Gaining respect starts with respecting yourself.
Self-respect is routed to the actions and habits you take each day.
Even a tiny shift can change how you view yourself, how you hold yourself, and thus, how others also view you.
Try these:
1. Take 5% extra care for your appearance every morning.
Shave under your beard if you often miss that bit.
Iron your shirt. Clean the dirt off your boots.
What other small things can you do to improve your appearance just a little?
Small acts of care like this go way further than you might initially assume.
Taking responsibility in small ways will translate to big wins in other areas.
2. Master a mini-skill.
You may say you’re too busy to take on a side project.
But taking on a skill parallel to your primary career or skillset needn’t take lots of time and can yield incredible things for you.
We can pick something super-narrow that takes ten minutes a day.
Drawing, speaking on video, dancing, and playing chess.
You will give your mind a rest by focusing elsewhere, but you also gain skills that build your self-respect and provide value in the world.
3. Do not act or speak out of anger.
Some of the greatest tragedies have come from people’s inability to take a breath when angry.
The last thing you want to do when triggered is speak or act uncontrollably.
This may work in the heat of a battle, but in most cases, very little good comes out of acting in anger.
Remaining calm when upset will instil more confidence than you can imagine.
4. Stop interrupting others.
Why do people interrupt each other?
It comes across as disrespectful, but often the action is rooted in insecurity.
Have the confidence and courage to allow space to appear in conversations.
When you cut in, you seem childish and unable to control your impulses to speak.
Allow others to finish, and you will respect yourself most of all.
5. Spend a little less time stewing on setbacks.
Setbacks, or perceived failures, are inevitable.
But I emphasise ‘perceived’ because mistakes are always mistakes when we believe they are so.
Instead of creating more stress than needed, get into the habit of spending a little less time on the ground after you’ve been knocked over.
Getting up sooner and carrying on regardless of how you feel is one of the most powerful habits you can nurture.
6. Subtract one bad habit today.
There’s that thing you know makes you feel rotten when you do it.
Find your strength and delete it from your life today.
This small act won’t stop there.
The positive energy attached to this show of force will flood into other areas of your life.
7. Take a little extra care.
Many of us are unfulfilled and bored.
No one talks about this, but very little is because they have chosen the ‘wrong’ vocation or are in the wrong job.
Because they have no respect for the work, they block themselves from enjoying what they do.
When we take an extra level of care in all that we do, two things happen:
1. We enjoy ourselves and perform better at the task.
2. Life rewards us with upgrades, promotions, and new opportunities we’d have missed had we moped around half-heartedly.
No matter what you do, go all in.
8. Do more of what’s working.
It’s crazy how many people see success in their lives or businesses and then do nothing to exploit the win.
Identify what’s working for you right now.
Write down all the examples of this. You will find many.
When we succeed, we receive a very clear signal of the direction we can take.
How can you ensure you do more of what has shown to work?
Squeeze every last drop out of those things that are proven to work.
Be obsessed with identifying wins and doubling down on those wins.
That’s how you astound yourself and those around you.
Want to learn the 25 tiny habits that build even greater self-respect?
I was never particularly happy until my late twenties. Things changed noticeably for me then. I learned ‘happiness’ is more to do with self-respect than anything else.
When I learned to move past my insecure thoughts and carve a healthy and confident self-identity, real, genuine satisfaction poured into my life. It was weird, but made sense.
Learn the 25 little daily habits I use that reinforce a powerful identity of self-respect in achievable daily steps.
My book shows you how (comes with 3 awesome bonuses):
Get the Art of Self Respect book bundle here.
“One of the best self-help books I’ve read in a long time. Alex exposes, in a clear and concise manner, the behaviors we should study, practice, and adopt to develop better self-respect. This, in turn, leads to earning respect from others.” - Jean Pierre
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