The characteristics of respect are esteem and thoughtfulness. It doesn't matters what someone else thinks of you as much, but more so what you think of yourself. The highest form of respect a person can pay themselves is the act of admitting your errors and mistakes and making amends for them. You may not be able to go back and repair everything in your past, but by acknowledging the problem and correcting them, helps us to not repeat those errors and mistakes.
One of the problems, we face today is that we don't think much of ourselves. We don't consider just how important our contributions are when we just go along with what is accepted. When we step out of this kind of thinking and start practicing esteem and thoughtfulness for not only ourselves, but for everyone, we pay ourselves the greatest respect. The truly virtuous people understand that self respect invites thoughtfulness, sincerity and caring for others as you care for yourself. Self respect also invites a sense of discipline. Your dignity grows as a result of being able to tell yourself no. If we want to be respected, we need to practice love, caring and respect for others. A lot of us feel respect is something we are entitled to. Are we to respect those that don't show respect for their selves or others? It would be wrong to give unconditional respect based on age, gender or position in life. That respect needs to be based on how these individuals respect themselves and others. When we respect ourselves, we in turn know the importance of respecting others.
Too many of us expect to be respected because of our position, age or gender, when we don't show respect for others. We need to think about how our behavior affects others. Self respect is not based on your successes or failures. It is not comparing ourselves to others either. Self respect is based on liking yourself. When you like yourself, your behavior reflects that. You become cognizant of how you act, how you respond to adversity, and how you relate to others. I can give you many more attributes for self respect, but that will only delay the inevitable. Respecting yourself equates to loving yourself. When you learn to love yourself, you will treat yourself with love and in turn treat others with love. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It all starts with self respect.
