Self Esteem 2.2
(Wednesday)
Context:
Respect is important in the workplace and in life. Authentic, lasting respect is earned. Earning others’ respect is not about fear or position, but rather having others recognize your strengths, unique abilities, and quality of character.
What it is: Self-Respect as defined in a dictionary is: pride and confidence in oneself; a feeling that one is behaving with honor and dignity.
Self-respect is defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
Why it’s important: Self-respect in action means not putting yourself down or allowing others to put you down or demean you. The way you treat yourself subconsciously gives others an idea of how you allow yourself to be treated. How you talk and think about yourself can dictate whether or not others show you a measure of respect.
While it is very important for those who will be in a lead or manager role to be able to earn the respect of others by displaying self-respect, any high-performing employee should be able to demonstrate that they respect their own ideas, abilities, and effort.
How can you respect yourself?
Be proud of who you are by accepting all of you -even your perceived flaws and imperfections (everyone has them).
Let go of shame or guilt of any past failures or mistakes. No one is perfect. No one. Even those you respect and admire have made mistakes.
Don’t tolerate negative behavior or speech from yourself or others. You can show respect for yourself by surrounding yourself with people who encourage you.
Know your worth. You know things or can do things that can help others. Do you have a younger brother or sister you can guide? Can you offer support to a friend in need? Know your worth.
Stay true to who you are. While there may be positive traits, qualities, mindsets, or attitudes that you admire in others and want to imitate, let those qualities enhance who you are, not change who you are. Stop trying to be someone else.
Follow your dreams.
Define your values. Be clear on who and what matters to you. If being honest and truthful is important to you, don’t let others who don’t persuade you to change.
Learn from mistakes without beating yourself up. Every mistake or failure is an opportunity to learn and improve.
Questions for reflection
What does self-respect mean to you?
List one or more things that make you respect yourself. Ask a friend or relative what they respect about you if you need help to get started with your list.
Write down your answers and observations in your journal, or discuss them with others.
Victory list
Write a list of obstacles you’ve been able to overcome, or goals that you have recently reached. Select one or two items from your list and write about:
Where you started, and where you are now.
What type of effort did it take?
How did you get to reach your goal, or overcome an obstacle?
Respect Yourself
It is difficult to respect someone who quits - someone who gives up. It’s difficult to respect someone who doesn’t even try.
So don’t underestimate how important it is to appreciate the effort you put into any endeavor. Whether you’re trying it develop positive traits and qualities or completing a task given to you at school or work, work hard at it. Give it your all. Appreciate your progress. If you’ve done your absolute best, and can see your progress, you can respect yourself.
Deep dive.
How do you treat yourself? Does your self-talk demonstrate that you respect YOU?
When you think or talk to yourself, do you often use terms or words that put your down?
Sometimes people will put themselves down without even knowing it. They may make a minor mistake and say or think to themselves, “I’m such an idiot!”
If you constantly put yourself down, you may need to work on changing your self-talk. Have you ever thought or said to yourself: “You’re such a loser”, “No one cares about me.”, “I’m worthless.”, “I don’t matter.” or “You’re a joke.”, or anything similar?
If you speak to yourself in a degrading way that you wouldn’t use to speak to your close friends or family members, you may need to learn how to respect yourself.
How do you treat yourself? Does your appearance indicate that you respect YOU?
First impressions count.
Someone who respects themselves has a balanced view of their appearance and understands when and how to dress in professional situations.
On the other hand, someone who doesn’t care whatsoever about how he or she is perceived may be lacking self-respect.
At work, dressing, acting, and speaking in a professional manner, while still being you, can increase your ability to be successful in the workplace and in life.
How do you treat yourself? Does your health indicate that you respect yourself?
Your health is a key indicator of how much you respect yourself.
What you eat contributes to your health. Getting the proper amount of rest and exercise also contribute to your health.
While everyone has different athletic abilities and nutritional needs, it’s important to make sure you don’t solely focus on academics to the point that you totally forget to pay attention to your health.
Studies show that individuals who pay attention to their health are more productive, resilient, positive, and less stressed than those who do not prioritize health.
You can understand why employees appreciate employees who demonstrate self-respect and take good care of their health.
How do you allow yourself to be treated? Does it indicate that you respect yourself?
Set the tone.
Don’t tolerate negative, demeaning people, comments, or influence.
Constructive criticism from people who care about your progress is beneficial. Getting input from others is valuable. But you don’t have to allow people to put you down and disrespect you. Not if you respect yourself.
Thought of the day.
Respect yourself and others will respect you.
Metacognitive exercise.
For the first part of this week, you were to identify the people to whom you compare yourself the most. Hopefully, you also identified how the comparison makes you feel and understand why you need to compare yourself to that person or person. You can continue that part of the metacognitive exercise.
But in addition, for the remainder of the week, try to notice what you like about yourself. What traits, qualities, skills, mindsets, talents, attitudes or abilities do you possess? Create a list.