COLD, HARD TRUTH ALERT: YOU CANNOT CONTROL HOW OTHERS RESPECT YOU!
How you respect YOURSELF first will feed into how others will respect you. They will test your boundaries and if you cave, they will exploit your lack of SELF-RESPECT and thus THEY WILL NOT give you an ounce of respect.
Personally, there have been so many people that I have allowed in my life to disrespect me. Many of them were family members, some were complete strangers and others have been “friends”. It was not until I stepped up and took charge of my SELF-RESPECT that they were given their walking papers and they were gone. Seriously, no one needs all that negativity and toxicity in their lives.
Another cold hard truth is that I used taking charge of my SELF-RESPECT as a catalyst for CHANGE in my life and you can too.
Learn to identify those toxic individuals that “demand” your respect. Those are usually the ones that the least need or want for your respect but they like “flexing” their perceived power. The ones demanding your respect are more than not hiding something. They want to keep you silent because you are “supposed to” respect these people because of their place in the family structure, workplace hierarchy, or because they have something that others perceive as worthy of respect such as money, power, status, or whatever others deem worthy.
Be better than that and them by respecting yourself first!
Set your boundaries and standards, then those that are “demanding” your respect will see you as not giving it to them until they respect you.
this is not a quid pro quo situation but when someone demands something what is being given in return? Where is the reciprocity when it comes to respect?
However, those individuals will, more than likely, not waste their “precious” time giving you any sense or level of respect first. So off they go to find another individual with little to no Self-Respect / no Self-esteem.
As a leader, it is your mission to encourage others to grow their self-respect and not fall to their knees in submission when someone comes around DEMANDING RESPECT. It does not matter who that individual is and where they are in your life because RESPECT HAS TO BE GIVEN LONG BEFORE IT CAN BE DEMANDED.
REMEMBER: ACTION is ALWAYS greater than WORDS
Get to work,
David Guerra, MBA
author of THE WALKING LEADER