Today's quotation:
Coming to appreciate your worth can, in some cases, dramatically improve your circumstances by changing the choices you make and the actions you take. And as you begin to treat yourself with more respect, other people begin to do the same, since we subconsciously "train" others how to treat us through messages we send through body language, tone of voice, and other subtle cues and behaviors.
Discovering your innate worth and living from that place allows you to make more constructive choices--to choose the higher roads of life.
Dan Millman
Today's Meditation:
If we could get everyone in the world to see themselves and treat themselves with respect, imagine just how few problems we would have. Imagine how little crime there would be, and how little aberrant behavior we would see. The people who are always down on themselves would start to live different lives, and they would be treated differently by the people they see every day. They wouldn't treat themselves so poorly, and as a result their lives would be brighter and they'd find more success in their endeavors, which would add even more to their feelings of respect for themselves.
Somehow, though, we haven't yet reached a point at which we teach people to respect themselves, to see their own worth. We prefer to teach them information, to make them memorize details and data when they're in school, rather than teaching them important wisdom that has come to us through the ages. We don't help them to discover the beauty and wonder of themselves; rather, we try to teach everyone the same stuff under the assumption that learning it will help them develop self-worth. Hundreds of years of evidence that it doesn't work that way hasn't changed the way we approach education.
If you can learn to believe in yourself in a humble and honest way, your life will change without question. If you can make choices based on your knowledge of what is truly best, then your choices will benefit many people besides yourself. If you begin to live your life from a place of complete and true self-respect, you will be treated by others with dignity and respect. If your actions are the result of complete honesty and don't result from what you think others want you to do, your life will grow richer in ways you didn't think possible.
Life isn't about information or about making ourselves look good in the eyes of other people. Life is about finding out who we truly are and treating ourselves with dignity, respect, and love. When we start to treat ourselves that way, we become wonderful role models that others can look to when they want to change their lives for the better.
Questions to consider:
Do you find it easy to treat yourself with true respect?
What allows you to do so or keeps you from doing so?
Why don't we tend to teach our young people the principals of self-respect?
On what do you currently base most of your decisions and actions?
For further thought:
One of the most common words in the invalidating, self-blaming stories we believe about ourselves or our situations is the word "should." The psychologist Albert Ellis has coined the phrase "Stop shoulding on yourself." When you tell yourself that you should feel or be another way, you are likely to feel bad about yourself. As an alternative, try telling yourself that it is okay to feel or be the way you are, even though you have some idea that you should feel or be different.
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