If you have ever struggled with low self esteem, you know the emotional pain that comes along with it. The ugly cycle of self destruction starts with a poor self image and a lack of self respect.
When you see yourself as something much less than the amazing person you truly are, it’s easy to make decisions that are disrespectful of yourself. And when you don’t respect yourself, you feel even worse about yourself. And as you feel worse about yourself, you disrespect yourself even more. I could keep going but I think you get the point. Self respect is a critical ingredient in the recipe for improved self esteem.
The guide below is not a quick fix. There’s nothing here that will “fix” your self image overnight. In fact, there is nothing anywhere that will do such a thing. You shouldn’t be surprised though. That’s not what self improvement is about anyway.
What you will find here is good, practical advice that will help tremendously once you’re serious about changing your outlook on yourself, building self respect, improving your level of self confidence and self love.
So are you ready to genuinely improve your perspective on yourself?
Building Self Respect for Whom?
It’s difficult to fully love and respect yourself when you hardly know yourself, so take the time to truly decide who you are. There is something about you that is worthy of love and respect, but maybe you don’t know what it is yet.
Ask yourself the tough questions like, “What do I stand for?” and “What is my life all about?” If you’ve been living unconsciously like most people, you may not have a clear answer right away. That’s okay!
There’s no better time than now to start the process of self discovery (and self creation). Decide who you are and who you will become. Decide to be a person whom you will be proud of.
Embrace Your Differences
Although we’re often taught to value and conform to societal norms, the real beauty of life stems from diversity. The color red would lose its excitement if it was the only color we could ever see. Nobody would be interesting if we all had the same height, weight, hair type, skin color, style, and ideas.
There is something unusual and unique about you, so why not embrace it? You may have always regarded it as a flaw, but you can choose to flaunt it or use it to your advantage instead. The choice is yours.
If you’d rather change the “flaw” instead of changing your outlook, that is okay. But embrace it in this moment. Accept it as a beautiful expression of life—an opportunity to create, experience, and recreate your reality.
It is our differences, not our similarities, that allow us to fully experience life. So, open your eyes to the beauty of your own uniqueness and feel the rise in your self image.
Honor Your Values to Respect Yourself
Once you’ve defined who you are, don’t overlook it. The more you honor your own principles, the more self respect and confidence you will develop.
Your fortitude will indeed be challenged—but that’s not a bad thing. If others try to define you in a way that doesn’t agree with your vision for yourself, you can gain strength by standing up for who you are and what you believe in. This won’t be easy when the pressure is on, but you’ll feel much better about yourself when you remain true to who you are.
Just remember: You are an important gift to this great Universe. You deserve your own love and respect. If you remain true to yourself during times of great difficulty, you’ll respect yourself for having the courage to do so.
Stand Up for Someone Else
The one thing that builds even more self respect than standing up for yourself is standing up for someone else. If you have an opportunity to make a difference and you feel compelled to do so, don’t hesitate.
Everyone may not accept this, but we are ALL one big family. Every person on this planet is adding to everyone else’s life experiences. Many times this is done indirectly but sometimes it means putting yourself in harm’s way for someone else.
It’s not always the popular or easy choice, but it is a choice that helps to build strong character and a positive self image. When you help someone else, particularly someone you are not obliged to help, you gain self respect while also gaining the respect of others. You may even gain the respect of those who disagree with your choice to stand up.
Believe in the Best for Yourself
Life is a journey filled with winding curves and unchartered territory. It can be scary, overwhelming, and stressful. But life is also exciting, rewarding, and filled with learning opportunities.
In order to feel good about yourself and your life, you have to believe that everything will work out for the best. That doesn’t mean you can never have a moment of sulking, it just means that you’ll feel best when you think best.
Let no person or circumstance convince you otherwise. Look for the silver lining in every cloud. See the big picture—the experience of living.
Keep a Self Respecting Crowd
We all know the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” This is so true. If you hang around people who have a victim mentality, a negative self image, or a lack of respect for themselves and others, you’ll have a hard time breaking free of your own issues.
If a person is a part of your “inner circle,” you are co-creating your reality with them. So it may be time to double (or triple) check your friends list. To improve your self esteem, spend more time with people who are positive, loving and inspiring. To build self respect, spend more time with people who give and deserve respect.
Now that you know what I think about building self respect, please share your thoughts on the subject.
Related Self Improvement Information
Dr. Anthony’s Self Confidence Creator
Improving Low Self Esteem: A Journey to Loving Yourself
Understanding Low Self Esteem: How Do You Feel About You
Nea is a Transformational Life Coach whose mission is to help you love your life.
