Respect Yourself

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

--Confucius

“Confucius”? Really? That’s a bit rich for a blog that routinely mentions “Top Gun,” don’t you think? William Blake didn’t want any action? Or Bill Shakespeare?

And don't ask me how Bruce Willis got in here. How did that guy ever get a record deal? I guess it was the same day Eddie Murphy got his. "My Girl Wants to Party All the Time." Whatever. Its late. I'm on holiday.

The next step in our journey toward low-cost quality living is “Respect Yourself.” Its as much a matter of steeling yourself against the storms life directs our way as deterring others from treating you as badly as you treat yourself.

Now, spoiler alert. This post reads like a self-help book. Or something on Lifetime network. Or a [Fill in the Blanks] Anonymous affirmation. I suppose that’s not so bad. This is Daily Affirmations with Chris Reeder, after all yo. But it gets kind of thick. Grab a throw pillow and a cosmopolitan, sidle up next to your girlfriend, bring a box of Kleenex, and get ready to gab.

Think of your best friend. Chances are you bend over backwards to help out that person. You do things to help them you wouldn’t do for anyone else. Not…bad…things. I’m not talking about breaking into the Watergate Hotel or anything to do them a solid (or am I?). Where was I? You spend hours with them during their darkest hours. You think of their triumphs as yours. You admire them, you’re completely open and candid with them, you support them. You don’t always roll their eyes when they go on and on and on about the same stupid personal problem they’ve had for freaking YEARS and refuse to do anything about it. Yeah, you know.

If you can be that good to someone else, why can’t you be just as good to yourself?

Sure, everywhere you turn you run into some lunkhead with a comically misplaced sense of over-confidence. You find them in gyms, upscale bars, executive offices, Ferrari dealerships, Congress, and so forth.

But there’s a lot more people who lack any confidence at all. They doubt their abilities, they run from challenges, they resign themselves to failure. They expect the worst. You know: Eeyore. Its not because they’re not capable. Its because they doubt themselves. At their core, they don’t like themselves. So they don’t treat themselves very well. Sometimes that comes out as destructive behavior. Sometimes its passing up chances to improve. Other times it results in giving up on people, or responsibilities.

This represents our real problem. Self-doubt, self-loathing, running from challenges…that’s what holds us back. People who won’t take risks, who don’t try to excel. In other words, people who aren’t “achievers”! How much do we lose when people take themselves out of the game before it even starts?

Have you heard about Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Just kidding.

If you’ll treat your best friend like I’ve described, why can’t you be just as good to yourself?

That entails several different considerations.

The biggest part of being good to yourself is liking yourself. Not the sort of misplaced Jersey Shore narcissism that’s strangling our society. Not filling your head with thoughts of “I’m the man!” But just plain liking and respecting yourself. Previously, I’ve written that you need to see yourself for how you really are, the way other people see you. There, I warned against misplaced hubris, but seeing yourself like others do has an upside too. You can see your good qualities. How many people simply don’t like themselves? Hey, speaking! I’m party Kryptonite, capable of killing off any gathering through infectious boredom just by showing up. You’re welcome. But if you’re not necessarily the most interesting person you know, you should at least think you’re likable. If you’re not, do something about it. No, really, change. Go to a counselor, or a preacher, or your best friend. Become the person you want to be. But chances are, you’re already likeable and have much to offer. You just don’t know it. Don’t you have friends? They must like you. What is it that they see in you that you don’t? Are your friends idiots? Have you deceived them with some clever “likeable guy” impersonation? Probably not. These people probably know you a lot better than you think. If not, maybe its not really an act. You look in the mirror and see things that aren’t there. Your friends look at you and see the things that are there. Maybe you are likeable. And maybe you should treat yourself accordingly.

You need to be good to yourself too. People are more than happy to take a pound of flesh from you. Why help them? Why destroy yourself with drugs, or drink, or food, or smoke, or spending hours on Facebook, or video games, or other destructive behaviors? Because they take your mind off your problems? No, all those mind-numbers just give you a second problem. You wouldn’t let your kids do those things right? You’d speak up if your best friend did those things, right? Again, tell yourself.

Another aspect of respecting yourself is trusting yourself. Chances are you really DO know what’s best to do, but you’re letting fear and doubt hold you back. Ever heard the saying, or thought about yourself, that its funny how you know what other people should do in their lives but you don’t know what to do in your own life? That’s actually not true. You DO know what to do. You just don’t trust yourself enough to do it. You worry that others will criticize you, or you’ll be embarrassed. You worry that doing what’s right will ruin your safe, comfortable life. But what you can’t see as that as you cling to the status quo, digging your fingernails in as deeply as you can to preserve your way of life, is the world around you changing. Like it or not, the carpet under you is being pulled away. You’re always standing on shifting ground. Pull the trigger. Take the risk.

Have I used enough clichés yet?

So if you like yourself and you treat yourself well, you should insist that others do so too. Stand up for yourself. Ultimately, no one can hurt you but you. You might let other people hurt you, but in the end, you have to allow them to do it. Well, unless its someone shooting you or something. Lots of people will run you down, ignore you, take advantage of you…why would you help them? If you saw your friend letting that happen, you’d tell them, right? So why don’t you tell yourself? If you want people to treat you like a doormat, act like a doormat. If you want people to treat you with respect, treat yourself with respect. People will treat you just as badly as you let them.

You should consider one last aspect—you need to develop yourself. Don’t ever stand for “good enough.” Constantly challenge yourself. Strive to improve. Not just your mind but your body. You only get one of each. Without constant improvement, both will wither and fail. Put another way, your mind and body are investments, not unlike your home or your retirement accounts. Surely you’d tend to your financial investments. You’d repair your home, you’d monitor your investments, right? Why let your mind and body become stagnant and atrophy? You can do anything you want. You can be anyone you want. Well, you can’t run the point for the Knicks or create nuclear fusion. Probably. But there’s a lot of stuff you can do. Its not just your mind either. Its your body. Your soft, torpor-ridden, dough-like body, which has turned translucent from staying inside since like 1984. Firm it up! You only get one body, and it has to last your entire lifetime. There’s no trade-ins, and for the most part, no spare parts (unless you’re David Crosby). Do whatever it takes: run, walk, find your x-box buddy and enter a three-legged race at the local VFW July 4th picnic. Get off the couch, put down the nutter-butters, tie your shoelaces and go. Iraqi war veterans with missing limbs can run marathons, so you probably can do a 30 minute walk.

So easy squeezy, right? Love yourself. Be good to yourself. Stand up for yourself. Develop yourself. It’s a cruel world, and you can’t count on someone coming along and solving all your problems and making you the happiest boy on earth. Not unless you live in a Disney cartoon or a Meg Ryan movie. Keep these things in mind, and maybe you’ll go from wallflower to all-star.

NEXT-Some Time in New York City