2 Powerful Strategies To Develop Self-Respect In 2020

If you don’t respect yourself, nobody will do.

For some reason, many people think of respect as a burden. Maybe because most people think of respect as something we should have towards older generations. Or towards people who already achieved something bigger than ourselves.

The truth, however, is that the degree of respect you show towards yourself matters most.

While more and more people are diving deep into personal growth, I feel as if the majority are concerned with topics like productivity, being more efficient, and building habits. What they miss out is self-care.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being productive, and I wouldn’t want to skip on my daily routines. However, I believe that success and happiness start within ourselves.

If you want to uplevel your life, you need to get along with yourself — very well. Respecting yourself is one of the most essential pillars of strong confidence and happiness.

After all, if you don’t respect and love yourself, why should other people? The people around you will only respect you as much as you do. If you seem insecure about yourself, others can also upset you more easily.

Respecting yourself starts with accepting everything and working on becoming an even better version of yourself. It doesn’t mean that you don’t like the current version — rather, it’s the contrary. By respecting yourself, you can love your current self while working on creating an even better one.

Every day you have the chance to build yourself into a better person, but to do so, you first need to love and respect your current version.

1. Do Hard Things Every Day

That doesn’t mean you should overwork and feel exhausted. Alternatively, it’s about completing hard tasks efficiently.

Every time you procrastinate, you lose some respect for yourself. That’s because you see yourself as somebody who is not able to finish things. By procrastinating regularly, you are harming your self-respect as well as your self-worth.

Additionally, you are making life harder than it needs to be. By completing tasks and finishing what you intended to do, your self-respect and confidence increase.

A research published by the Journal of Personality even found out that self-disciplined people are happier. Since they can accomplish their goals and thus create their life according to their wishes, people with strong discipline not only more successful but also more satisfied in the long term.

That’s why sticking to your resolutions is a great way to strengthen your self-respect. Knowing that you don’t procrastinate but instead get work done is a great feeling.

The best way to stick to your daily goals is to set small ones. Especially at the beginning of a year, many people make the same mistake of trying to accomplish hundreds of things at once.

Focus is the key. Instead of extending your to-do list every day, take some time to reflect.

• What are the most crucial tasks?
• What’s going to help you to achieve your long term goals?

Eliminate everything that doesn’t serve you as a person or your goals. Your daily to-do list should not include more than five to six items.

Otherwise, the chances are that you’re not being productive but simply keeping yourself busy. What works best for me personally is to accomplish the hardest tasks of the day first — you know, the whole eat the frog in the morning principle.

If you start your day by tackling a difficult task, you’ll feel much more powerful and energized throughout the whole day. You know that nothing can stop you because you already crossed off an essential item of your to-do list.

By sticking to your goals and eliminating procrastination, you will surely strengthen your self-respect. You will know that you can accomplish anything that you want and feel much more confident.

2. Control Your Emotions

Self-respect also means being in charge of your feelings. Too often, we let our emotions take control over our lives. Even though your emotions are an important part of you, they shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat.

Controlling your emotions is such a powerful skill, and it will come with tremendous benefits as well as allowing you to cultivate self-respect.

The first step to being in charge of your feelings is to discover them. What works best for me personally is journaling.

Writing is one of the most powerful ways I’ve found to get to know my emotions. And it is also the most effective way to transform negative emotions, like fear or anger, into positive ones. (At least, that’s how it works for me and many of my clients.)

Most decisions that we make due to strong emotions are not wholly rational. That’s why controlling your emotions can have such a significant influence on your life.

If you don’t get offended quickly, if you have strong self-confidence and are not dependent on other people’s opinions, you increase your self-respect.

Every time you feel triggered and emotionally attached to something, try to discover the real reason. Have a look behind the surface. You won’t grow by ignoring, but by accepting and transforming your emotions.

Try to figure out what it was that triggered you. Is it really what somebody else said, or is the problem actually based on what you think of yourself?

Examining and transforming your emotions is an incredibly powerful way to increase your self-respect.

One more strategy that works very well for me is meditating. Through guided meditations, you can dive deep into your belief system and transform your way of thinking.

Controlling your feelings also means that you can cope with criticism, which is super important for your self-respect as well.

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