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People are putting butter in their coffee. And hey, if you're just craving a new flavor experience, more power to you. The problem is that Bulletproof Coffee, the company behind the trend, is claiming that drinking a mug of fatty joe every morning instead of eating breakfast is a secret shortcut to weight loss and mental superpowers, and now the butter coffee has developed a cult of highly caffeinated, shiny-lipped adherents. So now we have to talk about it.

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Tell me if this sounds familiar: you spend hours upon hours on Facebook or some other social media platform, and yet you feel more lonely and disconnected than ever. You have thousands of “friends” online, but you don’t feel comfortable saying hello to one of them if you pass on the street. And even though you know intimate details about what some person you worked with 10 years ago had for dinner last night, you find it difficult making time to see your closest friends.

Maybe some of this rings a bell with you. If it does, I want to share some information and advice which may resonate as well.

Paul Graham, a legendary tech investor in Silicon Valley, published a piece last year titled Do Things That Don’t Scale. While the focus of that article was how tech startups operate, when I read it, I immediately thought the lessons also applied to building relationships today and a fundamental mistake that many people make when trying to do so.

The article challenged the prevailing wisdom across the startup community that new businesses should focus their efforts on only those activities which can “scale” their business — growing while keeping costs steady (that is, not investing more in order to grow more). In the article, Graham wrote:

“A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist. Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going.”

Graham also used the metaphor of an old car engine which had to be started using a hand crank, before engines came with electric starters. “Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going,” writes Graham. The point is you need to put in the labor to get the crank going to begin with.

What Scaling a Business and Scaling Relationships Have in Common

So what does it mean for a business to “scale”? Simply put, a business that scales can increase its revenues exponentially without an equal rise in costs. Think of software companies like Microsoft or Salesforce or Dropbox. These companies can scale quickly because it costs relatively little to add more customers by selling more digital products.

Consulting companies like Deloitte are the opposite — adding revenues means adding more consultants, which cost a lot more.

Now, what does this have to do with relationship-building? Today, you can use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to “scale” — or build — relationships faster than ever. Post something to your Facebook page or Twitter profile and you can reach hundreds or thousands of people in seconds. Just as a software company has the ability to acquire users quickly, social media allows you to add “friends” at warp speed.

But here’s the rub: in both cases — with startups and with relationships — there are costs to trying to scale too quickly.

Which brings us back to Graham’s article. He took on what has become prevailing wisdom among startups, as well as among social media fans, that scaling is always good. It’s an attitude which says that much of the grunt work of building a company one user at a time can be bypassed by doing things that help the company scale — which usually means focusing on the masses at the expense of individuals.

So here’s what that looks like in the world of social media: people spend hours upon hours on Facebook or Twitter thinking they are building connections when in fact they would build stronger, more genuine, and more sincere relationships if they were to focus on much more simple and fundamental activities that do not scale.

These people are, effectively, hiding behind a wall. They are passing up more difficult work for the easy work — sharing or “liking” photos, retweeting, commenting on someone’s wall. These are activities which can serve a purpose, but they are poor substitutes for the real thing. It’s like saying Splenda is the same thing as sugar, tofu is the same thing as real meat, or Red Lobster is a good place for…a red lobster. It’s not the same thing. Not even close.

Art of Manliness has long focused on the importance of building relationships one-to-one. In an article about how to make friends in a new city, Jeremy wrote: “We can have hundreds of Facebook friends and yet not know the names of the people who physically live right next to us.” Through hundreds of articles, AoM has sung the praises and virtues of slowing down and appreciating one another’s company. (For more, go back and reread the 5 Types of Friends Every Man Needs, How to Make Friends in a New City, and How to Be a Good Neighbor: 9 Old-Fashioned Tips for Getting to Know the Folks Next Door.)

In this article, I want to show you why and how to build relationships that don’t scale. I think you will find that by building relationships the old-fashioned, non-scaleable, genuine way — one or two at a time, rather than devoting your energy to trying to get 10,000 friends on Facebook — you will develop stronger relationships and stronger bonds with the people in your life.

Why We Avoid Building One-to-One Relationships

Why do we tend to avoid building relationships in a one-to-one way? There are a number of reasons. First and foremost, we live in an instant gratification society. Relationship-building takes time and does not offer an immediate reward. If you think about some of your most valued relationships, they probably took years to develop. In an age where you need to communicate in 140 characters or less, we tend to look down on things that go slow.

Here are a few additional reasons why we avoid building one-to-one relationships:

• We fear rejection. Whenever you go out and try to build relationships in the real world, there is a chance of rejection, which no one likes. What if someone doesn’t want to have a relationship with you? When you build relationships using social media in a “scaleable” way, you are more insulated from the sting of rejection.
• We are shy. According to Psychology Today, nearly one in two Americans claims to be shy. During previous generations, there were ways of getting around shyness; we tended to live in smaller, more interconnected communities where we could build up relationships over time. With the shift towards more urban living in larger communities, shy people face much more constant anxiety caused by having to meet more people. Social media can be a refuge for shy people, offering quasi-companionship without the stress of meeting people in-person.
• Laziness. It takes effort and energy to meet someone for coffee, lunch, or a pickup game of basketball. This gets harder as you get older and add a spouse, more job responsibilities, and children into the mix. It’s much easier to scroll through Facebook photos on our cell phone and delude ourselves into thinking that this substitutes for a night out with friends.

6 Tips for How You Can Build “Unscaleable” Relationships

Now, I want to give you some practical tips for how you can build more one-to-one relationships — the kinds of relationships that cannot be scaled. Here are 6 tips for how you can build genuine, sincere “unscaleable” relationships:

1. Take a Genuine Interest in Others

At the core of building relationships in an unscaleable way is taking interest in the people you meet. And taking interest in a person is, by definition, an unscaleable activity. It requires that you drill down and devote your solitary attention to one person.

If you want to make sure your interest is perceived as genuine, then focus on the following:

• Listen intently and ask good questions. Be completely present with the person, by putting away your phone, making eye contact, listening to what they have to say, and asking good questions. Nothing builds rapport more than being curious about the other person.
• Focus on the details. Remember details about the people you meet, such as their hobbies, their children’s names, or their hometown. Don’t expect to keep all of these details in your head. Personally, I write them down using my CRM of choice, Contactually, but you could do it whatever way works for you.
• Remember names. Here’s another detail you don’t want to forget: the person’s name! Remembering people’s names is a fast way to build trust.
• Follow up. Following up with people demonstrates your interest in them was genuine and sincere, and not limited to when they are in front of you. Follow up by sending the person you’ve met invitations to special events, by making helpful introductions, or by sharing resources or relevant information. For example, if I had a conversation where I recommended a great coffee company, I might follow up with an email including a link to the coffee company.

2. Offer to Help People With No Strings Attached

Another core strategy for building unscaleable relationships is to help other people with no strings attached. Larry Benet suggests taking what he calls a connection challenge. “Starting today, for the next 30 days, reach out to 2-3 people a day in your network,” says Benet, who runs a conference and networking group for speakers and authors. “Find out what is important to those people. Find out what they are passionate about.” How do you find out what they are passionate about? “Ask them!” says Benet. “Ask ‘what are you most excited about now?’”

Once you have asked these questions, then Benet says your next step is to find out what is the “most important project or goal they are working on” right now to achieve their larger goal, and to find out if there’s a way you or someone in your network can help.

3. Mix Up Your Routines

My next tip for building relationships in an unscaleable way is to get outside of your comfort zone and do something different and unusual. When we are in our comfort zone, we tend to do things that are easy and cause little friction. When you mix things up, you will force yourself to use the skills of old-fashioned relationship-building.

Your comfort zone could be a social club like the Elk’s Lodge or a regular poker game, or a group of friends you see regularly.

When I was growing up, my family moved a number of times. Each time we moved, I would show up in a new classroom with a new set of kids and have to navigate making new friends.

The experience forced me outside of my comfort zone — without my consent. If it was up to me, I would have stayed with my old friends! But in retrospect, I think it made me who I am today and made me comfortable with making new friends in a new community, even if it was a bit painful at times.

