Building Blocks of Human Psychology. Part 14 – Self Respect

Self Respect is different from Self Esteem.  Self Esteem is about evaluating and feeling positive about Self. Self Respect is about the actions you take in line with your values. Self Esteem is more on evaluation and Self Respect comes from what you do. Self Esteem is very basic requirement. But Self Respect is much more important.

Main anchor for a person’s life is values. Values are nothing but your core beliefs. Let’s say you have one of the value as Freedom. If you continue to compromise on your freedom then you will start losing the inner power and ultimately lose self respect.

Any one who lives in line with values will have greater inner power. All great leaders have enormous inner power. Which leader comes to your mind? Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela?. Self Respect is what drove them to stand up and nothing could stop them. That is the power of Self Respect. This is what I call as “Inner Currency”.

We may not and need not become Mahatma Gandhi. But we can definitely need to become ourselves. In the pursuit of chasing different things ( Career, Relationships, Money, etc) we would have compromised our values. You may get temporary benefit out of this. Soon you will realize that it is not worth all. Retrospect and correct it !!.

“Self-respect knows no considerations” – Mahatma Gandhi

YK