. A Misha TED talk would be fantastic!