Are you respecting yourself? How to appreciate YOU!

Do you feel people ignore you or don’t listen to what you say?

Do you feel unsupported and as though you’re not appreciated?

Do you get upset and frustrated by these feelings?

Do you dream of being valued and admired?

I do. I feel unappreciated and undervalued regularly. I feel unsupported by those around me and ignored generally. But what I’ve realised is that I’m the one who is ignoring me; I don’t appreciate or support myself emotionally, and I definitely struggle with valuing myself.

“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price”. – Unknown

Recently my husband did something minor that upset me and I thought to myself ‘he doesn’t respect me!’ But then I stopped and asked myself, is that true? And I realised it wasn’t. Then I thought about why I felt that way and asked myself, it’s you who isn’t respecting youself, isn’t it? I was reflecting how I felt about myself onto my husband.

You see, I’ve been working toward self-trust by feeling and listening to my feelings, setting boundaries and limits as a way to create self-confidence and self-assurance. I’ve been working on self-care and self-love to build myself up, but I hadn’t stopped to ask myself if I was proud of how far I’d come and earnt some self-respect through this process.

It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been angry at myself for a long time, especially about moving overseas for someone who I felt let down and unsupported by. And that anger has led to behavior that has damaged my marriage and affected my ability to parent effectively, frustrating my desire to be a calm interactive mum. And I’ve had a lot of feelings from my abusive childhood to confront and work through before I could begin on the current stuff. It’s been hard. 

So I ask myself: do I respect the effort I've made to repair the damage in my marriage and the commitment to being a better mum? And I realise I struggle with being proud of myself about anything.

So how do I change this and earn some self-respect? What do I need to do to change my thinking to achieve that?

“Self-respect, self-worth and self-love all start with self. Stop looking outside yourself for value.” - Rob Liano

I start by looking at how I approach the things I want to do. My expectations of myself are low. I accept that I am not disciplined or have no will-power to follow through as quickly as I would like. I avoid committing myself to anything - including my dreams. I delay and make excuses and procrastinate – a procrastination that’s based in fear.

But the fear is not about failure, it’s about success. If I succeed then I have to sustain that success and hold myself to a higher standard and have an expectation of myself. But what if I let myself down? What if I’m not good enough?

When I back-track the feeling of not being good enough, I arrive at my parents. As a child I wasn’t enough to get their attention or their interest, or hold it for more than a few minutes. Most of the time I felt like a burden – and they often told me I was. The wounds from that live on in my current life, showing up in the form of not feeling good enough in my present relationships or friendships. I feel undervalued and as though it is my fault in some way and that I’m doing something wrong. 

I am doing something wrong – I’m not respecting myself. 

I’m busy looking for validation or approval from them, rather than from myself. I’m waiting for other people to tell me I’m ok before I let myself feel ok. I’m forgetting that the only approval I need is mine; that the only person’s permission I need to feel good about myself is my own.

 “Respect yourself and others will respect you.” - Confusius

The next thing to do to start valuing myself is look at all the things I’ve achieved that I can be proud of, like giving up smoking, finishing my novel, and self-publishing a collection of my writing. But I need to also look at my day to day and all the things I do on a daily basis too.

A few years ago I worked through a book called ‘Have The Relationship You Want’ by Rori Raye. One of the chapters is called ‘Overfunctioning’, which offers an exercise where you write a list of all the things you do day to day and prioritise them from 1-4: 

1 = ‘must do’

2 = ‘can do but can let it slide’

3 = ‘not sure if that is for me to be doing’

4 = ‘it’s not my job’

When I first did this I was shocked at how much I did and how many things weren’t really my responsibility, as well as how many I could let go, or pass over to my husband. Doing this exercise again I see that I’m still doing a great deal.

So I need to acknowledge that and appreciate and value how much I am doing. Take a moment to feel good about that.

But is that all I need to do? Write a list and pat myself on the back and maybe do some positive affirmations and I’ll respect myself? No.

It goes deeper than that. I need to believe that my dreams and goals are inevitable and not a 'maybe or a ‘one day’ – that with persistent continuous action they WILL happen. I need to believe I have the determination and self-discipline to see them through.

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.” - Clint Eastwood

It’s only through action that I can earn my self-respect. I need to show myself that I take myself seriously. I need to value everything I do as well as acknowledge how much I do.

And not only the big achievements either; it can be small things too. Not just the publication of my book, but creating the schedule that I followed to keep writing regularly to complete that book.

This, coupled with a commitment to self-care, nurturing and loving myself, and not judging or critcising myself, can build a foundation of self-respect.

If I see what I can achieve and how capable I am, it will spark me to do more, rather than make excuses.

Self-confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. How can anyone see how great you are, if you don’t see it yourself? - Unknown.