respect myself

respecting oneself has so many facets … looking at my overall 43T goals, most of them truly fit underneath this overarching goal.

• taking better care of my health is a good thing, but right now are being neglected to a certain degree.
  1) i need to have a regular sleep schedule;
  2) i need to bring exercise back into my daily life (if it’s not aerobic it could be relaxing … like meditation or yoga);
  3) working harder to not eat junk food so frequently.

• continue to listen to my gut and say “no” when it’s clear i need to keep a boundary with other people. don’t allow others to badger me into doing what they want.

• figure out what my mojo is and try to recover it.

As noted in a previous post, i’ve learned that this goal is not about, “learning how to gain the respect of others.”

It’s about being true to oneself and having respect for oneself.

So I’m changing the goal to:

Respect myself

_I do not try to dance better than anyone else.
I only try to dance better than myself._

– Mikhail Baryshnikov

• It’s about being oneself;
• It’s bout being true to oneself even when peer-pressure/cultural pressure pushes hard for you to cave in;
• It’s about integrity;
• It’s about being reliable;
• It’a about striving for one’s best … attaining one’s maximum effort with each situation;
• It’s about knowing one’s own limitations;
• It’s about self-discipline in all types of situations;
• It’s about knowing one is not perfect;
• It’s about taking responsibility for one’s own actions;
• It’s about leaving the ego out of it, as difficult as that can be at times;
• It’s about seeing the lesson in rejection and learning from it;
• It’s about seeing the positive in each person one encounters … even those with whom one doesn’t feel cozy;
• It’s about not caring about what others think about you or say about you.
  It’s about loving oneself;
  It’s about having respect for oneself.

Because in the end, you are the only one with whom you spend your entire life. When you look back on your life, you’ll know what kind of life you’ve led.

To me, “Learn how to gain the respect of others,” is a learning process.

It is a goal open to others’ views, ideas, personalities.

In my opinion, to simply say, “be respected,” seems demanding and doesn’t necessarily have thought behind it. It also seems to not take other people’s views, ideas, personalities seriously.

To learn to gain the respect of others, one must also show respect of others.

To me, learning to understand others and showing them respect is the first step to potentially gaining the respect of others.

Another very important element in learning to gain the respect of others is learning to respect oneself.

I am able to be true to myself, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I am always respectful of myself.

That brings in a whole other topic: self-esteem. Which can be addressed in the process of working on this overall goal.

Peace to all who are working on this goal here at 43things.