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You are here : home > Values > Respectfulness > What is the importance of self-respect?

What is the importance of self-respect?


Self-respect refers to the amount of respect one has for themselves, how much they perceive themselves to be worthy of respect. The reason why self-respect is important is how respectable we find ourselves to be, influences not only how we treat ourselves, but also how we let others treat us. Self-respect then becomes a core aspect of our behaviour and a crucial aspect of our interactions with everyone around us. Self-respect also constitutes the foundation of all the decisions you make, the thought behind those decisions, how you manage your relationships.

Self-respect also greatly influences your career and work life. Self-respect indirectly influences a lot of your characteristics, traits and the way you carry yourself, which in turn influences the way your seniors see you and assess you, which affects your employment.

In the workspace, if you have high self-respect, you are likely to carry yourself in such a way that commands respect from others naturally. You also come across as a lot more professional when you have self-respect. Another major pro of having high self-respect is that you come across as someone who is self-assured and knows what they are doing, which makes your colleagues hold you in high regard and view you as somewhat of a leader. This also means your supervisors/”higher-ups” are likely to think of you when it comes to leadership positions. This helps you careen your career towards an upward direction and climb the metaphorical career ladder quicker.

To drive my point home, here are some pros of having high self-respect, and why you should invest your time and effort to work on and improve your self-respect-

1. Improving self-respect equals improving strength of character

What is the strength of character? Strength of character is how robust your “character” or image the people have of you in their mind is. Your ‘character’ consists of a comprehensive collection of the traits people see in you that make up your identity/personality. When you have high self-respect, it comes along with a bunch of other positive traits. For example - when you have high self-respect, you are more honest to yourself and are more willing to accept responsibility for the events that unfold in your life, mistakes and pleasant surprises alike, you don’t hold others responsible for happenings, you are also more self-reliant. When you have high self-respect you also respect your beliefs, values and ideals, and hence are more likely to stand up for them and fight for them. All these traits make people look up to you and admire your courage.

2. Path to a better person and partner

While self-respect has a lot of “outward” benefits, changes in your behaviour that lead to others stopping to take a look at you and take note of the kind of person you are, which all starts from “inside” first. Working on improving your self-respect compels you to introspection and self-awareness. This means you are also constantly working on yourself and improving as a person. You become more observant and pay close attention to yourself and the way you communicate with other and the way they communicate with you, you grow more attuned to non-verbal communication as well. This greatly improves your relationships with those around you as well as the person you are in those relationships.

3. You become more content and supportive.

When you have high self-respect and deem yourself as someone worthy of respect and love, you also tend to be less insecure, and instead gro more secure and safe in yourself. You learn to love yourself, and give credit to your skills, talents, accomplishments and value your abilities. And when you feel more secure in yourself, you are less likely to compare yourself to others, and compare yourself to the standard of success others have set and define your standards of success. You are happier with achieving those standards. You are more content with what you have and what you are. And when that happens, when you don’t feel the need to compete with others, you become genuinely happy for others’ success and encourage them to achieve their dreams too.

In what ways is it important to show yourself self-respect?

1. Respect for Your Beliefs And Values

Respecting yourself means respecting your beliefs and the values you hold close to yourself as well. Decide which of your beliefs and value are crucial to you, closest to the core of your authentic self, and stick to them. Try to align everything that you to your values, stand up for what you think is right not just via words but also through actions.

Also, make sure to not compromise or adjust your values to facilitate someone else, they are yours and yours alone. The only time you should be compromising on your values should be when you truly see the value in doing so, and not for pleasing someone else.

2. Respect your body

The mind is only as healthy as the body housing it is. Respect your body and take care of it as it takes care of you. Have you ever noticed how if you have skipped breakfast to reach work early, you can’t focus on work and become jittery? That is just a small example of how the body’s needs affect our minds. We should take care of our body by providing it with everything it needs, maintain a healthy and balanced diet, go out for walks and fresh air, work out and exercise or do yoga - whichever helps you maintain your physical fitness. Get full 8 hours of sleep and drink 8 glasses of water a day. Respecting your body will only benefit you, and help you maintain your mental peace too.

