Self-Respect – My life never worked till I started developing it!
I am very grateful to have yet another amazing day in my marketing consulting business. This post I would like to dedicate to my awesome CPA with whom I met with today. I am also thinking of the hard-working and amazing Jenny Kuo (from Sociable Space) as I write this article.
Like many of my clients (who are about 70% awesome female business owners), my CPA fits the perfect profile of many of them. Kind, good natured, technically brilliant, hard-working and of course not realizing how awesome they actually are!
Relating to this experience myself, I have spent many years of my life with little respect for myself. This has led to a disastrous life for myself in a range of areas. One big one was how badly my career progressed. As I never had respect for myself, I would always be attracted to employers that merely gave me respect matching my own internal respect. This resulted in earning far less than what I deserve, working incredible hours, generating results without any long-term benefit to myself and having nothing to show for years of hard work when I was moved on in all instances.
Many corporate rebels like myself are dealing with fallout from years of ill treatment in corporate environments. I used to think it was “only ee” (which is no doubt their intent) only to realize there are many which had it worse than me a range of ways. I have heard amazing stories and personally observed a range of things covering:
– Sexual harassment (e.g “sex for job security”).
– Forced to commit crimes to keep your job (happened to me once, and I said no and called their bluff).
– Standard corporate bullying.
– Theft by withholding entitlements and commissions.
– Women being penalized.
All very sad stuff and after speaking with my CPA and reflecting on my past, it’s all about respect. That is, many corporates and even people in our own lives treat us with such disrespect and contempt, we must be careful not to let it change our own view of “self-respect”. The big mistake I made was not keeping up my self respect and them getting to me and their lies rubbing off on me.
When I went into my own business and escaped that abuse, the thing that I found strange (as many others do) is that it can take some time to detox from what happens to us. In my case, even years later:
– I still have nightmares.
– I still act with poor confidence at times.
– I still don’t treat myself fairly.
– But I am getting over it!
To my poor friends and clients alike – if for whatever reason you don’t have good self-respect, I encourage you to really work on this part of your life. As my self-respect has increased, my income and results have increased! So it’s important and totally critical!
There are no secret answers, but I can say one great technique I learnt in the church and did myself:
– Every day Write 10 x Things (every morning) about why you can realistically self-respect yourself!
It can be little things! Eating health, loving your children, helping someone – or even from your past, reflecting on big things and missions you have won. I did this exercise mentally and it worked, but many need to write it down. Reflect on why you are awesome!
So if you are down on yourself and letting yourself get walked over, you have little self-respect, so please work on it! Don’t stuff up your life like I did, and if you have – just improve and don’t punish yourself!
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