As anyone who has done a hard workout can tell you, pain can be a good thing — it means there is growth, stretching, and new development. So if you find yourself in your comfort zone, mix it up — attend a new get-together, go to a Meetup, meet a new friend for a meal. You never know where it might lead.

4. Reconnect With an Old Acquaintance

One of the best ways to build an unscaleable relationship is by reconnecting with an old acquaintance on a level that’s deeper than reading their Facebook updates. When you get back in touch with an acquaintance from childhood, a buddy from college, or a friend from a prior job, it is easy to pick back up because you naturally have shared experiences or history that are fertile ground for conversation.

For example, a few months ago, I attended my high school reunion in southern California. My feelings leading up to the event were typical of anyone who has ever attended their high school reunion: I was asking myself why I’d signed up in the first place and wondering if it was too late to get a refund.

But it turned out I had a great time. Even though years had passed, many of the conversations felt effortless, because the relationships had been cemented years earlier.

That’s the magic of reconnecting with an old acquaintance — you don’t care about scaling your relationship because you are personally invested in it.

5. Talk to Everyone

A great way to build unscaleable relationships is by making an effort to talk to as many people as you can.

During my 21-day small talk experiment earlier this year, I discovered that making an effort to talk to more random strangers actually brought me more feelings of happiness, in spite of widespread notions that we would all be happier keeping to ourselves. Similarly, making an effort to talk to more people can also help you to build more individual relationships.

A simple “Hello” or “How are you?” may be all it takes to get a conversation started, and then you are off to the races. You never know who you might be in line with at the grocery store or at a department store, especially during the holidays, when more people venture out of their homes. You can strike up a conversation and create a brand new relationship.

6. Take Extraordinary Measures to Delight the People You Meet

In his essay, Graham wrote, “You should take extraordinary measures not just to acquire users, but also to make them happy.” I think that advice can apply not just to start-up businesses, but to the people you come across as well — you should take extraordinary measures to not just acquire friends, but also to make them happy.

As an example, Graham cites Wufoo, a company that helps people to build online forms. When it was just starting out, someone at Wufoo sent each new user a hand-written thank you note. Can you imagine the impression that made on their early adopters?

What if we all took this approach to life? What if we all tried to delight the people we meet?

You may be chortling under your breath at this suggestion. (I can hear you.) But why not? In my experience, it doesn’t take much to delight people, because the bar is generally set pretty low. For example, you could dash off a quick, hand-written note to the next person you meet, or maybe to some guy who wrote a super helpful guest post you just read (hint hint). You may just create a friend and an advocate for life.

Get Started Building Your Unscaleable Relationships

Now it’s time for you to get started. Take some of the advice above and begin building individual relationships. Don’t worry if your system is not perfect. Don’t think about optimization or making sure you are maximizing your efficiency.

It doesn’t matter so much where you begin or where you end up, but just that you get started. “You have to start somewhere,” says Benet. “Just take it one relationship at a time.”

_____________________________

John Corcoran is a former Clinton White House Writer and creator of SmartBusinessRevolution.com, where he shares how to grow your income by building better relationships in business. You can download his free 52-page guide How to Increase Your Income Today By Building Relationships with Influencers, even If You Hate Networking.

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Last week we published an article that discussed why and how to establish family traditions. Traditions offer numerous benefits: they strengthen your family’s bonds, enrich the life you share together, contribute to your children’s well-being, and create lasting memories. For this reason, they form one of the three pillars of family culture.

Today we offer a list of over 60 specific family tradition ideas. You can incorporate some of these directly into your family, or use them as inspiration for creating your own traditions.

Before we get started, let’s cover a few things that will help ensure that your establishment of new traditions will be met with success:

• While it’s tempting to go crazy with starting lots of traditions, shoot for quality over quantity. If you do a couple from within each category, you’re gold.
• Choose traditions that most resonate with you. Having said that, as you review the list, try not to immediately write off some as silly or not elaborate enough. This isn’t only about what appeals to you as a jaded adult, but what will appeal to your kids. If you think back to your childhood, some surprisingly silly and simple stuff was a lot of fun and created great memories.
• Traditions need to be practiced regularly to be effective. It’s easy to throw a tradition out the window when life gets busy and you’ve had a long day. Commit to the tradition and do your best to be as consistent as possible with it.

The ideas below come from The Book of New Family Traditions, from mine and Kate’s respective families, from our friends’ families, and from those we’ve come up with for our own family.

Daily Connection Traditions

Daily Connection Traditions are the small things you do every day to reinforce family identity and values. Without thought and intentionality, your family’s daily “traditions” can devolve into everyone surfing the internet on their own devices. So be sure to incorporate some rituals that bring you together face-to-face and allow you to re-connect each day.

Secret Handshake. Secret handshakes have been used by groups for millennia to distinguish members and non-members. Make one up for your own family. It can be elaborate and complex or simple but meaningful. An example of the latter comes from a family profiled in The Book of New Family Traditions. This family had the tradition of squeezing each others’ hands three times to signal the three words “I love you.” On the day the daughter got married, the father squeezed her hand three times as he walked her down the aisle. “Only she knew that this was happening, a tiny personal ritual lodged invisibly within one of the grandest and most public, and she says it was one of the most moving moments of her life.”

Family Meal. Countless studies have shown the positive influence that sharing a meal together as a family (it doesn’t have to be dinner) has on children. We’ll be dedicating an entire post to how to get the most out of family meals, but in the meantime, consider these suggestions to turn the breaking of bread into a cherished tradition:

• First: no TV, no cellphones, and no tablets.
• Begin with grace. If you’re not religious, have everyone share something that they’re grateful for that day.
• Family news: everyone takes turns sharing something positive and negative that has happened to them during the day.
• “Got any stories?” This is a tradition that Kate and I have had for a few years. Each person is expected to bring something interesting to the table that they’ve read or heard during the day.

Family Prayer. For religious families, prayer is an important ritual. Family prayer doesn’t have to be just a dinnertime thing. You can pray as a family before everyone leaves in the morning, before everyone goes to bed, or both. Our family has prayers at night. Everyone takes turns saying the prayer, including Gus.

Family Singing Time. There’s something about singing that unites humans on a primal level. What’s more, through song, you can pass on your values and cultural heritage to your children. Our family always sings a song or two when we put Gus to bed. It’s something we’ve done since he was an infant, and you can tell it makes him feel comforted, loved (we often sing songs about being a family), and relaxed. It’s been cool to watch him slowly learn the words and start singing along with us.

I really hope that Gus or Scout is interested in taking piano lessons, as I have a very fond dream of one day standing around the piano singing Christmas carols together.

The “What We Learned Today” Journal. “Buy a fancy, leather-bound journal. Each night before bed, every member of the family needs to write something they learned during the day. Parents can transcribe for little children. Entries don’t have to be long or profound. It can be as simple as, “If you touch a turtle, he puts his head back in his shell.” This is a great way to foster a love of lifelong learning in your children.

Surprise Daily Drawing/Note. There’s a guy here in Tulsa who drew little comics or wrote inspiring quotes on the napkins he put in his daughters’ school lunches. Napkin Dad was born. I want to do something like this when my kiddos start school.

Family Hugs. Kate and I try to get in one family hug a day. Afterwards, we usually put in our hands and say, “Three, two, one,” before lifting them up and shouting “McKays!” Yeah, it’s kind of cheesy, but Gus loves it, and the idea is to really drive home our family identity.

Bedtime Story. Children who have parents that read to them regularly typically do better in school and have larger vocabularies than children who don’t. Reading with your child will not only make them smarter, but it’s a great way to bond. There’s something really comforting about hearing your dad read aloud to you. For inspiration, check out this dad and daughter who read together every night for 3,128 days straight until the daughter was in college.

Evening Walks. Not only can walking help solve problems, but it can also strengthen families. Evening walks are a great time to get some fresh air and digest the day’s events along with your dinner.

Family Call-and-Response Motto. When they were growing up, brothers Jim and John Harbaugh (the coaches of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens respectively) didn’t have much. But their father always made them feel like they had everything they needed. To reinforce this feeling, he would ask his boys, “Who’s got it better than us?” To which they would respond: “Nooo-body!” Jim now uses the same call and response to build the unity of his football team.

