Respect is a word that gets thrown around a lot by people who lack self-awareness but that isn’t always clearly defined. This leaves everyone guessing and doing different things that may or may not lead to respect. We sometimes ask for respect from others or we strive hard to be respectful in our relationships but we don’t always ask for it for ourselves. We may find ourselves in relationships where we give all the respect in the world and get little or none in return.
So what creates this uncertain, rocky landscape when it comes to respect? It’s often caused by lack of self-awareness and because people don’t really know what respect is. I simply define respect as loving yourself and others, and thinking and behaving kindly toward yourself and others.
The important thing is for you to define it in a way that works for you and that you can clearly communicate to others. We often do not receive respect because we do not tell people what we need and we don’t take action to educate them. We essentially give other people the power to treat us negatively and not respect us. These patterns keep repeating because we don’t know what else to do. As we begin our journey toward asking for respect it is helpful to define the term. In romance and relationships, respect may be defined as someone allowing us be who we are, to help us and encourage us to grow, to share our triumphs and disappointments, to listen to us and to make us feel great. So how do we find this elusive thing called respect?
A logical starting point in the quest to respect ourselves is increasing our self-awareness and figuring out what we want out of our relationships and how we want to be treated. If we don’t know what we want, then how can we expect others to fulfill our wishes? Think in terms of defining who you are as a person and what is important to you. The second step toward honoring ourselves is to ask for respect from others. This is accomplished by asking the significant people in our lives for what we need. It’s our job to educate others about how we would like to be treated. As you’ve probably noticed, people aren’t mind readers – we have to tell them what we want. Many of us believe that people will just automatically understand how to respect us but, for the most part, people treat us exactly like we show them how to. We get results based on what we put out. If you act like a doormat you will attract people who will treat you like one. If you act healthy and balanced you will attract that kind of people.
What will you do to develop self-awareness and respect yourself and others?
Cheers,
Guy