3. Respect your surroundings

Keep your surroundings clean. The messier the place and surroundings you let yourself be in, the less respect you are showing yourself. Make sure the desk you work on is tidy atleast whenever you are done working on it, if not while you are working on it, that way you will always return to a desk that is tidy and puts you in the mindset to be productive. Make it a habit to make your bed as soon as you wake up, you always get to go to sleep to a tidy bed. Keep your home and car clean too. Clean surroundings lead to a clean mindset.

4. Respect your passions

We might have interests and hobbies that those around us might not share, so we tend to keep them to ourselves. But its okay to talk about them and share them. A lot of people would love to hear about something they don’t know, and maybe you might interest someone in one of your hobbies that they might end up sharing with you.

5. Have respect for your words

Speak what you genuinely think. Be honest to your words and be honest to those to who you speak. You owe it to yourself to speak your mind, so try to communicate as openly as you can.

6. Respect your boundaries

Respecting yourself also means respecting your comfort, and uncomfortable you will always be only half of you. So set your boundaries and let people around you know of these boundaries, enforce them and never let people step all over you. Respecting yourself is also making it clear to others that disrespecting you is not an option.

7. Respect your fears and anxieties too.

Our fears and anxieties are the biggest things holding us back. We shouldn’t underestimate them, but also don’t overestimate them. It is understandable to get overwhelmed in the face of something you are scared of or something that makes you nervous, but face it head-on, and keep walking till you are past it. Don’t let fears control what you can or not do.

8. Respect the you that has failed.

Unfortunately, most of us have been raised in a society that treats failure like the biggest crime, as if failing once means no hope for eventually winning at all. But don’t let this erroneous idea get into your head and make it home. Failure is the first step to success, sometimes the only way to know what to do is to learn what not to do first. Success and failure are like that, to know what to do to get to success also means to know which paths lead to failure. So respect the you that has failed, because that is what will help you in the future.

9. Respect your time

The eternal truth is that time waits for no one. Time is the one steadfast constant that continues to move forward with or without anything to accompany it. So respect time, be good to the time you have and in return time will be good to you. Allocate your time properly, manage and execute the things you want to do efficiently, balance and prioritise and never regret the time that has passed by.

10. Respect the advice your well-wishers give you.

There are people around you, and everyone has lived a life vastly different to yours. This means they have experiences, and subsequent wisdom, different to yours. You have something to learn from everyone. So try and listen to and understand, and then emulate the advice the people (who have your best interests in mind) give you.

11. Respect your weak links

View each flaw as an opportunity to improve, to make yourself better. It is better for you to recognise your own flaws and improve on them than to have someone else exploit them.

12. Respect your dreams and goals

Our dreams are what drive us forward, make us wake up each day and go ahead, our goals are what make us face challenges and push through each day and each obstacle in our way. Our dreams and goals then are the source of our resilience, so please respect your dreams and work your best to achieve them and honour them.

13. Respect your needs and feelings

We often deny ourselves the things that make us happy or things we need to make others happy. We might skip dinner with friends to be able to finish that important project at work, or you might lose out on our sleep after a busy day at work because you want to make your mom the dinner she loves. You need to figure out a balance, a way out where you are not constantly phishing what you feel into a box, or pushing your needs to the bottom of your priorities list.

14. Respect the opportunities that might come your way

The best way to respect yourself is to ensure you get to open your wings to their full span. Say yes to the things that come your way, say yes to new experiences and new adventures, step out of your comfort zone and you might surprise yourself.

15. Respect yourself enough to walk away

In a sadly vicious cycle, when we have low self-respect we tend to invite people into our lives who will exploit it against us and in their favour. And because we have low self-respect, we try to compensate by seeking their validation instead. But to respect yourself you need to cut out people who don’t respect you from your life. The biggest indicator of who is not conducive to your growth, is that they will be the first to protest when you start making changes for your growth.

16. Respect your actions

For every change you make for the betterment of the self, respect each of those actions by sticking to it. If your action for self-improvement is to drink water, then respect that action by continuing it the next day, and the next day again, and the day after that too. Respect your decisions, respect the actions those decisions entail, and in that you respect yourself.

17. Respect the positive influences in your life.

The biggest favour you could do yourself is to hang on to the people in your life that are a positive influence, those who truly want the best for you and encourage growth, no matter what that entails. It would be the biggest act of self-respect to respect the ones who taught you to respect yourself in the first place.




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