Hi!
Let this serve as an invitation to respect yourself and take yourself seriously over this upcoming week.
Respect Yourself
Here's the main thing to keep in mind as we go forward:
Almost all of us are in the habit of withholding respect from ourselves because of our perceived inadequacies. So in other words, we judge ourselves as not having done enough, not working hard enough, not having accomplished enough over the last few days... and so we withhold respect from ourselves by way of punishment.
We'll say something that sounds kind of good like "Respect isn't free, it's earned, and I gotta earn my own respect", but it really translates into "I don't respect myself because I'm not doing enough."
I want to suggest a different way of coming at this though, which is that you begin with respect as the baseline. I will go further to say that you deserve respect always, forever, not because of what you do but because of what you are.
And what are you? You're a living human being with a sincere desire to become a greater version of yourself. You have dreams for some form of self-development, self-actualization. You are a human being wrestling with 2 different drives: the drive to growth and the drive to instant gratification.
We approach issues of habit-setting, addiction control, productivity as if we're already behind, already supposed to be legendary masters - multi-disciplinary geniuses with 10 fluent languages, 10 profitable businesses, and 10 adoring sexual partners... but this sort of thing takes effort, time, and a willingness to pick back up after multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple failures.
So what - are you only planning to respect yourself once you get there? Is that the moment when you'll finally have earned your own respect?
Please.
Start now. Think about one of your heroes - the people you idolize - at what point did they finally deserve respect? Once they became millionaires? No, there was no such moment. And here's the reason: Receiving your own respect (and love) form the conditions that allow you to create higher-tier success in the first place.
So in short: It's not "Once I succeed, then I'll respect myself", but "I respect myself unconditionally, because I deserve it either way, and this unconditioned respect will give me the room I need to experiment, play, create, and, eventually succeed."
Take Yourself Seriously
A final note - I'd like to challenge you also to take yourself seriously.
If you knew how important you were, then you would do this naturally.
This doesn't mean to become some sort of self-important douchebag, but really you're not running that risk anyway. If you're the kind of person that's like "I don't want to overestimate myself, or take myself too seriously, or be a self-important narcissist", then you don't need to worry about overdoing this. You're way under-doing it.
When a person becomes self-actualized, they are able to offer their most mature, most potent gifts to the world. These gifts take a wide variety of forms, but they all enhance humanity and steer us in the right direction as a population.
It's of absolute importance that we develop ourselves, put good habits in place, become successful and actualized in order to put humanity on its best course.
You are an essential element of this, so please recognize this by taking yourself more seriously.
How to Implement this Advice
So if you're in agreement with all this, here's what you can start doing to bring this to life:
1) Make a firm decision right now that from now on, you deserve more respect and never less, no matter what.
2) Make a firm decision right now that you're going to take yourself and your life more seriously.
3) Take some new action today that will demonstrate this to yourself. This could be something such as setting a morning alarm on your phone and placing your phone out of arms reach from bed. Or going to the gym today. Or going for a run. Or not procrastinating on your work.
TL;DR
- You deserve respect not because of what you've done, but because of what you are. - Giving yourself respect creates better mental conditions to be more focused and productive. - Stop withholding respect and love from yourself, it's a losing strategy and serves no one. - Believe in yourself and take yourself seriously. - You have latent gifts in you that the world will benefit from if you express them. - No pressure, but when you become actualized as a human you become a contribution to steering our population along a better course.
Does this help? Let me know!
Brent