Leading U Ep 5: How To Respect Yourself

In this episode, Joshua delves into the vital link between self-respect and trust, shedding light on how self-respect lays the foundation for self-trust and confidence.

Offering actionable insights, Joshua guides listeners to cultivate self-respect.
1. Decide to give yourself what you need.
2. Offer yourself what you really want.
3. Bring yourself what you truly need consistently.

Tune in and empower yourself with valuable strategies for enhanced well-being and relationships through self-respect.

Transcript

0:01

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the leading you podcast brought to you by the North Central Ohio Media Group, and Josh Cole coaching. I'm Josh Cole. And I help leaders discover their edge by coaching the difference maker in them. This is the podcast for people who make a difference for people who use their influence to serve others. And I want you to reach your leadership potential, so that your families, your teams, your organizations make the best difference in our world that they can. And today we're talking about something very special. We're talking about the of respect, and how to respect yourself more. This is so close to home for me, because all of my life, I've been an extroverted person, I just love people. I'm a go getter, I love to get things done and accomplished, I want to move and shake the world. And yet at the same time, something inside of me has always just had this, this hesitation, and I've had to overcome so many anxieties and insecurities. And a lot of it has to do with what I'm going to talk about today, we're going to be dealing with how to respect yourself. Because as soon as I was able to understand how to view myself as a good and valuable person, well, then all of a sudden my influence and my ability to get things done, just went up. And I want to share with you today, what I've learned about this. Now I'll I'm happy to tell you how to gain the respect of your team's peers, loved ones in another podcast, that's all very important. But today, I want to focus in first on the the most important relationship you have and and that's the relationship that you have with yourself. So the stuff we're going to go over today is going to give you the keys to transform your self image and to develop your self confidence. So just imagine that, what would your life be like if you liked yourself? What would it be like if you trusted yourself, listen to yourself, or felt confident in your perspective and choices? I know there's a few things that would be true if you respected yourself, I know that you'd make and maintain healthier boundaries, you wouldn't feel so torn and uneasy, you'd feel calm and whole. If you respected yourself, you'd invest in your growth and peace consistently. You'd pursue what you wanted without guilt and hesitation. I mean, that's enough to get me excited about growing in respect. I mean, who doesn't want to live like that. And so, before I get into what respect is and how to respect yourself, specifically, I want to lay out a broad idea of how respect relates to trust. And I start with this because I really want you to be extremely motivated to improve your respect for yourself. It's a big deal. And so here's the big picture idea. trust and respect are inseparably linked. So when trust between people goes down, so does the respect for each other. They're linked. When respect for someone goes down, so does the trust level. And also vice versa. When trust deepens, respect, does as well. When respect goes up, we can trust that person with more things. And so they're they're just inseparably linked. So we can't trust people with important things if we don't respect them. And because of that, everything slows down in relationships that have low respect levels. And this is why anyone who tells us to quote, just trust them, without first gaining our respect, is asking for an impossible thing. If I respect you, I can then decide to trust you, because I've seen your track record and character, and I've judged them to be trustworthy. Similarly, you cannot trust yourself Unless you respect yourself, and why does trusting yourself matter at all? Well, because your satisfaction and peace, they rely on your level of trust in your ability to understand things, your ability to judge things rightly. I mean, think about it. If you won't, or can't believe your own opinion of yourself, your own thoughts about yourself or your work, then you can't feel confident that you are valuable. No matter how many people tell you that you matter, and that they appreciate you. And believe me, you are valuable, you are doing things that matter. But you have to believe that you have to trust yourself. And trust yourself, you have to respect your opinion, you have to respect your thoughts, your perspective, your intuition, you have to respect your emotions, or you'll dismiss them as unreliable. So again, trust and respect are inseparable. So if you want to feel confident that you're valuable, that you're helpful, necessary, good, I mean, hen Furthermore, if you want to feel unconfident, that your leadership is also valuable, helpful, necessary and good. You're going to have to grow intentionally, in your respect for yourself. So I hope that you're really listening today. This idea is a game changer. And so here we go. How do we develop self respect? Well, you first have to know what respect is. Respect is looking for searching for. Again, that's its literal meaning, Re Spect to look again, to search for again, I think that this literal definition is just more useful than thinking that respect is a feeling of admiration, or honor helps us kind of get handles on it. It's not just an emotion that washes over you for someone. It's an action respected, people get looked to over and over again, there's something about them that causes us to look to them. And why do we look to someone again? And again? Why do we respect them? Because they give us what we're looking for. And I don't mean that they do things for us or give us physical things, though, they