Self-respect needs nurture in order to grow
I hope you are enjoying your Samhain people and having a blessed and relaxing time of contemplation and quiet. Hopefully, I will be doing a post about it tomorrow, so fingers crossed that I create enough time for it. Today, a topic that is closely related to the energy of Samhain, self-respect. @eco-alex sure did make a perfect theme for this week with it because whenever we start working on ourselves and asking those big questions about who we are, there is no point in avoiding the subject of do we respect ourselves for who we are. Do you respect yourself? Do you know what that even means?
CC0 licence, Pixabay, author: Prettysleepy2 , adapted by me
We will go over 3 things in this post, knowing yourself, loving yourself and respecting yourself. Those three things are interconnected and one can not truly be expressed and experienced without the other two. It may exist but it does not shine to the fullest if it stands alone and is not backed by the others.
Knowing yourself is an ongoing job because we never stay the same. Every experience we have brings a certain change. Every person we meet and everything our senses come in contact with will impact us. We are a living being that is constantly growing so it impossible to say how we know everything about ourselves. We may know who we are in this moment but that person will change in the next one.
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
– Aristotle
To truly know who you are in any given moment is to master the greatest wisdom there is. One may ask "Why bother if I will change who I am anyway?" Because to know yourself, you are knowing everything.
Nothing is outside.
Your reactions to the world are your world.
You are the center of your Universe and everything starts inside your mind. Your hopes, expectations, realizations and doubts, all your thoughts and emotions are created by you. No one can make you feel something and they sure can not make you think something if you do not allow it. You are the creator of your responses to the outside impulses that keep on coming. Knowing why your reactions are what they are, recognizing your behavior patterns, and understanding how your convictions are shaping your reality can strengthen your rational mind and help you to stop when you need to stop and push forward when pushing is needed. That is what wisdom is, to know what to do and why to do it in a certain moment. Knowing yourself will bring you closer to mastering the art of self-realization and recognizing that the first person in the world you should love is yourself.
The first person you should love really is you. How would you recognize love from others and how would you know how to love others if you have not learned how love feels like? How would you know how to accept love from others and appreciate the feeling of being worthy of love if there is no self-love?
"Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
– Rumi
You're always going to be with yourself, you should enjoy the company. The person you will be spending the rest of your life with is you and in order to have a pleasant journey through that life, love is a necessary companion.
To love yourself is not vanity,
it is the basis of sanity.
When you love yourself, you will set boundaries and realize that your time and energy are precious. The more you love yourself the less nonsense you will tolerate. With love comes the escape from suffering. You can not feel like a victim if you love yourself. There is not a compliment you could hear that would make you feel good if you do not believe those words to be true and besides, there will be no compliments to start with if you do not create a fertile ground for them. Everything you experience is just a reflection of you. Loving people live in loving worlds and those who hate themselves, see hate everywhere. Unworthiness is the worst feeling you could feel and do not start with that BS how some religions have convinced you about that. No one can force you to think something, no one is in your mind except you. Do not go for excuses and accept responsibility for your lack of self-love. The good thing is, loving yourself will make you love yourself more and more and it is never to late to start.
To respect yourself means that you will not do things you do not want to do. It is very subjective because we are all different and there is a great variety of opinions what people with enough of self-respect should not do. It is cultural too and age-related but the point is, others cannot determine what your self-respect driven behavior should look like. That is your job.
"I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect."
– Mahatma Gandhi
You may look at a person and think to yourself how they have no respect for themselves or they would not be doing what they are doing but you fail to realize that maybe that is exactly what they wanted to do. Do not judge unless wanting to be judged yourself. What you think is appropriate is not what others need to agree with. It goes the other way around too. If you want to do something, the fear of judgment should not be stopping you. Others have different criteria on how self-respected behavior looks like. Do not hold yourself up to their standards, yours are enough.
You are powerful
only if you know that you are powerful.
