Notice I did not title this with the tried and true psychobabble of “self-esteem.” There is a good reason for that. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. Self-respect is about how you treat yourself and what kind of treatment you will tolerate from others.
I can’t always measure how I feel about myself, but I can clearly see in any life circumstance how I am treating myself and how I allow others to treat me. Indeed, it is not an understatement to say that without self-respect, self-esteem is impossible to achieve. If you work diligently on self-respect, self-esteem will take care of itself.
That is the advantage of seeing things in terms of respect vs esteem. Self-respect is about your behaviors. It is measurable and verifiable when you learn how to do it. You can tell, when you are watching, whether or not you are treating yourself respectfully. And you can learn to practice it the moment you decide that is what you are going to do.
That does add a degree of difficulty because it puts the responsibility in your lap to get it done. But of course that is true of everything else in life.
The good news is self-respect is a learned behavior. You can be taught how to practice self-respect and with practice you only get better.
There are five other areas of specialty named on the front page of this website. All of them, even ones you might think are unrelated, will involve at least some work in this area.
Sometimes it requires courage, especially for men who have not been taught to respect themselves either from their families or other significant relationships. Frequently men who come from abusive families end up in abusive relationships, repeating the cycle over and over.
Add to that the way society often treats men and you end up with a lack of self-respect in men on a cultural level.
This does not have to be the definition of your life. Please review other articles in this category and you may find them very helpful in understanding the nature of the problem a lot better.
And, if you feel like some personal coaching in this area might be of help, I am ready to be of service to you.