Weekly Connection Traditions

Family Game Night. Analog games, from cribbage to Apples to Apples, are a fun and cheap way to bond and have fun together as a family.  Tamp the competition down and ramp the laughter up. I personally can’t wait to play Boggle with Gus and Scout.

Movie Night. Let the kids take turns picking a movie to watch, and do an occasional dad’s choice night as well to introduce your progeny to classics like Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark while waxing poetic about how movies were just plain better in the 80s. Have fun with the snacks too – come up with dad’s special popcorn recipe or occasionally take the kids to the drugstore and let them each pick out their own candy.

Saturday Football. There’s something incredibly relaxing and comforting about watching college football with your family on a Saturday afternoon in the fall. Pass down your alma mater pride as you cheer on your team together.

Pizza Night. Everyone loves pizza, and it’s nice to be able to look forward to having it on a certain night each week. Skip the delivery now and again and make your own – allowing the kids to decide how to top their own super simple mini pizzas.

Don’t like pizza? How about Taco Tuesday? We love Taco Tuesday around here.

Family Home Evening. Mormons are encouraged to set aside one night per week (usually Monday night) for Family Home Evening. A typical Family Home Evening includes a fun activity and a short lesson or devotional on some virtue or scripture. FHE is usually capped off with a special treat.

The goal of Family Home Evening is to teach your children the principles and values you want them to carry with them as adults, all within an informal and loving atmosphere. FHE can be adapted by families of any religious stripe or even families who aren’t religious. There’s no formula for Family Home Evening. Just corral the kids for 30 minutes one night a week for fun, discussion, and eats.

Family Vinyl Dance Party. AoM contributor Cameron Schaefer shared a fun family tradition in his post on getting started in vinyl record collecting. On Friday nights the Schaefer family gathers in their family room for a Vinyl Record Dance Party. A family member selects a soundtrack for the night, and they all dance until they collapse on the floor.

Special Saturday/Sunday Morning Breakfast. Lots of families have special Saturday/Sunday morning breakfast traditions. For some it’s pancakes or cinnamon rolls, for others it’s a giant breakfast casserole. Dads and breakfasts just go together, so work on coming up with your own specialty.

Breakfast need not be a solely in-home tradition, however. I take Gus to Braum’s every Saturday morning for breakfast. Pancakes and milk for Gus. Sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit for dad. We’ve been doing this since Gus was about 10 months old, and we’ve rarely missed a Saturday. It’s a hoot to see Gus get all excited about “Breakfast at Braum’s” on Friday night.

Dinner & Grocery Shopping. Every Monday we go as family to a grocery store that also has their own little restaurant. We eat dinner there first and then do our shopping. Doesn’t sound really exciting, but we all look forward to it.

Weekly Family Meeting. Your family is an organization. And like any successful organization, you need to plan, discuss issues, and synchronize schedules. Enter the weekly family meeting. I’ll be dedicating an entire post on how to run a successful family meeting in the future. Stay tuned.

Monthly Connection Traditions

Full Moon Walks. A full moon occurs roughly every 29 days. While you may have gotten used to seeing them, they really are a magical sight – especially for kids who haven’t lost their sense of wonder. Whenever a full moon has risen, take a walk outside at night as a family to have a look at it. Get into the woods sometimes if you can in order to experience the awe of nature at night. This is a great way to get your kids keyed in to the rhythms and cycles of our world.

Box of Goals. An important life skill for your children to develop is how to set and work towards a goal. What better way to teach this than with a family tradition? Get a cigar box or fancy wooden box and on the first day of each month, have your family members write down one goal they want to accomplish that month on a piece of paper and place it in the box. When next month rolls around, take out the pieces of paper and review the goals to see how everyone did. Then write new goals for the next month. Rinse and repeat.

Daddy Date. We have a friend who has three daughters. Ever since they were knee-high to a grasshopper, he took one of them each month on a “Daddy Daughter Date.” Rules were simple. The daughter he spent the evening with got to pick the activity they took part in. He didn’t care what they did. His goal was to give each one of his kids one-on-one time with dad.

The monthly date with dad isn’t just for daughters. You can do something similar with your sons as well.

Family Service Day. If creating a culture of service is part of your family mission statement, put that goal into action with a monthly Family Service Day. Designate one Saturday or Sunday to serving others. It could mean spending a morning at the homeless shelter or cleaning the garden of an elderly neighbor or sorting clothes at Goodwill.

Life Changes/Milestone Traditions

Milestone traditions celebrate events that may occur only a few times, or even just once for your immediate family. But they become traditions as they are passed down from one generation to the next.

New Home Traditions

New Home Dedication. Buying a home is a momentous occasion and thus a great time for instituting a family tradition. Some religious folks hold ceremonies in which they dedicate the home (and all those who dwell in it) to God.

In the Jewish tradition, it’s customary to hold a Chanukat Habayit (home dedication) party. At this gathering, words from the Torah are spoken and family and friends use the occasion to express their blessings and wishes for a fruitful and happy stay in this new home.

New Muslim homeowners will often host a feast in their new house and those that enter are to leave their blessing.

Differing Christian denominations have their own unique new home dedication rituals, but they typically involve a dedicatory prayer and a reading from the Bible. For some ideas on which scriptures to read check out this list. I know many Christian families that will place a plaque near their home’s entryway with the famous verse from Joshua 24:15 (“As for me and my house…”) after a home dedication ceremony.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” Blessing. In the classic holiday movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey and his wife, Mary, give a nice housewarming gift/blessing to a family that just moved into a new house:

Mary: Bread… that this house may never know hunger.

[Mary hands a loaf of bread to Mrs. Martini.]

Mary: Salt… that life may always have flavor.

[Mary hands a box of salt to Mrs. Martini.]

George Bailey: And wine… that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Enter the Martini Castle.

[George hands Mr. Martini a bottle of wine.]

You don’t need to know a thoughtful couple like the Baileys to experience this tradition. Just do it yourself when you move into your home. Make some focaccia maybe, and enjoy it with wine for mom and dad and grape juice for the kiddos.

Mortgage Burning Party. This one is for you Dave Ramsey “gazelles” out there. Once you pay off your home mortgage, throw a party with your family and ceremoniously burn your mortgage agreement. Mortgage burning parties were actually once a common tradition in America, but due to changing mores and the increasing mobility of Americans (thus making it less likely a homeowner will live long enough in a home to pay it off), Mortgage Burning Parties are pretty much unheard of today. I think it’s a tradition well-worth resurrecting.

Family Time Capsule. Bury a family time capsule when you move into what you think will be your “forever home.” Fill the capsule with some of your family’s favorites things, notes, and items that represent the time period. Then open in it up in 20 or 30 years. Make sure you exhume it if you end up moving sooner than you thought you would.

School-Related Traditions

First Day of School Photos. On the first day of every school year, take your kiddos to the front of the house and snap a picture of them for posterity. You’ll enjoy looking back at how they’ve grown through the ages. I remember looking forward to this little ceremony as a kid. It was my chance to show off my cool new backpack and Air Force One high-tops.

First Day of School Chalk Pep Talk. Kids can sometimes be a little nervous on the first day of school. Give them a nice surprise by writing messages of encouragement on the driveway with chalk the night before. It will put a smile on their face when they walk out the door the next day.

Parent/Teacher Conference Note. Whenever Kate’s parents came in for parent/teacher conferences, they would leave a note for her in her desk, telling her how neat her desk was, how nice her artwork on the wall was, and a nice thing the teacher had said about her. Kate says she really looked forward to finding the note and that it was cool to think her parents had been there.

College Acceptance Celebration. One family I know would celebrate their kids’ college acceptance letters by buying everyone in the family a t-shirt or sweater with the school’s logo and then having a barbeque with the university’s fight song playing in the background. The mom would then snap a pic of the whole clan dressed in their school colors, frame it, and pack it in their kiddo’s stuff when he or she shipped off to college. Cheesy? A little bit, but I always thought it was a nice gesture.

