What is Self-Respect?
“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Now what does that mean? What does it actually mean to respect ourselves? And what does that have to do with others? If others don’t respect us, doesn’t that mean that they are disrespectful people? So, what does that have to do with us? It’s them and not us!
It sounded excellent but never really made sense to me. That is until last year or so.
I found out that if my house was extremely messy, others (family or friends) who visited me would not treat it very well. For example, they might just leave the plates lying around, not bother taking their shoes off while entering the house and so on.
On the other hand, if my house was really clean, same people would be making sure they took their dishes to the sink, took their shoes off before entering the house, some even cleaning up their own dishes.
Now it made sense to me. If I don’t respect my own house, others won’t either. Same way, if I don’t respect myself, no one else will either!
If they see a messy house, they assume I don’t care about my house and they don’t feel a need to care for it either. Some because of their good habits may still do but there is no inclination to do it.
Even the messiest people coming to my house would not leave a mess, or not as much, if my house was extra clean.
I have friends who are strict vegetarians. In the beginning, people tried to persuade them to try to eat meat but they stood their ground. Now whenever they go out, those same people don’t even go to the restaurants unless they serve vegetarian food also.
That’s what it means to respect yourself.
Another example:
I am also a real estate sales person. Usually I would keep showing houses after houses to people just because they insisted they wanted to see them or just because they were my friends. And these were the houses that they hated but they still wanted to see just in case.
Time spent on that is the time I could be spending with my family or doing something else that I enjoy but I would still go on these showings because they kept insisting. If I said no, they would say that they really wanted to put in the offer this week and desperately need to see these houses. They would also make me feel quite guilty by insisting that they were only looking at houses with me because of friendship and trust even though they had a lot of real estate people in their own family. Needless to say I would take them.
Recently I’ve developed the attitude that if something doesn’t feel good, I don’t do it. So, I’ve actually started referring these people to others. It felt really uncomfortable especially because I’m not used to it. Another big reason is because I’ve been brought up with financial scarcity mindset. So, there’s always a hope that if I sell this house I would get some more money to pay some of the debts off and so on.
I am actually very happy with my decision! And I’ve learnt that this was another area that was contributing to me feeling depressed. More I start to be selfish and avoid doing things that make me feel bad about myself and my life, happier I feel!
Learning when to say no is the key!
Related posts:
- Day 1 and 2 of seven day challenge
- The Lone Walker
- Results of one day no gossip challenge
- Gossiping quotes
- If you can do this, you can achieve anything that you want
- After the caffeine withdrawal symptoms disappeared
- How to love yourself
- How to instill new beliefs?
- Why do I feel tired all the time?
- It’s tough to write while depressed
Tags: self esteem, self-respect
August 20th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I love the house analogy. People tend to treat you as you treat yourself. And I may say you attract friends who agree with your own self-image (I have had that problem in the past).
Self-respect is, in a way, treating yourself in the same way other people would expect you to treat them. You would not (I hope) expect to tell other people ‘You are an moron’ so why do it to yourself?
Equally, I would find it very strange if you forced drugs into someone else or perhaps prevented them from eating. So why do we take drugs or have eating disorders?
The key word is ‘respect.’
August 20th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I think Carla Gordon said “If someone in your life talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you would have left them long ago.”
Really, if we don’t respect ourselves, why would anyone else? Our relationships with others are a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Yup, nicely put.
August 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 am
I really like this post. I had a conversation along the same lines with my best friend. You may attract friends who will constantly put you down to ‘keep you in your place’, because they want to prove they are better than you – which is something my friend was subjected to. Internally, my friend thought that he was ‘not worthy’ of the good things in life and accordingly, his friends treated him that way. Now that he is moving past all his fears and into a better vibrational space, his friend is attacking him. Why would a friend do that? My answer is that his friend wants to maintain control over him. But my best friend finally realizes that he needs to respect himself, and believe in himself. He’s doing well!
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:00 am
Bravo for your friend! It takes a lot of courage to start respecting yourself. Especially if you are used to letting others walk all over you. During this process sometimes you have to let go of these so called friends who’re trying to still maintain control over you. There are enough people in the world that would actually be happy for you to worry about the people who want to keep you down. Thanks for sharing. It’s great to hear stories like these
August 23rd, 2009 at 6:41 am
With regard to friends, I have found that some friends will be with you only at certain stages of your life and will resent you moving on. It is one of the hard lessons in life that these people need to be ditched (or at least put at arms length). I guess the obvious examples would be drinking buddies!
Your true friends however will adapt and support you at every stage because they like you as a person and not what you represent or what you can do for them.
It follows then that some people will dislike you gaining self-respect or success, perhaps it makes them feel inferior.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
At least by gaining self-respect you will like yourself much better
And your true friends will stay by your side no matter what. I’m learning it the hard way as well but at least better late than never!
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I do see that some people dislike that their friends are moving ahead or becoming successful. For example, certain people only like socializing with friends who are making less money than then. As soon as that friend moves ahead, the socializing stops or the taunts begin. E.g. ‘remember when you were nothing’ etc., instead of being encouraging.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
People like that are not really real friends. They’re in our lives sometimes because of history, because we’ve known them all our lives. Oh well.
That’s life! Live and learn.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
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