Respect yourself and others will respect you. ~ Confucius

The ultimate power one can own is the power to rule oneself. ~ Genevieve Behrend - Your invisible power. Never a true word spoken. Do you give yourself enough respect to warrant getting it from others?

Too many times we relinquish the role of taking responsibility for ourselves and who we become. What it often amounts to is a lack of self respect. Self respect is not just about pride in how you dress, look etc. Self respect is also about conducting yourself in a manner befitting your best self. Taking total ownership of the present and the future you.

It is about taking care of your physical and mental health, loving yourself enough to do what is right for you. Looking your best, feeling your best and ensuring that no matter how hard things are, you respect yourself enough to keep going, as you are worth it. Until you know your worth no one else will.

If you exude confidence and be an example of greatness, it will rub off on those around you. They will believe in you too. I am not talking about arrogance, I am talking about carrying yourself with confidence and doing so while maintaining respect for others.

We sometimes wonder why people do not treat us the way we think they should. Why our expectations are not met. However have you taken the time to consider it may be because you allow it?

Do you ever demonstrate how you should be treated? If you come across as someone that holds themself in high regard, takes care of business and has it together, people will treat you accordingly. They will feel compelled to even if they don't want to.

We may have someone in our life that fails us, or treats us in a way we did not expect. How you react to that is very important. If it does not bode well with you, how do you manage that situation? Do you stand up and tell them or do you let them do it time and time again? If your expectations are realistic (and we all know we can have unrealistic expectations on others that are just unfair), you can simply take them aside and respectfully explain that it is not appreciated or you can feel sorry for yourself and let it continue?

Guaranteed if you approach them in a respectful manner and explain that you deserve better treatment, they will discover a respect for you that clearly was lacking before. In saying that, there are some that just do not care and they repeatedly disrespect you for their own reasons. Respecting yourself is not accepting this.

There are so many examples I could recite around how we allow ourselves to be disrespected. However on the flip side we are showing a lack of self respect if we continually allow it to happen. You need to respect yourself to get it in return.

Blessings