Wedding Traditions

Night-Before-Wedding Roast. We have another friend whose family always stayed together at a hotel the night before one of the kids got married. They’d hang out and do a good-natured roast of the bride or groom-to-be. They had a big enough immediate family (5 kids) to make this fun. If your family is smaller, invite close extended family to take part too.

Birthday Traditions

Most families have traditions for celebrating birthdays. Cake, presents, dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. You know, the usual. Below are some birthday traditions you may not have thought about.

First Cake Cut Wish. I picked this one up from Kate’s family. In addition to getting a wish for blowing out the candles, the birthday boy or girl gets another wish for making the first cut into the birthday cake. Two wishes, one cake. Can’t beat that.

New Privilege/New Responsibility Cards. Amidst all the fun and hoopla, remind your kid that with age comes greater power and with greater power comes greater responsibility. In addition to birthday presents, present your child with two envelopes. One envelope is labeled, “New Privilege”; the other, “New Responsibility.” Provide an age appropriate privilege and responsibility each year.

8^th/ 18^th Birthday Time Capsule. On your child’s 8^th birthday have him fill a time capsule with some of the things he likes and a note to himself. Open it a decade later on his 18^th birthday.

Nose Grease. This birthday tradition comes from our friendly neighbors north of the border. In Canada (particularly the Atlantic Coast providences) it’s common for the birthday boy or girl to get ambushed by friends or family members and have their nose greased with butter for good luck. The buttered nose supposedly makes the person too slippery for bad luck to catch them. This tradition is said to come from Scotland. I think I’m going to have to adopt this one as it hails from my ancestral homeland of Nova Scotia.

The Yearly Measurement on the Door Frame. Many families have a doorframe where they keep rough pencil lines marking off the height of their kiddos as they age. Make it a tradition to take the measurement on birthdays.

Miscellaneous Traditions

Hunting Traditions. Our hunter/gatherer ancestors developed meaningful traditions to celebrate the life-giving hunt. While hunting is no longer essential for survival, many families continue to have traditions that surround their yearly hunt. A few include celebrating the first kill by having the new hunter share his harvest with those in the group, the Hunting Beard, and the after-hunt breakfast or dinner. There are many more. I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

Meteor Watching Party. Once a year or so (use this handy calendar) get everybody up in the pre-dawn hours, dress warmly, drive out to a spot where there’s less light pollution, lie down on a blanket, and pour cups of cider or cocoa from a thermos as you watch for meteors and point out different constellations to your kids.

Welcome to Fall Dinner. Usher in the first day of the indisputably best season of the year by having a harvest-y dinner: turkey, stuffing, apple crisp, and the like. It’s something my mom did in my family growing up and I really enjoyed it.

Baseball Opening Day. While football has overtaken baseball as America’s favorite sport, there’s still something about celebrating America’s pastime by attending a game on opening day that resonates with me. It’s a chance to connect with your kiddos over a sport that’s connected generations of American families.

Barbershop Visit with Dad. Every man should frequent the barbershop. So should every little boy. Instill in your strapping little lad the time-honored, manly tradition of visiting the barbershop by making his first visit a big deal. Take pictures of him getting his ears lowered and then take him out for breakfast or lunch afterwards. From then on, get your haircuts together.

Annual Camping Trip. Inspire a love of the great outdoors in your kids by taking them camping at least once a year. If you find a campsite you love, return to it again and again as you build special memories around that place.

Another fun tradition is to pick a day each year that you go backyard “camping” with your kid.

Holiday Traditions

The holidays are the most tradition-rich time of the year. There are a lot of great classic traditions out there from making cookies for Christmas to doing an egg hunt on Easter. Here are some holiday traditions you may not have thought of.

Easter

Easter Basket Scavenger Hunt. Instead of setting out the Easter baskets by their bed or in the living room, have your kids do a fun hunt for them. Leave the first clue by their beds, and have them follow one clue to the next until they find their baskets.

An important note: adding a scavenger hunt to anything turns it into an awesome, memorable tradition. I’m not sure there’s anything more fun as a kid than a scavenger hunt.

Egg Wars. The fun of dyeing Easter eggs doesn’t have to end when you pour out the food coloring. On Easter Day, commence the egg wars. Two people each hold an egg and on the count of three, they hit the end of their eggs together. Whoever’s egg cracks loses; the winner goes on to another battle. You can offer a prize to whoever has the egg that lasts the longest. During the Great Depression, Kate’s grandfather’s family was so poor, that the prize was keeping the other person’s egg.

Halloween

Pumpkinfest. Make the classic tradition of pumpkin carving extra special by finding a nice pumpkin patch that you return to each year, taking a hayride while there, and making a whole pumpkin-themed meal to precede the carving (pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie…).

Tombstone Rubbing and Ghost Stories. Tombstone rubbing used to be a popular pastime with folks. It’s still popular among genealogists searching for info about ancestors. Basically, you just get some butcher paper, place it over the face of the tombstone, and then rub charcoal or crayon on it so that the lettering on the tombstone is transferred to the paper.

To make this activity a bit spookier, visit an old cemetery at night and have a contest to see who can get the oldest tombstone rubbing. (Make sure to bring flashlights!) Afterwards, tell ghost stories while sitting in the cemetery. Spoooky!

Candy Swapping Wizard. This is a good one if you’re not crazy about your kids grazing on their trick-o-treat candy for the next 6 months, but want to do something about it that’s more fun than curmudgeonly. Tell your kids to select X number of pieces of candy they get to keep, and then to place the rest of their booty outside the door to their room. During the night, a wizard comes and swaps their candy for a gift.

Jack O’ Lantern Burial. After serving valiantly on Halloween Night, a carved Jack O’Lantern typically experiences an ignoble end by slowly wilting away on the front porch and eventually being tossed in the trash. One family featured in The Book of New Family Traditions didn’t think their Jack O’ Lanterns deserved such an anticlimactic demise. So they decided to give their carved pumpkins a proper burial the day after Halloween. They have a small patch in their backyard that’s designated as the “Pumpkin Graveyard.” The day after Halloween the family brings their respective Jack O’ Lanterns to the graveyard and offer a short eulogy that goes thusly:

“We are gathered here to pay homage to our dearly departed Jack O’ Lanterns. Throughout their short lives our Halloween Pumpkins have brought both us and our Trick-or-Treaters much joy. We now consign them to the earth where they first came. May they rest in peace.”

All of this is done, of course, with tongue firmly placed in cheek.

Says the mother of this family, “The Great Pumpkin would be proud.”

Thanksgiving

Thankful Box. As they hang out before dinner begins, family members are encouraged to take time to anonymously write down a few things they are grateful for on slips of paper, which are then placed in a decorated shoebox. Later on as the family eats dessert, the box is passed around the table and each person draws a slip and reads it aloud until the box is empty. The fun comes both in hearing family members offer heartfelt (and occasionally humorous) thank yous, and in guessing who wrote what.

Turkey Bowl Football Game. For families that have huge extended family gatherings at Thanksgiving, a morning of touch football is a great way to work up an appetite for turkey and pumpkin pie later that day.

Watching the Lions Lose. No Thanksgiving would be complete without the family gathered around the TV to watch the Detroit Lions lose. It would be like Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Christmas

Out with the Old, In with the New. To teach your kids to live just a bit more simply, to accumulate less stuff, and not to hold onto what they have too tightly, require that for however many gifts they get for Christmas, they have to get rid of the same number of their old toys/clothes. Throw away or donate what they discard.

Glass Wax Stencils. This is a tradition from Kate’s family that we plan to carry into ours. Glass wax is a liquid window cleaner that comes out pinkish and dries with a white frost. By blotting it with a sponge over stencils, you can, as the makers of glass wax used to tout, “turn you window into a winter wonderland!” Stenciling with glass wax used to be popular decades ago, but has almost entirely disappeared, making both the stencils and the wax hard to find. Look for the stencils on ebay and the glass wax at the Vermont Country Store.

