3 Secrets to Happiness: Secret #2 Compliment, Contribute, Condone

The second tool that we’re gonna used that’s used by happy people, successful people, is they complement, they contribute and they condone. The opposite of that is most of us are walking around and aren’t necessarily as successful and happy as we’d like to be. Well most of us are criticizing, complaining and condemning. We’ve got to get those three things out of our life. That’s not going to help you achieve anything. It’s going to hurt you and it’s going to hurt the person that’s receiving it.

If we’re not criticizing, we’re complementing. We all can find something that we like about another person. My daughter was in elementary school and she came home crying, she didn’t want to go to school the next day and she loved going to school. She was sharing with me that she had a substitute teacher that was not the nicest substitute teacher and people had nicknames for her... that wasn’t nice either. So, I encouraged my daughter to not be fake, it didn't’ want her to lie about something, but I encouraged her to find something about this woman that she can complement. I asked her when she went to school the next day to complement her teacher about something; because we never know what’s going on in the lives of another person. So criticizing them and complaining isn’t gonna help anything and surely staying home from school cause you don’t want to interact with another person, that’s not healthy either. So after she thought about it for a while, she said to me that she really did like the jacket that this woman wore. I said perfect! So you go in and the first time you get to see her, you tell her how much you enjoy the jacket and if you can be specific, be specific. Make sure that it’s something you really do like. So she did that and she came home and she was “You know what mom, this lady is so much nicer today after I’ve told her how much I loved her jacket, she wasn’t mean”. See? Now, that may not work as quickly with everybody but it’s certainly a start.

Criticizing and complaining wasn’t gonna help the situation so find something to compliment and don’t make it a fake compliment either because people can see right through that. It has to be heart-felt, it has to be something that you really do and want to compliment somebody over. Now, it may mean that you have to take a minute to think about it but that’s okay too. So you can find something to compliment and then you can contribute.
So I’m constantly trying to drill this into my three children is to contribute. When you contribute people will feel better. We all want to be useful engines; we all want to be useful. So contribute where you can. If you see something you can do even if it’s just picking up something that you didn’t really place somewhere and you put it away, doesn’t matter. Find a way to contribute. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn’t have to be that you have to go out and build somebody a house or join a huge volunteer organization, although those are great ways to contribute. Look for something that you can do to be helpful. In the workplace, there are a plenty of ways that you can contribute outside of your regular job description. You just got to do something and figure out how can you contribute to a meeting, what thoughts or information can you provide. So find a way to contribute.

We’re going to compliment, we’re going to contribute, and we’re going to condone. Some of you might not understand what I mean by condoning. I don’t mean that you tell everybody that you’re okay with whatever they’re doing, that’s not what I’m talking about. Condoning is accepting and allowing people to be who they are. That is different than tolerating. To me there’s a difference between tolerating and condoning. Somebody who’s condoning, they don’t care. I don’t care if my neighbor keeps his lights on his house all year, I don’t care, I condone that. I’m not going to be bothered by it. So, you know it’s to accept and allow a behavior to continue. It’s not necessarily tied to a moral conviction, but could be. I’m not going to dive in to this very heavily but I do want you to think about it. Don’t be so revved up about what’s going on in the news, that’s not going to aid your happiness and it’s certainly not going to necessarily aid in your success, but probably detrimental to your happiness. I see so many people getting so wrapped up the news and they start complaining, and they start criticizing and they start condemning all these people that they don’t even know and it doesn’t really affect their lives. So, let’s start complimenting, contributing and condoning.