Self confidence and self respect
Every day, the media presents images of 'successful' people. These images reinforce the illusion that a successful person is someone who is rich, famous, beautiful and powerful.
Real success is being comfortable with who you are, in any company and in any situation. There's a difference between confidence and self respect. You may be very confident at work, but this does not guarantee that you feel good about who you are.
If your sense of personal value comes from ‘what you do’ rather than ‘who you are’ then, when you stop doing, you may struggle to find any value in yourself.
One way to avoid sinking into uncomfortable feelings about yourself is to make yourself busier and busier. But no matter how busy you are, you won’t feel good about yourself without self respect.
Reclaiming self respect is at the heart of the meditation journey.
Self respect refers to your overall evaluation of yourself. Self-respect can be high or low. A healthy self respect means accepting everything about yourself: your strengths, your weaknesses, your victories, your defeats, your past, your hopes and dreams, your uniqueness and your ordinariness.
Your level of self respect influences the way you treat yourself.
You can be loved by many people, but be unable to love yourself; you can be a high achiever, yet feel like a failure; you may do a lot of helpful things, but remain constantly self-critical.
Deep down, you hold beliefs or perceptions about yourself. If you believe you are not lovable, then you interpret life through this filter. If you believe that you are inferior, then, no matter how well you do, it is never good enough.
To have a healthy self respect is to know yourself, as you are, with all your unique character traits, and to appreciate your own value and self-worth. Self respect is recognising your own value.
Source:
http://learnmeditationonline.org/elearning/course/jumpTo?moduleId=79&courseId=3
