Purpose Project... final essay
- juliafurst
- Jun 5, 2018
- 3 min read
Self confidence is the fundamental of success. Unfortunately in this day in age, people are plagued with self doubt and low self esteem. How do you compete with the people on social media who are, well flawless. Perfect in every way, and then there's you, too skinny, too fat, too short, too tall. Everytime you look in the mirror you do not see yourself. You see the flaw you are most self conscious about. This society does nothing to tell people “wow, you are beautiful” or “wow, you are so nice” straight to there face, eye contact and all. The only compliments one may receive are the empty ones posted on someone's feed, usually just looking for more likes, or they’re your friend and feel obligated to do so. The two word compliments received on social media are rarely in complete sentences, and what, its expected to believe them?
For our experiment we wanted to record the reactions of people as we complimented them. In this we hoped to be able to conclude on the power compliments had on people. Do people take them half heartedly? Success with our experiment would mean people would take the compliment to the fullest degree and then pass it forward. Although this part of the project is out of hands, that would have the largest impact on the community around us.
For the actual experiment, we decided to go to Providence Town Center and run our experiment outside the school environment. The key to our project was carrying out our compliments in the most genuine manner, as said by Hara Estroff Marano of Psychology Today,“The art of the compliment is not only a powerful social skill; it is one of the most fundamental. You don't need to be an expert to do it well. You just need to be genuine. Compliments are in fact one of the finest tools for acquiring more social skills, because the returns are great and immediate. They escalate the atmosphere of positivity and become social lubricants, fostering the flow of conversation and advancing communication by enhancing receptivity”. In tried to incorporate this into our project by making sure our compliments were honest and were taken as sincere as possible. We wanted to make sure our compliments were not received in an antagonistic manner.
It was interesting how our experiment, showed the differences in people's reactions. After we complimented them, we found that we got one of two reactions, the flattered look, and the uncomfortable look. Either way, one of us performing the sample felt good about giving the compliment afterward. This became apparent after reviewing the footage, even if we received no reaction from the subject, there was an obvious difference in our own mood and we always ended the interview with a smile. This is an idea that I looked deeper into, Margaret Manning of Happify Daily says, “Giving a genuine compliment is an amazing positivity boost! But compliments are not only good for the recipients—they’re good for the people who give them as well. When you go out of your way to say something nice and give thoughtful praise to another person, it amplifies your self-confidence and nourishes your self-esteem”. She continues her article talking about how complimenting people makes them want to be around you and boosts positivity all around. With this said, we hope you will go out and compliment more and more people, because let's face it, a compliment can never hurt someone when said sincerely. Therefore you have nothing to lose. Be an advocate for positivity and pass it forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOrzmFUJtrs
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