The Secret to Getting all the Love and Respect You’ve Ever Wanted

When you were an infant, you were completely dependent on your caregivers to provide for all of your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs; they fed you, bathed you, calmed you, taught you to speak, etc. But as you grew, you were encouraged and expected to begin taking on these responsibilities yourself. Particularly with physical needs, you likely received a very clear message that you should feed yourself, tie your own shoes, wash your laundry, get a job, etc. You were taught, rewarded and expected to care for your basic physical needs. But it is also likely that you did NOT receive such clear messages and instructions regarding your mental and emotional needs—that you have the ability and capacity to care for them yourself. These are the foundational needs of love, respect and acceptance. If you never learned to care for these needs yourself, you are probably under the impression that others are supposed to provide these for you.

But here is the danger: What you neglect to give yourself mentally and emotionally you will seek to get from others in unhealthy ways. It leads to insecurity, fear, anxiety and co-dependency. And in the end, it is never enough. No amount of love or respect from another person can adequately substitute for the foundational love and respect you withhold from yourself. Like a bottomless cavern, you demand more and more but are never satisfied for long. Here is the paradox: when you don’t love and respect yourself, you can never fully receive love and respect from others, even from God. It literally prevents the love and respect from being felt, known, and experienced in your life. You desperately crave it but there is no place for it to stick and take hold. It is like a coating of polytetrafluoroethylene—akaTeflon—keeping out the very love and respect you desire.

Men, have you ever been frustrated when you tell the woman in your life she is beautiful in a hundred different ways, and she is still insecure about her looks? Ladies, do you grow exasperated when you support and encourage the man in your life but he still is doubtful of his abilities? This is exactly what I mean about there being nothing in the way others treat you that can compensate for the way you treat yourself on the inside.

The love, acceptance and respect that comes from others can only compliment that which you are already practicing toward yourself, but it will never undo, outdo, or make up for it.

In last week’s post, I introduced the idea that we all have a relationship with our self. You begin transforming this relationship when you stop looking to others as the foundational source for feeling loved, respected and accepted. FIRST you love, respect and accept yourself, THEN you can rightly give and receive it from others others. The way you treat yourself creates a filter for all other treatment from others. It effects not only how you interpret their treatment, but also the kind of treatment you actually allow or tolerate from them.

You accept the treatment from others that is congruent or corresponding with how you are already treating yourself. When you treat yourself with kindness, then your filter is set to receive predominantly kindness from others. You will find yourself surrounded more and more by kind people and will not tolerate those that try to mistreat you. However, when you are harsh and critical with yourself, your filter is set to receive mostly criticism from others. You will hear and see criticism from others (even if that was never their intention) and you will allow critical people to stay close to you.

You may not like it, maybe even complain or fuss about it…but you tolerate it because it fits with how you already treat yourself inside.

So here is where it gets fun. The kinder you think, feel and act toward yourself, the more your relationships with others will reflect the same. The more respect you give yourself, the more respect will naturally flow from others and the more you will find yourself surrounded by respectful people. AND if you occasionally get unkindness or disrespect from someone IT WON’T BOTHER YOU like it used to, because it can’t shake the strong foundation of love, respect and acceptance you have already established for yourself.

Only YOU can create this for yourself, and I can show you how.

To Your Great Life!

Becky