Pickle on the Christmas Tree. Legend has it that during the Civil War, Private John C. Lower was being held at a prison camp and was given a pickle on Christmas Eve by one of the guards. Starving, he believed the pickle helped save his life, and after the war he began a tradition of hiding a pickle on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve for his family to find the next morning. Other origin stories for this 19^th century American tradition are floated as well. Nowadays, a pickle ornament is hung on the tree on Christmas Eve and whoever finds the pickle first the next morning gets an extra gift or is promised a year of good fortune.

Countdown to Christmas with Books. There are a lot of fun ways to count down to Christmas with your kids, from making a paper chain to opening the doors of an advent calendar. Here’s a new one I picked up from The Book of New Family Traditions: wrap 24 books about Christmas, and open and read one each night during December. On the 24^th, the book that is opened is The Night Before Christmas.

Run a Marathon Before Opening Presents. The parents of a family we know who are very ambitious, gung-ho about life, and love physical challenges would make their kids run a marathon before they got to open presents. Not individually, mind you! The 26 miles was split between the parents and their 4 kids, depending on age and ability. Quite a way to teach delayed gratification.

New Year’s Eve

Rent a Hotel Room. Staying at a hotel is terribly exciting when you’re a kid. Rent a room on New Year’s Eve, bring board games and snacks, let the kids swim, and have a family slumber party to ring in the new year.

Banging on Pots and Pans at Midnight. The tradition of noisemakers at midnight originates from the belief that it would scare away bad luck and evil spirits. Let your kids run down the streets banging on pots and pans when the clock strikes twelve.

Eating Chinese. I’m not sure why we associate New Year’s Eve with Chinese food, since the Chinese New Year is on a different date, but Kate and I have started a tradition of going out for Chinese food on December 31. Just seems lucky somehow.

If you’re feeling more ambitious, try your hand at making our own fortune cookies and creating personalized fortunes for your family.

Putting Regrets to the Fire. Have each family member write down and then share one of their regrets from the past year. Then throw the regrets into the fireplace to symbolize a fresh start.

Despite the size of this list, there are tons of other great traditions out there – we didn’t even mention all the specific religious/ethnic/cultural traditions that exist! Tradition ideas are limited only by your creativity. Please share your family’s traditions in the comments!

Illustrations by Ted Slampyak

CryptoLocker is a new variety of malware that is genuinely awful. You should be afraid.

Starting now, you should redouble your efforts to live by the Rules For Computer Safety, especially these two:

  –  Never, never, never open email attachments unless you know with 100% certainty that the attachment is something you expected and want to receive.

  –  Don’t click on links to web sites that arrive in email messages unless you know exactly where you’re going. Hover over links to make sure they lead where they appear. One of the ways this is spreading is through messages that look real – fake UPS tracking notification emails, for example.

Got that? I’m dead serious. I don’t want anyone I know to have any personal experience with CryptoLocker.

I wrote about “ransomware” earlier this year. It’s a type of malware designed to extort money by holding your files hostage until you pay money to the bad guys. Although it was always difficult to remove, older varieties of ransomware did not actually damage the files. At worst (which was pretty bad), the drive could be removed and the files could be copied off before wiping the drive.

CryptoLocker goes much further.

When you run a malicious email attachment with the CryptoLocker code, CryptoLocker silently encrypts your files. After the encryption process is complete, the above window appears demanding payment.

Let’s get straight to the bad news. Once your files have been encrypted, there is no way to get them back. The encryption is quite real and quite strong.

It gets worse for businesses.

CryptoLocker reaches across the network and encrypts all files in mapped drives. If you have shared company files in the M: drive, CryptoLocker will encrypt them if it is run on any computer with permission to access the mapped drive. (Reportedly it will not encrypt files accessed through a UNC path – \\company-server\sharedfolder – but most companies use mapped drives for convenience.)

CryptoLocker encrypts files in attached backup drives. If your backups are stored on an external hard drive, there is a good chance that the backups will also be encrypted. The only backups that are safe are either stored on devices that are not attached to the computer, or stored online. Even some online backups might not be completely safe, because the next backup would copy the encrypted files online. Your backup program would have to allow you to restore previous versions of your files, a feature of most but not all online backup programs.

Worth noting: Dropbox, Skydrive, and other file syncing services are not backups. The encrypted files will be synced to the other computers linked to those folders.

The CryptoLocker ransomware demands a payment, typically $300, using an anonymous online payment service payment method. (It’s not harvesting credit card numbers because that might create a trail to the bad guy bank account.)

A timer begins to run when CryptoLocker has finished encrypting the files and presents the ransom note. If you pay the money before the timer runs out, the malware gets the private security key required to undo the encryption and it decrypts your files, a process that takes several hours. If you don’t pay the money before the timer runs out, your files are gone.

As of a few days ago, paying the ransom was actually working for infected machines. The servers run by the bad guys were responding by pushing the required private key and letting the files be decrypted. At any time, though, those servers may be taken down or the bad guys may decide it’s easier to just take the money and run. Not to mention that paying ransom to bad guys is wrong and repellent in many ways.

Most reports say that antivirus programs are not detecting the CryptoLocker malware, or are not stopping it in time. At some point they’ll catch up but as of today you should assume that you have no protection except your own judgment.

I hate to be an alarmist but this one is ugly and widespread. It’s getting a lot of attention in the security community. There are more details about CryptoLocker from Sophos, from a detailed Reddit thread, and from CMIT Solutions, for example.

ONLINE BACKUPS

Bruceb Cloud Backup, or any other online backup service that keeps previous versions of your files, can help restore your files in the event of a catastrophe. This malware is a good example of why online backups have become popular. If you haven’t set up Bruceb Cloud Backup, give me a call or drop me a note. It takes only minutes to get protected. Get more details here.

Be careful out there!

The post CryptoLocker Is A New Security Nightmare appeared first on Bruceb News.

Have you ever met one of those families that just seem to have it all together? Maybe you knew such a family growing up and loved hanging out over at their house – there was such a great atmosphere there that you kind of felt like you were coming home whenever you stopped over. The parents were happy. The kids were all well-adjusted and generally did the right thing. Everyone in the family seemed to genuinely love, respect, and care about each other. They all truly enjoyed each other’s company and had a blast doing things together. Sure, they had problems and struggles like any other family, but they supported each other and rallied together to take care of whatever they were going through. Maybe you joked about them being so good it was creepy – perhaps they were perfect aliens from another planet — but you envied them nonetheless.

These days you’re the dad, and you’re heading a household of your own. Things in your home might be a bit chaotic. Perhaps your kids don’t get along, maybe there’s tension in your marriage, or maybe you just feel like your home life isn’t quite in the shape you want it to be. You think of that fun, warm family of your youth and want what they had, but you don’t know how to go about it. In twenty-two years of school, no one ever offered you a single course in parenting. Maybe you hope it will just happen as the years go by.

As a young dad, I find myself in this position. I want to create a close-knit, fun-loving family and raise children with upstanding character. So I’ve asked the parents of the families I admire what their “secret” is to creating such a tight family bond. They all pretty much say the same thing:

They’re intentional about creating and fostering a positive family culture. 

We typically don’t think of families as having a culture. Countries and communities have cultures, but not families. Right?

Well, in recent decades, organizational experts have argued that cultures not only develop in large societies like countries and cities, but also smaller ones, like corporations and non-profits. Sociologists and family experts say that even individual families have their own cultures.

What’s more, research has found that family culture plays a more important role in shaping a child than parenting styles, and the type of culture a family develops strongly predicts their happiness.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, we need to take a look at what exactly we mean by “family culture.”

What Makes a Family Culture?

To understand what family culture is, I think it’s instructive to see how business management experts define business culture. MIT professor Edgar Schein describes it thusly:

“Culture is a way of working together toward common goals that have been followed so frequently and so successfully that people don’t even think about trying to do things another way. If a culture has formed, people will autonomously do what they need to do to be successful.”

A culture is, in short, a way a group of people think, feel, judge, and act. You can probably sense the culture at the business or organization you work for. Is morale low and does everyone sort of half-ass it and just do the bare minimum? Or is there an unspoken expectation that people always go above and beyond the call of duty and take pride in doing so? Does the employee identify with the company and its vision, or just see it as a temporary gig? Before making any decision, do employees only consider short-term profits or do they also take into account long-term success and even other intangibles like social and environmental impact? What an employee instinctively does – even when the boss isn’t looking — will depend on the business’s culture.

