11. “Self-respect is the root of discipline: the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
Compared to today, I had little self-belief, I struggled to do anything hard until about a year ago. I could still do hard things, but emotionally struggled to get through the process. You could say that I wasn’t emotionally or mentally disciplined.
In the past year, my self-belief has grown massively thanks to working with my coach and learning how to prove to myself that I could do hard things in a disciplined way. I learned to face my fears, take courageous action steps, follow through regardless of my mood, consistently show up to practise skills, even when they became mundane. I followed a pre-planned schedule and felt good doing it. I celebrated the small daily wins with my accountability partner, especially when I didn’t feel like doing something but I followed through anyway. I have repeatedly proven to myself that I’m the type of person who keeps promises to myself and follows through with action, even when it’s hard. It wasn’t about proving my parents wrong, it was me I needed to convince!
Because of this my self-respect has grown significantly. I’m now able to take on roles that challenge me, I’m also able to say ‘no’ to people if their request doesn't align with my values, schedule or goals. I respect myself enough to keep my hard-earned discipline - good nutrition, daily movement, good sleep and recovery and focus time.
The more you believe in yourself and your capabilities, the more you will promise yourself to get things done, the more you will do what is necessary, even if it’s hard, and the more your respect for yourself grows.
Think of the people you respect. What do they have in common? They are usually disciplined, hard working, resilient, positive, and have good boundaries. They never demand respect from people, they don’t need to, because their actions show us that they respect themselves and we are drawn to that characteristic. They earn it by doing hard things consistently.
If we learn to follow through on an action that we promise ourselves, our self respect will grow. This ties in with self-belief that I wrote about last week (here). When we believe in our capabilities, we can count on ourselves to show up, step up, take an action step, experiment, learn, ask for help, learn from our mistakes, course-correct and take action again. In other words, we can handle the situation. And if we believe we can handle one tough situation, then we learn to rely on ourselves to handle any situation.
This way our respect grows because we have evidence to show that we can handle difficult situations. This then builds the trust in ourselves*. When we can trust and believe that we can handle any situation life throws at us, we become empowered and powerful.
How to cultivate your self-respect:
Recognise and acknowledge where you are at now.
Practise believing in yourself. Gather evidence that you and others have believed in you in the past. If not, acknowledge that when you don’t believe in yourself, you end up not doing it or not achieving it. A mindset shift here is crucial.
Promise yourself you will do one thing you keep meaning to do.
Schedule it into your day. Prepare for it in advance so your chance of achieving it is high.
Show up to the task, focus and give it your all. It’s more about the process, not the result. Believe you can and put your all into it. Often you end up proving to yourself that you can.
Afterwards, congratulate yourself for turning up, following through, keeping your promise to yourself.
Repeat with the same task until it’s completed or start another task.
Keep going, practise this daily to build your muscle of discipline, self-belief and self-respect.
Now over to you:
Will you commit to cultivating your self-respect?
What will you experiment with first?
Will you give these steps a go and let me know how it goes?
*You can find it here.
Until the next issue, take good care of yourself and your loved ones.
Ikuko 💌