The good thing about self-respect is that it can grow. All you have to do is nurture it. Your choices are the key here. Every time you act in harmony with your authentic self, your self-respect will grow some more and your every choice matters. This is why knowing yourself and loving yourself is so important. You can not be in harmony with your authentic self if you do not know it. The world will constantly try to make you and shape you into something else but if you stay true to who you are it will be your greatest accomplishment. Value your imperfections as much as your perfections because they make you who you are and present you with a learning and growing opportunity. You were not meant to be perfect but you were meant to be authentic. Being an individual is not your right, it is your obligation. You do not have to justify yourself to anybody, explain yes but justify no because it is not about how others will see you or call you, it is about what you will respond to. It is up to you to be you, love, know and respect you.
Stay true to yourself.
An original is always
worth more than a copy.
Image sources AND LICENCES in order of appearance:
- all images used in this post are free for commercial use, they are royalty free with the links to original images provided under them
- line divider that I use is from FREE CLIPART LIBRARY, and is here
- title pictures are made by me using the CC0 images from pixabay that can be found here
- my bitmoji avatar was created on https://www.bitmoji.com/, visit the site to create yourown
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Probably 40 years ago I heard about the 'way of the one'. A teacher charged me with finding that way. I'm still finding, but the who I was has gone through huge changes.
Through it all I did learn to know (first the knowing), love and respect myself. Those aren't the terms I would exactly use, but since you have laid this out so elegantly I'll use your words.
The difference is astounding. Self knowledge, respect and love has allowed me to literally still be alive and more or less fully functional. I can not overemphasize the importance in my life.
Thanks Petra. Enjoy Samhain. Thanks for taking the time for us out of your contemplation.
It is normal that we change as we evolve, that is the point and the whole idea of a learning and growing process. I am happy that it did you good and that you are doing so good with it. Proud of you too. Much love! 💚
Blessed Samhain my dear. I enjoyed reading this post, very motivational. Nice read on this peaceful night. Thank you.
I am happy that you have enjoyed it, much love! 💚
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wow, another incredible answer! this week we have really stepped up to the plate! Beautiful answer yes!!! This reads like a potent self healing opportunity! You talked about a few important things, and boundaries is one that i still have a lot to learn about.. but i am learning.. SO important, and many people who dont have self love or self respect simple cannot put them out there.. but when we dooo, we start to see how others also respect us more!
<3 Great job @zen-art!
I have learned that others will not respect us until we respect ourselves, everything is always a mirror :) We are all work in progress, you with your boundaries, me with my fears, someone else with something else. The key is to keep growing and keep smiling while we learn. Thank you for your support honey, much love! 💚
So, so, SO much awesomeness in your post, @zen-art! The phrase that really resonated with me is -
"You are powerful
only if you know that you are powerful."
via GIPHY
I hope you had a magical Samhain, and I'll keep my eyes open for your post (and cross my fingers you find the time). Bright blessings to you!
Somehow, I will make the time, I got up in the 6 in the morning in order to get all the things done today and it is a holiday lol and nobody should be waking up that early on a non-working day :D I am glad you enjoyed the read, much love! 💚
sometimes it's hard to love yourself because you know yourself... I don't know, maybe "hard" is how it should be.
When we know or focus only on the "bad" things about ourselves then it can seem hard to love ourselves but when we truly know how amazing we are, love comes easy and it becomes unconditional. We love ourselves with our imperfections too.
Great advice, others can influence a person but the person is still the one in charge, accept the influence or reject it. That is a big step to learn to take, you are powerful when you learn you are powerful is right.
Nice to see you well honey and I hope you come back from Dallas soon, your work is missed. Thank you for your lovely comment 💚
That is so true indeed learning to respect and love oneself is a start. In that way you would also be able to to truly love others. The good side and the bad side too must be accepted. We are all unique and special in this world. Although it is a struggle for me sometimes to accept my imperfections and failures in life. I still strive to love myself little by little in everyday. Thanks for this.
When you want to be a bit better every day than loving can be sometimes hard because you focus on what you are not good at and want to improve. That too can be fixed with practice. We should be focused on our improvement and growth, love comes more easily than. Thank you for your lovely comment 💚
@zen-art, you have painted a very good picture of what it means to respect yourself. It means you have to know who you are, love who you are and respect who you are. Thanks for sharing this beautiful piece my creative friend!
Thank you darling, I am glad you have enjoyed the read 💚
Congratulations! This post has been chosen as one of the daily Whistle Stops for The STEEM Engine!
You can see your post's place along the track here: The Daily Whistle Stops, Issue 299 (11/01/18)