Hi, I’m John Drury. I help professional business leaders achieve what’s important without losing what’s essential.
If you want to be a leader, the first person you must lead well is yourself. And to me the foundation for effective self-leadership is healthy self-respect because if you struggle to respect yourself, then others are going to struggle to respect you too.
Self-respect, it differs from self-esteem in that self-esteem comes from others when they praise you and encourage you which is great but self-respect is the gift you give yourself.
No one can give it to you, no one can earn it for you. It comes when you do the work to know and test your strengths. It comes when you do the work to know and learn to accept your weaknesses or some things you’re not great at. You need to be ok with that.
It comes when you discover your values and learn to live by them, stay true to them. Self-respect comes when you go through testing times. You test your capacity and you withstand pressure.
It all goes to building your healthy self-respect. It enables you to become secure on the inside and more content as being you. It enables you to find your voice to stand up for something and be known for something.
Also, self-respect, it comes through those difficult times when we make mistakes, when we have things happen to us that are setbacks and caused us to struggle. Self-respect comes as we rebuild after those times and learn to stand up again when we’ve been knocked down.
It’s never too late to build or to rebuild self-respect. I know in my life and through a period of failure where I made some really bad errors in my life and learning to do the work again and rebuild my life took a couple of years but it’s enabled me to stand true to me and to have a good sense of self again.
My confidence comes from within, not from other people’s phrase or comments or criticism. There’s a strength on the inside that comes from a healthy self-respect.
What is it that has helped you build your self-respect or what are the areas that you struggle with self-respect?
I’d love for you to comment below the video in the comment section.
Thanks for listening