might and often do. But um, you know, I respect a lot of people who aren't close to me, that can do things directly for me or give me anything like a physical gift or a physical asset. I look to some people again, and again, I I respect them, because I see them offering through their demeanor and actions. What I want in my life. Seeing is having folks, when we see someone act confidently, we have more confidence. When we see someone honor us, we have honor. When we see someone offer a support or love, we have support and love. When we see someone provide what we need to meet our deadlines to meet our goals. We have what we need to succeed. I mean, this explains a lot, doesn't it? It even explains why we disrespect people who why we won't look to them again. We disrespect people who offer things we don't want to see things we don't want to have. I mean, every day, we're offered incompetence, rudeness, arrogance, immaturity, or unreasonable expectations. And of course, none of us want any of that. And a lot of times we disrespect people or we overlook them because we're looking to them to give us something that they never give us. And if we think that the only thing someone has to offer us our problems, needs conflict, or discomfort, we find ourselves over looking them, dis respecting them. So now we can begin to understand how to earn respect for ourselves. Our level of self respect is dependent on how much we look to ourselves for what we want and need. If you cannot, or will not offer yourself what you need. You will not look to yourself again for that thing, you end up disrespecting yourself. Allow me to give you a few examples of this. So here's the first if you cannot or will not offer yourself admiration. You won't respect any thought or feeling you might have that would praise you. You will seek your praise from everybody else but yourself. You're constantly feel like you're on a stage performing for everyone craving the next compliment promotion or pat on the back, you'll probably assume that others don't value you enough and overlook you, even if they do value and respect you, because you feel disrespected. So you just start to look to others for your purpose. How about this, if you cannot or will not offer yourself consideration, you won't respect any desire that you've got for personal comfort, time or care, you will put pressure on others to take care of you, or blame them for not making time for you, or giving you the space you need to recoup or think. Or how about this one, if you can't, or will not offer yourself courage, you will look to others for your courage. You'll wait for others to lead, you'll hesitate to try new things or change systems that are stale or maybe aren't working anymore. You'll drain your friends and colleagues with your constant negativity. And what I hear a lot of people call, quote, realism. But really, it's not realism. It's just a person who is not encouraging themselves. How about this, if you cannot or will not offer yourself challenges, like education and growth? Well, you will look to others to think and decide for you. You will project an image of someone who can't learn can't get better, can't be expected to know what's best for you, you'll suffer a lack of self esteem and confidence. I mean, I could go on and on. But you get the picture. If you don't have a high level of self respect, you end up becoming like this. You don't offer yourself what you can and should give yourself and so you disrespect yourself. And that leads eventually to being a person who's resentful. So I don't want that for you. I don't want that for me. I've been working really hard on this in my life. And I'm going to share with you four instructions that I have found that has helped me to build my level of respect for myself. And if you do these four things over and over, you will grow to respect yourself deeply. So here's the first one instruction number one, decide that you can and will give yourself what you need. Decide it today. Just choose, I can and will give myself what I need. We're all on a constant quest for resources, because we have needs of all sorts. We're always looking for help and emotional support, especially from ourselves. We just don't know it. Because we don't think of ourselves as a person to look to. Because we are us, we forget that we should and can give us first what we want other people to give us. And if you decide that you have what you need, and determined to make it happen for yourself consistently, you will look to yourself again for that thing, you will begin to respect yourself, you will automatically grow in self respect. So you can't develop self respect. If you don't think that you can be there or that you can come through for yourself. And just like we stopped looking to someone who can't give us what we're looking for, we stop looking to ourselves if we aren't willing to give ourselves what we need. So decide, right now that you have what you need. And that you can give it to yourself. You can admire yourself, you can love yourself. You can forgive yourself, you can motivate yourself, you can encourage yourself, you can expect more from yourself, you can so do it, you're worth it. And so that leads me to instruction number two, offer yourself what you really want. Now, this might sound obvious, but you won't give yourself what you don't know you need. Right? You'll have to investigate what you really want from yourself. Don't assume, investigate. Ask yourself, what do I need right now really? What do I really want? How can I give that to myself? And it's gonna take a while to get true answers to those questions. Because all of us default to offering ourselves what we think we deserve. Instead of offering ourselves what we really want. There's a big difference between those two, which you think you deserve what you think you ought to have instead If what you really want, you have to offer yourself what you really want, not what you think you ought to have. Many of us think we ought to give ourselves less time, more demands, and little compassion. And on the