Be it your personal life, or your professional life, Respect is a quality that we need to incorporate in our lives to become a successful person.We believe sometimes that success is achieved when we become rich in finances because money is a requirement for us to lead a happy life. Unfortunately, we don’t realise how important human values are.
Instead, are you rich in values?
Humanity is not practiced in most cases. Respect is an important human value which when one practices, will eventually make him or her a happy person. Yet, some demand respect and end up doing the worst thing they can ever do,and then they are neverare respected in society. One thing we need to be clear on is that respect can never be demanded butcan only be earned.
Now. the next question is How do you earn this respect? It’s not difficult; If you practice it, eventually others will follow the same way giving it back to you. Therefore, where should it start? It should start from within. You need to practice respect and not force others to respect you. First.you must respect yourself. Understand and contemplate on the fact how important your life is and how important dignity and respect is to you in society.Actually, it all boils down to self-discipline. How well self-disciplined am I? Ask this question from yourself constantly and question the level of integrity you practice. Monitor every thought that arises in your mind which in turn gives rise to an action and practice doing good to society and to yourself. Eventually you will earn respect.
Family
When we consider a family for instance, it maybe thatyou are a mother or a father and you expect your children to respect you. You should understand that as elders youneed tolead a life that is worthy of respect and eventually your children will respect you. We constantly see conflicts among family members where the mother or father does not practice what they preach and sooner or later the children will point out what is wrong. And as elders you are found guilty. For example, if the father is an alcoholic, how can we expect his sons to respect him? Just like the two sides of the coin.there’s always two sides to a problem. If as elders you have not set the right example for your children, it will be difficult to earn the respect that you expect. Therefore, we need to really turn inwards to our hearts to see if as elders we are doing the right thing or the easy thing during most instances. On the other hand, the same applies to the children who also expect themselves to be respected. They should do the right thing, take advice, learn from experiences and eventually elders will also respect them.
Now, you might wonder if there’s an age barrier to gain respect. The answer is “NO”. Irrespective of what age we are, we expect people around us to respect us and not make fun or mock at us. Therefore, the decision is ours whether we are ready to build our lives as citizens of good values, so people would respect us. In fact, coming back to family we see conflicts among siblings and parents find it extremely difficult to manage them.
Why does this happen? Why do we lose respect? It’s because of wrong behaviour. Do we think twice before we utter words? Do we think twice before we perform an action? Do we ask these questions from ourselves?
1. Will these words I am about to utter hurt someone?
2. What if someone did the same to me?
3. Is there any other way I can communicate the same, so I won’t hurt another’s feelings? Why do we not have time to re-think before we perform an action?
Respect is important inboth our personal and professional lives. Don’t we love to hear appreciation and acknowledgement from our seniors? Don’t we love to hear good about ourselves? But when was the last time you appreciated your subordinateand say “wow you are amazing, you’ve done this great” Always be the boss that you expected to have one day. It certainly helps you gain respect. In the corporate sector we see instances where juniors do not want to work with their managers or seniors mainly because they don’t get appreciated enough and aren’t respected too. So, it’s a new year, new beginnings, let’s start sharing love, care among all. Let us take a step forward, think positive and think different, spread a bit more of kindness, love and care.
Respect yourself, do the right things andRespect will follow you. All the best for the New Year!