Some businesses have become famous for their positive cultures. Online shoe retailer Zappos has a culture that encourages above-and-beyond customer service. Everything the company does is geared towards “wowing” the customer. To ensure that they only hire employees that will fit into that culture, Zappos has a long and extensive hiring process to weed out folks who aren’t willing to put the customer first. If you’re lucky enough to get a job offer, they will actually offer you $3,000 to NOT take the job. Zappos would rather lose $3,000 in the short-term than hire someone who’s not fully on board with their distinct business culture. The effort in crafting a customer-first culture paid off handsomely for Zappos, as it was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for nearly $1.2 billion.

A business culture like Zappos’ just doesn’t happen. It takes a lot of work. As Forbes writer Mike Myatt argues, business culture is created either by design or by default. Culture created by default tends to produce mediocre results because humans have a natural tendency to take the path of least resistance. If a business wants a culture of excellence, its leader must intentionally create that culture and work hard to maintain it.

As it goes with businesses, so it goes with families. It may seem a little off-putting at first to apply business principles to what we think of as the ethereal, spontaneous bonds of blood kin. But there are definitely parallels between the two organizations that can be instructive, even if the aims and definition of success for each entity differs.

Every family has a distinct way they work together to solve problems, achieve goals, and relate to one another. And just as business culture is created by default or through intentionality, so too is a family’s culture.

Family cultures created by default are just like their business culture counterparts: mediocre. Parents haven’t thought through what kind of values they want to impart to their kids, and just figure that those values, as well as close bonds between family members, will just happen as the years go by. They then wonder why their kids didn’t turn out the way they had vaguely imagined and hoped for, but never articulated or planned out.

Understand this: A family culture happens whether you’re consciously creating it or not. It’s up to you and your wife to determine whether that culture is of your choosing. If you want a positive family culture, you must commit yourself to years of constant planning and teaching. A culture isn’t something that’s created overnight; it requires daily investment. But the payoff is definitely worth it.

The 3 Pillars of Family Culture

So how do you go about creating a family culture? Organizational experts have pinpointed three main aspects:

Values. Values are the foundation of a family culture. Values give a family an overarching purpose and guide as to how each family member acts and behaves in different situations. Positive family values could include kindness, mutual support, respect, sacrifice, hard work, fun, and service. Each family’s set of values will be different from the next and will be shaped by things like education, religion, and family history. Family values can also be negative. In some families, petty competition, resentment, and entitlement are the guiding values. Negative family values typically appear when family culture is created in default mode.

Positive values require constant reinforcement, both through norms (see below), and talking with your children. For example, let’s say your kid knows you’re going out for ice cream later, but decides he wants to go now and starts throwing a tantrum. Operating in default mode, you’d just yell something like, “Cut it out and go to your room!” But if you’re trying to instill the value of delayed gratification as part of your family culture, you’d say something like, “I know you want ice cream now, but we need to stop by and see grandma first. Sometimes in life we want things right away, but we have to wait and finish other things first.” You then send him to his room and have the same talk when he’s calmed himself down. You do this even if he doesn’t seem to be listening, and you do it every single time he has a tantrum that is rooted in the same issue.

Norms. Norms are the spoken and unspoken rules of how a family operates; they represent your values in action. Norms guide how family members interact with one another and with the outside world. Examples of family norms include things like how family members resolve conflict (yelling? passive-aggressiveness? calm, assertive discussion?) and how and if children help out around the house. Norms are conveyed both by example and by intentional inculcation.

For example, if you want a family culture where work is valued, then you need to thoughtfully design opportunities for your kiddos (including your tots) to work and help out around the house. Because we want to encourage this value in our family, Kate and I find ways for our two-year-old, Gus, to pitch in with chores. Oftentimes it takes longer to get the job done with Gus “helping,” but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is trying to raise a child who appreciates hard work and understands the necessity of pulling his own weight in our family and in society.

In the absence of the setting of examples and rules, families will slip into default mode and norms will usually end up following the path of least resistance, devolving into things like incivility, laziness, and apathy.

Rituals/Traditions. Rituals and traditions are a set of behaviors and routines that provide a family a sense of identity and purpose. They provide cohesion to the nuclear family and connection to extended family. Rituals and traditions can be big things like family reunions and special activities around holidays, but they can also be small things like family dinners or game nights. This also includes rites of passage for your children as they go through various stages in life.

As with the other two pillars, rituals and traditions can either be created by design or default. When left to default, you end up with family rituals that feel empty and unsatisfying and don’t bring you any closer — like nightly TV watching or vacations where everyone spends the entire time looking down at their smartphones.

The How to Develop a Family Culture Roadmap

Have you spent much time thinking about these 3 pillars of family culture? Have you pondered what the purpose of your family is and what you think family means? Do you have a clear vision of what you want your family to be like and how you want each member to feel about and treat each other?

Are you a leader in your home or do you just kind of let your family drift along through chance and circumstance?

These are vital questions for a father to contemplate. I know I want my kids to not simply have a vague idea of being part of our family, but to really feel like they belong to something special, and know exactly why it’s special and what the McKays value. I want them to do good and treat others right not because we’re watching, but because that’s just what McKays do.

It may seem that happy families are just naturally happy, but as it is with successful people in any arena, there’s usually a lot of effort and conscious practice going on behind the scenes. It looks easy because they truly enjoy it, and for this reason, they may not even experience it as effort. But, you can guarantee it still takes intentionality. 

With that in mind, over the next few months we’ll be exploring things we can do as fathers to develop a strong and positive family culture. All the suggestions are backed by research. Moreover, the suggestions will work whether you’re religious or not, conservative or liberal. The goal is to simply to provide a framework for dads to intentionally create the culture they want in their family, because an intentional family culture will always be better than one created by default.

Here’s a roadmap of the topics we’ll be covering in the next few months:

• How to Create a Family Mission Statement
• The Benefits of a Family Night and How to Plan One
• Creating Family Rituals and Traditions
• Resolving Family Conflict
• How to Be a Transitional Father

P.S. Just because you don’t have kids yet doesn’t mean you should gloss over this topic. You can sit with a spouse and discuss your values and what kind of culture you’d like to have in the future, and get working towards it right away. You can’t instill positive values in children if you don’t practice them in your marriage first.

_________

Sources:

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

The Effects of Family Culture on Family Foundations

You hand someone a gift and they eagerly tear off the wrapping paper and lift the lid on the box. But as they pick up and examine the present tucked inside, their smile quickly fades. “You know, this watch really isn’t right for me. Here, you can have it back.”

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.

10 Ways Compliments Are Dismissed

Sociolinguists place compliment responses into 3 main categories: Accept, Deflect, and Reject. These categories represent a spectrum, and most people aren’t uncomfortable at either extreme; outright denial seems rude but full acceptance feels conceited. Thus, most people seek what seems like a safe middle ground, choosing a deflecting response that dilutes and mitigates the compliment. They see compliments as hot potatoes that need to be tossed on as soon as they land in their hands.

In The Assertiveness Workbook, Randy Paterson lists some of the different ways we reject and deflect compliments, to which I’ve added a few I’ve observed myself.

1. Ignore

The recipient ignores the compliment, either because he didn’t hear it, or because he doesn’t recognize that he’s being complimented.

Compliment: “You played crazy good today – you were all over the court.”

Response: “Yeah, I’m really thirsty. Let’s stop for some Gatorade on the way home.”

2. Denial

The recipient denies the compliment outright.

Compliment: “You guys sounded so good tonight.”

Response: “Yeah right. We sounded like total crap.” 

3. Arguing

The recipient of the compliment argues against his deserving the given praise.

Compliment: “That was a really profound insight you brought up in class.”

Response: “Not really. Anyone who had read the previous cases would have come to the same conclusion.”

4. Self-Insult

The receiver downplays the praise by offering self-deprecating remarks.

Compliment: “That’s a really spiffy hat.”

