“What we do matters to us. Work may not be the most important thing in our lives or the only thing. We may work because we must, but we still want to love, to feel pride in, to respect ourselves for what we do and to make a difference.” Sara Ann Friedman
“That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.” William J. H. Boetcker
I’ve addressed respect in my blog before, and in reflection I thought it would be interesting to focus on self-respect vs. the respect for others. There is a lot of interesting debate in psychology circles regarding the differences between self-esteem and self-respect. See Psychology Today Self Esteem vs Self Respect for a quick overview. Having high self-esteem is ego driven. Technically a person with high self-esteem feels superior to others and expects preferential treatment. These people are very dependent upon how other people react to them and the feedback that these people provide. Studies have shown that some of the most heinous violent crimes are committed by people who have an unusually high warped self-esteem when they encounter someone who clearly does not hold them in as high regard. They have been “dissed” and it makes them angry. This is not self-respect, it is the pathology of a narcissist.
A person with healthy self-respect is :
- able to look at themselves, both their successes and their failures and feel content – accepting who they are
- not defined by either the positive or negative feedback of others (compliments are nice, but not required)
- consistent in how they treat others with kindness and understanding
- not phony, passive-aggressive, or manipulative
- not willing to do the wrong thing just to appease someone else
- concerned about maintaining their health and physical wellness (but is not obsessed by appearance)
Working with these kinds of people is a wonderful experience. There is no jockeying for position or ego driven posturing. Instead, there is cooperation, receptivity to suggestions, and a straight forward understanding that everyone on the team wants to do the right things.
For more reading see this article on Self Respect.
I had a conversation last night with my friend and his dad about this sort of thing. We were arguing ‘Self Respect vs The Respect from others’, also when I say arguing, I mean debating. Do you think it could be good to not always respect yourself? It can drive you to go on and be better. If you respect yourself enough to say, “I am good how I am now, I am content”, isn’t that you will always be? If you reject the self-respect for a moment then the rules have gone (to an extent).
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I’d love to hear your views
Interesting conversation. I believe that part of respecting yourself is to keep learning and growing. You’re not respecting your true potential otherwise. There are a lot of sad people who rest on their laurels and live on only through their past successes. I believe the term is ‘washed up’. No matter who you are or how old you are you can learn something new. You may not be the best in the world at what you learn, but it will expand your horizons in some way.
On the other hand, there are times when respecting yourself includes understanding your limitations. If you don’t do this, you can waste a lot of your time and energy following a dream that will just lead to disappointment. I’m pretty much tone deaf. What would it say about me if my dream in life was to be an opera singer? You’d think that I wasn’t being realistic and I was setting myself up for failure. In this case “I am what I am” is being pragmatic. Maybe I can learn to sing a little better, but I’ll never bring down the house at the MET.
I checked out your blog – good luck in college. I look fondly back at that time in my life. It’s where I really learned how to learn.