Don’t demand respect. Earn it!

Note: If you expect to be respected because of your position, financial status or age regardless of how you treat others, you may want to read something else as this blog may upset you.

We’re being watched everyday with or without our knowledge. Our parents watch us. Our siblings watch us. Our friends watch us. Our children watch us. Our spouses watch us!

And from our actions, they gauge the respect they give us!

It’s simply sociology if you ask me- social interactions, relationships, imitations and behaviour. You’re looked up to somewhere by someone, and as much as you want to hold societal expectations in contempt, they have some pretty realistic assumptions.

We owe humility to everyone! It’s a law of humanity, we all have the same needs and concerns.

People underneath us keep track of our lifestyles not just for story telling. They admire us, they are inspired and hope to be like us.

Meaning, they secretly imitate us, how we speak, how we dress, the kind of friends keep. And whenever there’s a reverse in our actions, when we fail to treat ourselves and others with respect, they automatically lose faith in our actions and ultimately lose admiration for us.

See at times, we’ve concluded that respect should be robotic because of our posts in society; parents, team leaders, elders, managers, husbands and so on. And as a result, we’ve asserted dominance to people thinking by evoking fear in them, we’re being recognized.

We expect people to blindly worship us because of certain superiorities even when we don’t deserve it.

Having an accolade will earn you admiration but won’t necessarily earn you homage among folks who know your clumsy character.

Yet it disturbs us when we don’t get the repute we think we deserve. We always resort to raving about how our friends and family don’t appreciate us no matter what, how we have extended the world to them but they never respect us!

But are we really worthy it?

Do you walk the talk? How do you behave around people? Do you always throw angry outbursts with threats to others? How often do you apologize or even admit you’re wrong? Are you the one known for sluggish tardiness on dates? Do you take responsibility when you blow things up or make excuses? How do you positively impact others?

How about if you earned respect because you chose to do the right thing, be empathetic, kind and polite?

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect- Bruce Lee

Because the flipside is that everyone of us can preach about how good we’re, how we have integrity, we can always remind people of our age and positions as if they’re one way tickets to respect, but a few us can actually act in accordance to what we claim we’re.

Why should you be respected? Does your behaviour arouse dignity?

Instead of assuming and demanding respect, how about we try to actually earn it? Act in a way that earns us respect!

It’s the least we can learn from mistakes of our fathers.

Treat people the way you want to be treated. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given- Hussein Nishah