Respect is a two-way street and is the strongest expression of love.
Respect. The most important thing in relationships besides love.
If we want others to treat us well, we must treat them the same way. If we want to be heard and seen, because of who we are, we must be able to accept others as they are. If we want to have love and light in our lives, we must share that same love and light with others.
If we want to receive respect, we must be able to give it.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. No matter how often we talk about respect, we don't always follow these rules as religiously as we promised ourselves we would.
Too often we allow people to disrespect us and prefer to withdraw from them. We let them into our lives, we put the keys to our world in their hands. We trust them, and then they hurt us and the harsh reality hits us. We are disappointed.
And suddenly we realize that we are not receiving from them the same attention and love that we are giving. We realize that we are not respected and accepted for who we are!
Why? Because it's us. It's our fault. We are to blame for how others see us because we are the ones who define our own worth. Our worth depends only on ourselves. It is important how we see ourselves, how we treat ourselves and how we love and be gentle with ourselves.
If a person doesn't respect us, it's just a sign that we're doing something wrong. That the relationship we have with ourselves is not strong enough. This is a hint that we do not love and respect each other enough.
The truth is, you can't force anyone to respect you. We cannot tell a person to treat us a certain way. They will do as they see fit. They will probably treat us the way we treat them, but mostly they will treat us the way we treat ourselves. They will love us as we love ourselves. They will care about us as much as we care about us. They will see us with the same eyes as we see ourselves. This is the energy we manifest. You see, we can't force anyone to respect us!
Because we don't want to be surrounded by people who don't respect us, we can look that person in the eye and decide to walk away from them. We can make a decision and remove from our lives all persons who have disrespected us at any time.
But we can make a decision and surround ourselves with positivity. We can consciously choose what to focus our energy on. We can change our lives from its core. But first, it is necessary to change the way we see ourselves. This is something we can only do ourselves. We must understand that without it we will never find happiness and respect.
It will all be in vain if we don't break free from our cage and embrace ourselves as we are.