If you desire the “good life” and you want to know how Nea can help you attain it, contact her now.
Hi, I'm Nea. As a 
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 22 comments }
Good one.. helps a lot.
Hi Nea, this was a great article. The only thing I might add is that you can’t just “say” you are going to respect yourself. You have to act in a way that earns your own respect. If I’m committing crimes I know are wrong, I’m not going to respect myself. I have to earn my own respect, just like I have to earn respect from others.
Every person including yourself should be given the benefit of the doubt and be respected as a human being by default. But you can lose respect for yourself and from others by behaving in a way that destroys it.
“Although we’re often taught to value and conform to societal norms, the real beauty of life stems from diversity.”
Amen to that.
What a wonderful comment Stephen. The action part of the equation is pertinent. There’s nothing worse than going against your own principles, thus emotionally injuring yourself. That creates a sense of self loathing rather than self respect. Talk about going in reverse of the goal! When our thoughts and actions are in alignment with the greater good, we can’t help but develop self respect.
Thanks so much for adding your amazing insight.
Such and important topic Nea. Lack of self-esteem is found in various segments of our society but can be extremely stressful on teens who may be the faced with bullying if they do not conform. We should accept that we are unique human beings and do not need to be perfect in the eyes anyone else. After all if those who do not conform are cast out it will be a very empty world.
“The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model, and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance.” – Michel de Montaigne
Nea: I think this was a very helpful article and I couldn’t agree with you more that improving your self confidence is often times a process. The key is to put in the work consistently so that we really can impact our self confidence in a positive way. I think the things you included in your list are by all means some of the most important things we can and should do if we are in need of improving our self confidence. Great post.
Building the right social circle has a tremendous effect on your self-confidence and self-worth. If you do not surround yourself with people who respect you, then it will become harder to respect yourself. Hold your head up high at all times and when your feeling down blast one of your favorite songs on the radio, or just go outside and yell, dance, embrace the day. Or what I like to do is watch the Tyler Durden speech from Fight Club…always inspiring. Great Post Nea…Keep up the good work!
Self respect is something most of us does not know how to handle. I believe that self respect is influenced by our lot in life. It’s funny when I think how we forget our self respect when we show our love for someone or when we’re fighting for a cause. While I believe that self respect is important, there are times when it is not.
Just a thought.
Great post, lots of valuable advice and pointers
What a powerful post! I work a lot with women who are trying to build up their self esteem and the 1st section of your post speaks volumes. If you don’t truly know who you are, it is impossible to fully love and respect yourself. (just as you said).
Thanks for this insight. BTW – I tweeted the link to this post and I hope that my followers on twitter stop by as well.
I agree with every point of the post. Maybe the easiest way to build self respect is to surround yourself with people who respect you the way you are. Then you don’t have to spend your days thinking about what other people think about you, because you know that the people you hang around with like you no matter what.
I love your thoughts on this! Here is something else that I put together: 9 Helpful Tips to Jumpstart your Self-Esteem: http://www.infozooms.com/Lists/ListDetails.aspx?rid=224
Great post! Very true about embracing our differences. It is a breath of fresh air not to be like everyone else.
I am sure besides your tips one should also stick with affirmations and afformations which are quite helpful.
One way to gain respect from other member of society is to give value and respect to your own self. In the first place, people will judge you the way you look at your self. This is a nice post about improvement of ones self esteem.
I love this..Time and time again, I advice this to my fellow colleagues or friends– believe in the best for your self. Only through this we find to have acceptance and celebrate being unique.
I’ve been under the weather and unable to respond to each of you, but your amazing comments are greatly appreciated. Love to you all!
It appears that You censored my previous comment. Well, It’s Your blog, so I suppose You are entitled to do that. But it does tell a lot about appearance. Nothing is more important than appearance. Anything goes when it comes to keeping up appearance, does it not?
Would You delete my previous comment on this post. It’s wrongly placed and out of order. My apology!
great article about self respect and self esteem. saying is believing, you believe in yourself and the half way will be done in self esteem.
Thank you so much for reading the article Selin. I’m glad you enjoyed it and I hope to see you back here soon.
I think you have a lot of insight and what you are saying makes a lot of sense, i am training to be a psychotherapist and the course im on is tough and it forces me to analyse myself and my interactions with others. The hardest thing i have found on this journey is self acceptance and self love, but i am determined to see it through as i have a passion to help others. I sense you have this passion as well and i commend you for this.
very interesting and useful info here. Thanks for sharing. There’s a lot of people out there in the world with some self-esteem issues, and it is something that needs addressing. Cheers.Self Esteem Affirmations
Comments on this entry are closed.