On keeping Your Self-respect.
Being impeccable with your word.
One of the many striking things Mark Manson once said was ‘The person you have to spend the most time in your life with is yourself, try not to lose their respect.’
You see, In our primordial human era, we have spent more time with ourselves and simultaneously more time apart from ourselves than we have with other people. We can both be in tune with ourselves and at the same time be far away from ourselves. Throughout the day, there is a constant switch between our state of consciousness and unconsciousness.
We may have been driving on a highway for a few distance and suddenly realise that we haven’t actually been paying attention to the road. We move from being aware of thing, to moving on auto-pilot, getting busy with life, acting out our patterns of behaviour that we do everyday which stem from how we have consciously planted them in the past to them being unconsciously played out. When we eat, how we talk, the things we do and in the order we do them. This is why we need to be quite careful with the things we say and do to ourselves in our conscious state.
We may exhibit some traits that go against our ordeals or moral compass, likewise we may act out our values in their truest forms. All of which are in tune with the level of self-respect we have. We can find ourselves being kind to ourselves especially when we make mistakes, because we have — with open arms before now — embraced the idea of self-compassion, or we may say some mean things to ourselves, because prior to this time saying mean things was considered acceptable and normal.
- Do we celebrate our small wins or do we see ourselves not worthy of being linked with these tiny achievements? Do they look so insignificant and embarrassing?
- Do we do our tasks diligently and are open to challenges and growth, or do we ditch our work when it gets a little difficult, and procrastinate?
- Do we sit with our emotions, or find ways to run away from them as often as we can?
Why your word? Ultimately, one of the respect we get for self is dependent on how we hold up our end of the bargain in the deal we make with ourselves. That we are Impeccable with our word. What that means is that, the attainment of the agreements we make with ourselves, however hard it may be to accomplish, leads us by hand to how we define and perceive ourselves.
When we are Impeccable with our word, we have a clear view and a lot more positive outlook at how we treat ourselves, ridding our minds off emotional poison and negative beliefs of self which builds our self-reliance. However, the more we go against our word, the more our self-doubt grows stronger, making us see ourselves less. That we can’t hold up our end of the bargain, that we won’t do what we say we will, that we don’t believe ourselves, that maybe it is because we are not good enough, or maybe we are just a failure.
In order to regain our self-respect, we have to keep our tiny commitments with room for mistakes and gentle compassion to try again the next day, till we find our path.