Response: “Well I need something to draw attention from my ugly mug!”

5. Questioning

The receiver questions the giver’s judgment, taste, etc. in offering the compliment.

Compliment: “Your photography is definitely the best exhibit here.”

Response: “Are you kidding? You must not have gone to very many art shows in your life.”

6. Narrowing

The receiver whittles down a broader compliment into a smaller one.

Compliment: “You’re looking really dashing tonight.”

Response: “This tie can make any suit look good.”

7. Boomerang

In response to a compliment, the receiver fires one back.

Compliment: “That is one sweet ‘stache!”

Response: “Well that’s a heck of a manly beard you’ve got there!”

8. Reassurance

The receiver has trouble accepting the compliment and seeks confirmation.

Compliment: “Your speech was incredibly convincing.”

Response: “Do you really think so? I felt like I was floundering out there.”

9. De-Value

The recipient suggests that the thing being complimented isn’t as great as the complimenter is suggesting.

Compliment: “That’s a really handsome sweater.”

Response: “It’s so old. I’ve had it since high school.”

10. Credit Transfer

The recipient transfers the praise to others.

Compliment: “I think that was the best dance we’ve ever had.”

Response: “It was really Jill who did all the work and made it happen.”

Why We Deflect Compliments

Paterson gives the following reasons for why people struggle to fully accept a compliment, to which I’ve again added a couple reasons I also think bear mentioning.

Fear of being seen as conceited. This is by far the most common reason people deflect a compliment. They worry that by agreeing with someone else’s praise of them, they are essentially praising themselves and thus being smug.

The need to restore “balance.” Since a compliment is a positive act, you may feel a psychological need to balance things out by either negating the praise through deflection, or by quickly returning the compliment.

The desire to avoid “indebtedness.” This is the worry that if someone does something nice for you like offering a compliment, you will then “owe” them something nice in return and will thus be indebted to them in some way.

Having low self-esteem. If someone says something nice about you that you don’t believe about yourself, your immediate reaction will be to deny or disbelieve it. You can’t integrate the complimenter’s positive view of you into your own negative one, so you look for ways to find their assessment faulty – i.e., they missed the mistakes you made or they don’t have good judgment.

Inability to be assertive. Guys who struggle with being assertive often find accepting compliments to be a struggle. They have a hard time taking ownership of their positive qualities and feel like acknowledging praise isn’t something a “nice guy” would do.

Suspicion of motives. You may reject someone’s compliments if you’re suspicious that they’re just trying to flatter you and butter you up for some reason. This suspicion may be legitimate or it may come from an overly cynical worldview and be rooted in trust issues.

Desire to look even better. People will sometimes use false modesty as a way of trying to make themselves look even better. For example, Bob compliments Jake on giving a top-notch presentation, and Jake, who actually spent a few dozen hours preparing it, says, “Oh, it was just something I threw together.” Now Bob is thinking, “Wow, if he just threw that together, imagine what he could do if he spent a lot of time on something!” Alternatively, someone may seek to add modesty to the other qualities they’re being complimented on. So Mike tells Andy, “I really appreciate how thorough you made this report.” To which Andy responds, “It was nothing. Just doing my job.” Andy may want Mike to think, “He’s not only a diligent employee, but so humble to boot!”

Why You Should Graciously and Fully Accept Compliments

Sociolinguists have found that Americans respond to compliments with a deflecting response a whopping two-thirds of the time. While this kind of response may be popular, it’s not very smart or even polite. This is an area where you should definitely try to break the mold of the mainstream. Here’s why.

Denial and deflection insults the giver. When someone offers you a compliment, they’re saying that they’ve observed and assessed a praiseworthy quality in you. When you deflect or deny that praise, you’re basically contradicting them; you’re saying that they don’t have good judgment, discernment, or taste, or that they’re insincere – that they don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re returning their kind words with an insult.

Denial and deflection make the giver feel uncomfortable. When we dismiss a compliment because it makes us uncomfortable, we simply transfer that discomfort to the giver. Not only do you insult them, but as Paterson puts it, rejecting a compliment often makes the giver feel “awkward, uncomfortable, stupid, or frustrated.” Where do they go from there? They’re now stuck with the tiresome task of offering reassurance of their sincerity…”No I really do think so…”

Be a man and eat the discomfort yourself instead of tossing it back like a hot potato.

Denial and deflection decrease the likelihood of someone complimenting you again. When you always wave off people’s compliments, eventually they won’t bother to offer them at all anymore.

Denial and deflection diminishes your value. A compliment shows that someone sees value in you. When you dismiss those compliments you’re telling them that either you do not have the qualities they thought you did, or that you’re so insecure you can’t even recognize and/or acknowledge that you do. Either way, it diminishes your value in their eyes. This makes you unattractive to the ladies who like a man to be confident. It also isn’t impressive to your employer. If you’re always telling your boss that so-and-so is really the one who deserves all the credit for the success on a project, why should they give you a raise or even keep you around?

You lose out on the good feeling that comes with a compliment. Getting a nice compliment can make you feel great. But when you deflect and devalue the compliment instead of absorbing it, you also deflect the positive boost it could have given your self-esteem.

Boomerang compliments aren’t usually sincere. You may think that always responding to a compliment with one of your own is polite, but it’s not. A boomerang compliment signals that instead of listening to and absorbing someone’s praise, you were busy formulating your own compliment. And because people know it’s a knee-jerk behavior that’s designed to mitigate your own discomfort, that it’s more about you than it is about them, it doesn’t register as sincere. It’s far better to offer your own compliment at another, appropriate time, so that it comes off as spontaneous and authentic, rather than coerced. There are exceptions to this rule, of course (see below).

How to Accept a Compliment

The first step in quitting the faux modesty of the compliment deflection routine is to realize that fully accepting compliments does not make you conceited. You didn’t come up with the praise yourself, someone else did! You’re just confirming another person’s assessment, and again, it’s more polite to accept and appreciate their judgment rather than to contradict it.

Second, it’s okay to let yourself feel proud of something you did well. A little pride need not involve an inflated sense of your accomplishments or worthy qualities – just an honest assessment of what you did. It’s quite possible to be modest, while still being grateful and gracious.

So what’s the best response to a compliment? Get ready for it…”Thank you.” That’s it. There’s never a situation where a simple, unadorned thank you won’t work.

That being said, sometimes it’s more comfortable and quite appropriate to offer a follow-up to your “thank you,” or an amplifier that shows just how much the compliment meant to you.

Appropriate follow-ups to “Thank you”:

• “I really enjoyed it.” “I’m glad it worked out so well.” If you feel uncomfortable just leaving it at “thank you,” try a neutral follow-up statement.
• “It couldn’t have happened without Jason’s help.” Now, giving a knee-jerk response in which you deny all credit to yourself and transfer it to others is faux modesty. But, when other people really do deserve some credit for the things you’re being praised for, it’s appropriate to mention those folks, after accepting credit for your own role.
• “I am happy I could help.” This is a good alternative to the “Just doing my job” deflection. Maybe you were just doing your job, but don’t rebuff and deny someone’s desire to show their appreciation for you. Instead, offer a “thank you” and tell them you’re happy you could be of assistance.
• “You know, you also played great tonight; nice job!” The boomerang compliment can be appropriate when it’s truly sincere — praise you would have given anyway — and especially when you won’t see the person again (this is often the case in competition situations). Just be sure to offer your compliment after you’ve fully accepted the one you’ve been given.

If a compliment is particularly heartwarming or special to you, there’s nothing wrong with following up your “thank you” with an amplifier that tells the giver what the compliment means to you, how it makes you feel, or why you value it:

• “That really means a lot.”
• “I really appreciate you noticing that. No one ever has before.”
• “I was feeling really down and this is just the encouragement I need to keep going.”

Now go forward and offer many more compliments to others and acknowledge and accept the ones that come your way with class!

Editor’s note: The excerpt below comes from a book published in 1875: A Gentleman’s Guide to Etiquette by Cecil B. Hartley. Hartley’s rules may be over 100 years old, but they’re just as true today as they ever were. There are some real gems here — some of which truly gave me a chuckle.

