It is important to have a high sense of self respect. When your presence and conduct exhibits your self respect, people respect you too. However, when you do not maintain your self respect, you demand respect or feel hurt when someone doesn\’t respect you. Remember from my earlier posts where I have spoken about reflection, reaction and resound! Self respect is just a reflection. When you respect yourself, you earn respect from others. It just comes back to you. So, today, let\’s understand, how you can boost your self respect in just 3 steps.
How does a lack of Self Respect affect your health?
A lack of self respect can create a feeling of guilt in you. Guilt occurs from dishonouring words that you have spoken. The words you speak are your own. You own them. When you do not follow what you have spoken, you dishonour your own words. This creates guilt in you. Guilt further causes you to seek acceptance appreciation from the world around you.
Guilt affects your lungs. When you harbour feelings of guilt in you, your lungs partially collapse resulting in reduced intake and absorption of oxygen. This progressively causes restless, anxiety and depression. It may also affect optimal functioning of your liver and kidneys thereby causing symptoms of blood pressure and fatty liver disease.
Boost your self respect by observing your thinking
For so many years, you have been following the ways of the mind. You have been thinking that it\’s okay to not be disciplined, It\’s okay to sleep on ideas that otherwise could have changed your life. And, it\’s okay to browse social media. On the whole, you have thought it\’s okay to be the way the mind directs. Well! Here is a piece of truth for you. If you have not realised until now that the mind will only sway and never still, the mind does not have a head or tail to move in a particular direction, it doesn\’t have a forward or reverse, you\’re wasting your life way. The mind doesn\’t even know its way.
To boost your self respect, you need to at first, observe your thinking. Some people are habitual thinkers. In being habitual, their thinking is patterned. It could be thinking of loss all the time, or creating fictitious imaginations of success in their space, either way, such thinking is unproductive. So, firstly, observe your thinking. Observe how the thinking happens. What kinds of thoughts occur. Do not reject any of the thoughts. They all belong to you. These are the thoughts you\’ve nurtured until now. So, just observe them.
Thoughts must lead to action
Observe what you do when your immediate family member calls you. Do you immediately respond to their call and actually go to them? Or, do you verbally respond to them that you are coming but think to yourself; I\’ll go to them after I finish what I am doing, and forget all about it? Action must follow your thinking. This is the second step to boost your self respect.
Let us take a broader example; Let us assume that you are driving on a street. After sometime, you encounter a traffic jam. What will you do? Will you sit in the car and blame the situation? Or, will you think aloud about what you can do to ease the jam? Your thinking supports and influences your attitude. Self Respect is an attitude.
The same attitude also holds good when you see something not right happening in your city, country or the world. If you claim to have a high sense of self respect, it\’ll show in the way you respond to local and national situations.
Integrate thought word and action
The third step is to stitch together your thinking, speaking and action. This means, with the first step, conscious thinking will weed out random and unnecessary thoughts.
The second step will help you articulate your thinking. This brings in clarity in what you think. The third step is when you act on your thinking.
The three steps of thinking with awareness, articulating your thinking and actually acting on your thinking is the quickest way to boost your self respect.
Children have high self respect. They always think, articulate their thinking and follow up their thinking with action. They do this way because, children always live in the now moment.
How do these steps boost your self respect?
When your thoughts, words and actions follow one another, or are in synchronicity, then, there is no scope for the mind to sway. This way, you are always alert and aware. What you think is what you will speak. And what you speak is what you will act upon.
It is, in every which way, it is a commitment to yourself to stay in the present. Why don\’t you try it! When you apply what I have communicated to your life, you will see how this will boost your self respect.
Do write to me your comments after trying out these simple to do practices.
— Mahesh Krishnamurthy
