Why Successful Women Struggle to Accept Compliments and How to Become a Sponge for Appreciation
Updated: Apr 16
Written by Nathalie Cabart, Life Coach and Energy Healer
Nathalie is a Life Coach and Energy Healer, and a former global qualitative researcher with 30+ years of experience working with women leaders worldwide. She blends cross-cultural insight, deep emotional work, and energy healing to help women in business change their inner narrative and step into their full radiance.
Compliments are meant to feel good. Yet many successful women react to praise with an instinctive discomfort. They minimize it or even dismiss it. “You’re exaggerating.” “It was nothing.” “Anyone could have done it.” Why can recognition feel so difficult to accept, even when it is sincere? The answer often lies in the quiet narrative many women carry about their own worth, a narrative that may not truly reflect who they have become.
Why compliments sometimes “slide off”
Many accomplished women know how to achieve, perform, and contribute. They work hard, take responsibility, and often go the extra mile. Yet when appreciation arrives, it doesn’t always land.
Instead, it seems to slide off like water on a smooth surface. The praise is heard, but it is not fully absorbed. Or even worse, it is rejected as it makes them feel uncomfortable.
During a coaching conversation with one of my clients, she described this dynamic in a way that stayed with me. Reflecting on her own difficulty receiving compliments, she said: “I wish I could be like a sponge and actually absorb the appreciation.”
I found the image striking. Since then, I have often used this metaphor of becoming a sponge for appreciation – someone who can genuinely receive and integrate positive recognition. But for many women, this capacity was never developed.
The narrative behind self-worth
Our ability to receive appreciation is closely connected to the narrative we carry about our own value, the quiet story we repeat internally about who we are and what we deserve.
If that narrative still reflects an outdated or critical self-image, compliments may create an internal contradiction.
On the one hand, someone is saying something positive. On the other hand, the inner voice may still whisper: That can’t be true. They’re just being polite. They don’t really see who I am.
This is typical of what people call the “Imposter Syndrome,” the tendency to believe your success is undeserved and that someday people will realize you are a fraud. (If you want to learn more about Imposter Syndrome, I suggest you check Dr. Kate Atkin’s work, a life-changer)
To resolve this tension, the mind often chooses the story it already knows. What is familiar always wins. And the compliment is simply discarded as irrelevant and non-valuable.
A moment that reveals this pattern
Recently, another client shared an anecdote that illustrates this dynamic very clearly. For the second year in a row, she had been awarded “Most Inspiring Woman” in her local community.
Instead of feeling proud or honored, she felt something very different. Anger. She explained that during the past year, she had actually been less involved in community initiatives than before. From her perspective, she had not done enough to deserve the recognition. She did not feel legit.
In fact, she felt so uncomfortable with the award that she refused to be publicly promoted as the winner. Accepting the recognition felt almost dishonest. As if she were a fraud. And that’s what made her angry.
During our conversation, one sentence revealed the belief behind her reaction: “You don’t get something for nothing.”
In her internal system of values, recognition could only come as the result of visible effort and continuous engagement, which, in her own opinion, she had not done enough of.
The idea that her presence, inspiration, or long-term impact might still matter to others even during a quieter year simply did not fit the narrative she had about herself. So, the recognition had nowhere to land.
The hidden power of unquestioned rules
This kind of reaction is often connected to deeply rooted beliefs we rarely question. In The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, Mindvalley founder and author Vishen Lakhiani explains that many of the rules we live by are not actually ours. He calls them “Brules”: Bullshit Rules, inherited beliefs absorbed from culture, family, or past experiences. I love the concept and often use it in my practice. These rules often operate silently in the background.
For example:
To win without risk or effort is to triumph without glory.
Life is hard, you don’t get something for nothing.
You can’t have it all. If something good happens, something bad will come soon.
When these internal rules are strong, appreciation that arrives unexpectedly can feel uncomfortable or even suspicious. The mind rejects it because it violates the rule.
Becoming a sponge for appreciation
Imagine two different ways of receiving a compliment. In the first scenario, the compliment hits a protective surface and immediately bounces away.
In the second scenario, it lands on something absorbent like a sponge and gradually sinks in. Becoming a sponge for appreciation means allowing recognition to settle inside instead of rejecting it.
It does not mean becoming arrogant or dependent on external validation. It simply means allowing positive feedback to register as information. Not as judgement. Nor validation. A simple piece of information that may help update the story you carry about yourself.
A small experiment
The next time someone gives you a compliment, notice your immediate reaction. Do you deflect it? Minimize it? Redirect attention elsewhere?
Instead, try something different. Pause. Breathe. What if their opinion on you was as valuable as yours? What if their viewpoint was worth your respect and consideration?
Instead of minimizing or discarding the compliment, take a moment to acknowledge their viewpoint as a piece of information, a potential truth, not more, not less valid than your own, and simply say: “Thank you.”
Then allow yourself a moment to consider that the appreciation might reflect something real about you that you have been ignoring until now.
This small shift can begin to soften the resistance many women feel when they are recognized, allowing appreciation to land and gradually be absorbed, like a sponge learning to hold water.
Updating the mirror
In my previous article on the Ugly Duckling Complex, I explored how many successful women continue to see themselves through an outdated self-image formed earlier in life.
The difficulty of receiving compliments is often one of the clearest signs that this inner narrative is still active.
Life evolves. Capabilities grow. Impact becomes visible. Yet the internal mirror we use to see ourselves may still reflect an older version of who we once believed we were.
Learning to absorb appreciation, becoming a little more like a sponge for the recognition that comes your way, is one way of gently updating that mirror.
I also explore this dynamic through storytelling in my podcast Her True Story, particularly in the episode “How to Become a Sponge to Appreciation.”
Because sometimes transformation does not begin by doing more. It begins the moment we allow a new story about ourselves to take root.
Call to action
If this reflection resonates with you, it may be an invitation to look more closely at the narrative you carry about your own value.
Sometimes the most meaningful transformation happens when we question the hidden rules that have quietly shaped our self-perception for years.
If you would like to explore these patterns more deeply, you can learn more about my work and book a complimentary clarity session through Flowernflow.
Read more from Nathalie Cabart
Nathalie Cabart, Life Coach and Energy Healer
Nathalie is a Life Coach and Energy Healer with over 30 years of experience as an international qualitative researcher. After decades spent working with leaders of major global brands and listening to consumers across cultures, she now helps women in business shift their inner narrative, reconnect to their worth, and step into their full radiance. Through a blend of deep listening, emotional insight, and energy work, she guides women to lead their lives with clarity, confidence, and authenticity.