1. Even if convinced that your opponent is utterly wrong, yield gracefully, decline further discussion, or dexterously turn the conversation, but do not obstinately defend your own opinion until you become angry…Many there are who, giving their opinion, not as an opinion but as a law, will defend their position by such phrases, as: “Well, if I were president, or governor, I would,” — and while by the warmth of their argument they prove that they are utterly unable to govern their own temper, they will endeavor to persuade you that they are perfectly competent to take charge of the government of the nation.

2. Retain, if you will, a fixed political opinion, yet do not parade it upon all occasions, and, above all, do not endeavor to force others to agree with you. Listen calmly to their ideas upon the same subjects, and if you cannot agree, differ politely, and while your opponent may set you down as a bad politician, let him be obliged to admit that you are a gentleman.

3. Never interrupt anyone who is speaking; it is quite rude to officiously supply a name or date about which another hesitates, unless you are asked to do so. Another gross breach of etiquette is to anticipate the point of a story which another person is reciting, or to take it from his lips to finish it in your own language. Some persons plead as an excuse for this breach of etiquette, that the reciter was spoiling a good story by a bad manner, but this does not mend the matter. It is surely rude to give a man to understand that you do not consider him capable of finishing an anecdote that he has commenced.

4. It is ill-bred to put on an air of weariness during a long speech from another person, and quite as rude to look at a watch, read a letter, flirt the leaves of a book, or in any other action show that you are tired of the speaker or his subject.

5. In a general conversation, never speak when another person is speaking, and never try by raising your own voice to drown that of another. Never assume an air of haughtiness, or speak in a dictatorial manner; let your conversation be always amiable and frank, free from every affectation.

6. Never, unless you are requested to do so, speak of your own business or profession in society; to confine your conversation entirely to the subject or pursuit which is your own specialty is low-bred and vulgar. Make the subject for conversation suit the company in which you are placed. Joyous, light conversation will be at times as much out of place as a sermon would be at a dancing party. Let your conversation be grave or gay as suits the time or place.

7. In a dispute, if you cannot reconcile the parties, withdraw from them. You will surely make one enemy, perhaps two, by taking either side, in an argument when the speakers have lost their temper.

8. Never, during a general conversation, endeavor to concentrate the attention wholly upon yourself. It is quite as rude to enter into conversation with one of a group, and endeavor to draw him out of the circle of general conversation to talk with you alone.

9. A man of real intelligence and cultivated mind is generally modest. He may feel when in everyday society, that in intellectual acquirements he is above those around him; but he will not seek to make his companions feel their inferiority, nor try to display this advantage over them. He will discuss with frank simplicity the topics started by others, and endeavor to avoid starting such as they will not feel inclined to discuss. All that he says will be marked by politeness and deference to the feelings and opinions of others.

10. It is as great an accomplishment to listen with an air of interest and attention, as it is to speak well. To be a good listener is as indispensable as to be a good talker, and it is in the character of listener that you can most readily detect the man who is accustomed to good society.

11. Never listen to the conversation of two persons who have thus withdrawn from a group. If they are so near you that you cannot avoid hearing them, you may, with perfect propriety, change your seat.

12. Make your own share in conversation as modest and brief as is consistent with the subject under consideration, and avoid long speeches and tedious stories. If, however, another, particularly an old man, tells a long story, or one that is not new to you, listen respectfully until he has finished, before you speak again.

13. Speak of yourself but little. Your friends will find out your virtues without forcing you to tell them, and you may feel confident that it is equally unnecessary to expose your faults yourself.

14. If you submit to flattery, you must also submit to the imputation of folly and self-conceit.

15. In speaking of your friends, do not compare them, one with another. Speak of the merits of each one, but do not try to heighten the virtues of one by contrasting them with the vices of another.

16. Avoid, in conversation all subjects which can injure the absent. A gentleman will never calumniate or listen to calumny.

17. The wittiest man becomes tedious and ill-bred when he endeavors to engross entirely the attention of the company in which he should take a more modest part.

18. Avoid set phrases, and use quotations but rarely. They sometimes make a very piquant addition to conversation, but when they become a constant habit, they are exceedingly tedious, and in bad taste.

19. Avoid pedantry; it is a mark, not of intelligence, but stupidity.

20. Speak your own language correctly; at the same time do not be too great a stickler for formal correctness of phrases.

21. Never notice it if others make mistakes in language. To notice by word or look such errors in those around you is excessively ill-bred.

22. If you are a professional or scientific man, avoid the use of technical terms. They are in bad taste, because many will not understand them. If, however, you unconsciously use such a term or phrase, do not then commit the still greater error of explaining its meaning. No one will thank you for thus implying their ignorance.

23. In conversing with a foreigner who speaks imperfect English, listen with strict attention, yet do not supply a word, or phrase, if he hesitates. Above all, do not by a word or gesture show impatience if he makes pauses or blunders. If you understand his language, say so when you first speak to him; this is not making a display of your own knowledge, but is a kindness, as a foreigner will be pleased to hear and speak his own language when in a strange country.

24. Be careful in society never to play the part of buffoon, for you will soon become known as the “funny” man of the party, and no character is so perilous to your dignity as a gentleman. You lay yourself open to both censure and bad ridicule, and you may feel sure that, for every person who laughs with you, two are laughing at you, and for one who admires you, two will watch your antics with secret contempt.

25. Avoid boasting. To speak of your money, connections, or the luxuries at your command is in very bad taste. It is quite as ill-bred to boast of your intimacy with distinguished people. If their names occur naturally in the course of conversation, it is very well; but to be constantly quoting, “my friend, Gov. C,” or, “my intimate friend, the president,” is pompous and in bad taste.

26. While refusing the part of jester yourself, do not, by stiff manners, or cold, contemptuous looks, endeavor to check the innocent mirth of others. It is in excessively bad taste to drag in a grave subject of conversation when pleasant, bantering talk is going on around you. Join in pleasantly and forget your graver thoughts for the time, and you will win more popularity than if you chill the merry circle or turn their innocent gayety to grave discussions.

27. When thrown into the society of literary people, do not question them about their works. To speak in terms of admiration of any work to the author is in bad taste; but you may give pleasure, if, by a quotation from their writings, or a happy reference to them, you prove that you have read and appreciated them.

28. It is extremely rude and pedantic, when engaged in general conversation, to make quotations in a foreign language.

29. To use phrases which admit of a double meaning, is ungentlemanly.

30. If you find you are becoming angry in a conversation, either turn to another subject or keep silence. You may utter, in the heat of passion, words which you would never use in a calmer moment, and which you would bitterly repent when they were once said.

31. “Never talk of ropes to a man whose father was hanged” is a vulgar but popular proverb. Avoid carefully subjects which may be construed into personalities, and keep a strict reserve upon family matters. Avoid, if you can, seeing the skeleton in your friend’s closet, but if it is paraded for your special benefit, regard it as a sacred confidence, and never betray your knowledge to a third party.

32. If you have traveled, although you will endeavor to improve your mind in such travel, do not be constantly speaking of your journeyings. Nothing is more tiresome than a man who commences every phrase with, “When I was in Paris,” or, “In Italy I saw…”

33. When asking questions about persons who are not known to you, in a drawing-room, avoid using adjectives; or you may enquire of a mother, “Who is that awkward, ugly girl?” and be answered, “Sir, that is my daughter.”

34. Avoid gossip; in a woman it is detestable, but in a man it is utterly despicable.

35. Do not officiously offer assistance or advice in general society. Nobody will thank you for it.

36. Avoid flattery. A delicate compliment is permissible in conversation, but flattery is broad, coarse, and to sensible people, disgusting. If you flatter your superiors, they will distrust you, thinking you have some selfish end; if you flatter ladies, they will despise you, thinking you have no other conversation.

37. A lady of sense will feel more complimented if you converse with her upon instructive, high subjects, than if you address to her only the language of compliment. In the latter case she will conclude that you consider her incapable of discussing higher subjects, and you cannot expect her to be pleased at being considered merely a silly, vain person, who must be flattered into good humor.

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