Self Respect and Self Esteem for Success

Self Respect is one of 2 main ingredients to Self Esteem. Self Confidence is the other ingredient. Self Esteem is more than just liking or feeling good about your self. It's being confident in your abilities to cope with life's pitfalls and believing in your worthiness to be have love, success and happiness.

When I started researching for this article I realized I struggled with believing I was truly worthy of having a good life. I thought I should be worthy, but there was doubt. I thought my needs and wants were of minor importance and I shouldn't bother others with my desires or even with my ideas unless asked. I knew I had trouble with low self esteem for most of my life. But never made this particular connection until now.

Self respect is feeling you are of value. Believing you have a right or worthiness to love, success, happiness. Of deserving to have your needs and desires met. It does NOT mean you feel your rights or desires take precedent over others, but that others needs don't take precedent over yours.

Here are some attributes you probably have if you have HEALTHY self respect:

• You have a realistic, not negative and not inflated, concept of yourself
• You accept your rights and responsibilities
• You stand up for yourself.
• You respect others and their rights.
• You feel connected to others.

Lets take the above attributes one at a time

You have a realistic, not negative and not inflated, concept of yourself

This means you understand and accept yourself 'warts and all'. Acceptance of yourself is not to be complacent or satisfied with the way you are but an acknowledgement of your strengths and weaknesses. You can understand that you have trouble or are great with numbers, reading or mechanical things. You can work to enhance your strengths and reduce your weaknesses if you know what they are. An Alcoholic must acknowledge and accept that he is an alcoholic before working to change it.

You notice I emphasized HEALTHY self respect when I listed attributes. This is because over inflated self respect can lead to a belief of superiority and a trampling of others rights. Well balanced self respect does not conflict with respect for others, it enhances it. If you exaggerate your own rights over the rights of others you are a braggart, a snob. You are probably also lonely because no one else is good enough for you.

You accept your rights and responsibilities

You regard it as normal and appropriate that your needs and wants be met. If you don't respect yourself you often allow your own desires to be overridden by others. You probably follow the saying "Go along to get along" far too often. For a long time I couldn't even tell friends or family that I'd rather go to Burger King than McDonalds.

But while you accept your rights, you also accept your responsibilities. You regard it as appropriate and normal for you to be accountable for your actions. You are willing to take the blame for your own mistakes. This does NOT imply that you take the blame for others too. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

You stand up for yourself.

This follows from the previous attribute. If you accept and expect your rights, you will stand up for yourself. If the waitress makes a mistake and serves you rice when you asked for potatoes, you have the situation corrected. You don't make excuses for her and accept the potatoes.

You respect others and their rights.

You feel connected to others.

Being connected means feeling compassion, empathy and connection with others. Since we are all inter-dependant, we should all feel connected. But we often don't. A lack of self respect often creates a defensive barrier between you and others. One of my defensive barriers was the belief 'I can't get too close to others, because they will ask more of me than I can give. I have so little to give.' These barriers prevent compassion, empathy and connectedness to function properly. Respecting yourself allows you to interact with others without defensive barriers.

If you don't respect yourself, it is impossible to have high self esteem. If you feel like you don't deserve to be happy or successful or to have your desires considered, you don't have high self esteem. After going through the definition of self respect, lets move on to how to develop, build and raise self respect. This involves changing your Self Concept. (article comming soon)

Let me know what you think about this article by submitting a Comment. I'll post appropriate comments. Maybe your comment will help someone else.