other hand, I see folks think that they need a ton of me time, very little demands or commitments and excessive compassion. In both of those extremes are not what you truly want. Human beings are designed for fellowship with others, coupled with fellowship with themselves. They're designed for reasonable responsibility, coupled with cyclical periods of rest and reflection. Humans are designed for honest self assessment, that also includes compassion, and grace. If you give yourself less time to reflect, when you hardly spend any time in a quiet place, you will not grow and self respect. No matter how much time you spend entertaining yourself. That's not what your truest self demands. And also, if you give yourself excuse, after excuse, for failing to keep your resolutions and promises to yourself, that hyper compassion will make you respect yourself less. And yet, shaming yourself and beating yourself up won't build your self respect either. What you need is to find out what your self really wants, what it is really demanding of you, and then offer that to yourself. So if you're super hard on yourself, what you really need, and what you really want is some grace and compassion. But if you will, if you know that you're demanding what you want inside is more of you, well, then you have to stop being in it. Yes, stop giving so many excuses for why you're not coming through for you. So with that, let's go to instruction. Number three, bring yourself what you truly want to view as consistently and excellently as possible. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is self respect. Once you identify what you need from yourself, you're going to have to commit to giving that to yourself regularly. And with quality. Something deep inside of you knows when you're flaking out on your goals, when you're flaking out on your perspective, or your values. So don't skimp on the things that matter to you. Your conscience is not going to leave you alone, when you're just going half baked into things for yourself. Now, let's be clear. Excellence doesn't mean perfection, but rather doing the best thing possible with what you have. It's about striving for quality in every action. So yeah, don't skimp on yourself. But also don't expect perfection either. And as you maintain your efforts towards your goals, showing up for yourself every day, even when motivation wanes, and it will, you will begin to look to yourself more and more to supply what you truly need. Set aside dedicated time for reflection, pursuing hobbies are interested in rich you commit to improve your personal and professional life, one step, one little action at a time. And then these victories will compound over time. You'll have your setbacks. But just know failure is not a reflection of your worth. But it's an invaluable source of insight. Failure is just more data. It's just something to learn for the next time. So learn from every failure, adapt and persist. And you will start looking at yourself as a resilient source of what you want. And what you need. Your respect level is going to go way up for yourself over time. Here's the last instruction for the day. Evaluate your achievements honestly and regularly. So you're going to decide that you have what you need and want and you're going to give it to yourself. You decide that you're going to give that to yourself, what you really want. So you decide that you can and will give yourself what you need. Then you offer yourself what you really want, not just what your default going to, and then you give yourself that consistently and excellently and when you're doing all of that as you're doing that cycle of going through all that you evaluate, you check in, honestly, regularly. Because one of the greatest motivators is having an honest look at what you've done for yourself. I know, we're all scared of judgment. We all hate seeing red marks on our tests. But if we don't evaluate our days, we can't tweak our plans. We can't tweak our ways of doing life. If we can't show ourselves that we're honestly making good faith changes to improve our lives and calm our fears, we just cannot develop greater self respect. Respect is only earned when inspection is invited. Just like I can't respect someone who avoid showing me their work. Avoid showing me their life or their thoughts. I can't respect myself, if I don't lay my cards on the table about my motivations, my performance and my achievements. If I'm running from those things, I can't grow and self respect. So for your sake, I'm asking you to create a habit of examining your day, your decisions, and your feelings so that you understand deeply what's driving you, and what's really holding you back. And this will allow you to kind of recalibrate your actions to match your core values to ensure that you're headed towards your goals. And we're talking about integrity here. And it'll help you identify areas where you might be selling yourself short. And remember, our goal is to show ourselves a track record of improvement, not perfection. No self evaluations are helpful. If there just used to find proof that we aren't good enough. If self evaluation for you is just your way of beating yourself up that doesn't help. Shame never helps us improve. So evaluate yourself with honesty, and grace. With consistent reflection, you'll be equipped to make great choices that align with what you truly want for yourself, and your self respect will flourish. Well guys, that's it for today that was powerful. If you follow those things you're going to grow and self respect, you're going to chase after your dreams harder. With more meaning behind them, you're gonna have a little bit more fulfillment, and I cannot wait to hear about how you're succeeding and how you're growing and self respect. If you liked this episode, be sure to share it subscribe. Leave a five star review if you can, wherever you're listening. It will greatly help us get the word out about leading you. So look for the next episode coming out soon. And remember, the world needs good leaders like you. So lead yourself to a better you