Earning Respect is About More Than Your Position

Everyone wants a little respect. Aretha Franklin said it herself. All we want is a little respect. If you don’t feel like you get enough respect, you might want to do something about that. Say, for example, your mom doesn’t respect the fact that you are a mother and a wife and that you can make your own decisions now, or that your dad doesn’t respect the fact that you left your corporate job to start your own business. People will not respect everything you do, but that doesn’t make you any less respectable (unless you aren’t the kind of person who deserves any respect, and I think we all have a pretty standard list of those people; abusers, murderers, rapists, pedophiles…). If you deserve a little respect, start doing these things.

Respect Yourself

If you want people to respect you, you need to respect yourself. No one is going to offer something to you that you don’t offer to yourself. If you have no confidence, that comes across to other people and they’re not going to have much confidence in you either.

Offer Respect

You won’t get respect if you don’t give respect. Even the most powerful and respectable people in the world don’t get respect from people they don’t, in turn, have respect for. For example, some people think that you automatically get respect just by being the boss. However, if you don’t treat your employees with respect, they don’t have to treat you with respect.

Earn It

Now that you have your own, and you are offering it to others, you have to earn it. No one is going to respect you if you continuously go back on your word or you don’t behave in a way that demands respect. For example, if you’re a teacher and you think that automatically entitles you to respect; think again. Unless you are doing your job and doing it well, you aren’t earning it.