I can feed off a good compliment for weeks. I need to be careful, because a good compliment can also make me get ahead of myself and then the only thing keeping my feet even close to the ground is the fact that a big head is also heavy.

So what do we do with compliments?

Don’t look for them. I follow Jeff Goins’s blog. He’s like my personal writing coach even though he doesn’t know I exist. I’ve learned tons from him. The other day he wrote that it’s better to be brilliant in the dark than to blow your own trumpet prematurely, switching the light on to your own mediocrity. Let others find you. And let God take his glory. Solomon said it like this: ‘Let someone else praise you, not your own mouth…’ (Proverbs 27:2)

Don’t get all emo and depro and I-hate-myself if someone tells you that you’re awesome. I mean, Jesus didn’t walk around snivelling into his shoulder, ‘Oh… I suck… I’m probably not even the Son of God…’ He knew who he was. And he lived it.

Don’t get silly and flirty. False, self-deprecating modesty is pretty irritating.

Just say thank you. And remind yourself in your heart, ‘What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?’ (1 Corinthians 4:7)

‘LORD, you will grant us peace; all we have accomplished is really from you.’ – Isaiah 26:12