“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.” ― Lao Tzu
If popular culture is any indicator of our subconscious values (it often is, unfortunately), people tend to believe they gain self-respect by gaining the admiration and respect of others. The value signifiers people use most commonly are:
—Wealth: designer clothes, nice cars, big houses, extravagant vacations, private schools, members clubs.
—Power: Managerial status, political influence, relationship dominance, social clout.
—Popularity: knowing lots of people, having the admiration of lots of people, large social media followings, public fame, notoriety.
—Coolness / edginess: being ironic, wearing hip calculated fashions, playing devil’s advocate, contrary thinking, humor, taste.
—Virtuosity: supporting causes, doing activism, speaking up for various injustices, social media virtue signaling, political discourse.
All of these fall under the umbrella of things we project onto other people. People believe that if they project a certain image of the self onto others, they will be respected. And respect from others is seen as the prerequisite for self-respect.
But there’s a problem! No one cares. You’re all alone. Spend enough time around wealthy or powerful people and you realize that they often spend more time individually thinking about how they themselves are coming across than you. A lot of them are really miserable, especially the ones who don’t have a meaningful job or purpose in life. Or go to the NYC Supreme store or a hip music venue and realize how every cool person is so self-conscious they barely notice anyone else. Or go on Twitter and watch as people shout back and forth about refugees or water crises. Do you think they really feel that much better about themselves afterwards? Do you think they make a difference? No, they’re just trying to feel better about their own lot in life by co-opting the suffering of others.
There’s a fundamental misconception in the way we try to acquire self-respect. We think we have to start with respect from others, when in fact it’s the other way around. Self-respect comes from upholding an intrinsic standard for yourself, a standard that has nothing to do with other people.
It’s about cultivating what makes you unique and developing unique skills and healthy habits, not conforming to a false standard.
If you spend enough time alone, getting comfortable with yourself, reflecting, working on projects that matter to you, you develop this sixth sense for your ‘true self’. Once you have a grasp of who you really are, you can grow in such a way that cultivates self-respect.
But if your self-image is a series of shiny images gathered from pop culture or the opinions of others, or what you think the world wants, you will never uncover your true self. You will never acknowledge your true strengths and weaknesses. And you will go through life play-acting as someone else, someone you think other people will like.
Let’s be real— do you like people who pretend to be other people? Do you find yourself admiring and respecting social climbers, kiss-asses and phonies? No, the people we admire and respect are always individualists who’ve found a way to cultivate their own strong sense of self. And if they’re not, they usually end up experiencing some sort of downfall or reckoning down the line (flavor of the month celebrities, ultra-rich financiers, corrupt politicians, sexual harassers).
There’s an old management adage about employees: it’s not about how hard you work, it’s about how hard it is to replace you. You can spend 90 hours a week doing a job anyone can do, but if someone else does it for 100 hours, they win. But there are increasing numbers of extremely successful people who spend 20-30 hours a week doing a job that only they can do. This specialization comes from knowing yourself, and applying yourself to your own specialized set of values and strengths, rather than trying to play to others’ perceptions.
Start by figuring out what makes you unique. It’s not one individual skill. Its a collection of ideals, experiences and skills. You are the only you. When you’ve spent years trying to be someone else, or trying to gain affirmation from others, it can feel as if you’re nothing special. But if you take the time you spend seeking affirmation and direct it inward towards this process of reflection, you take the first step to cultivating your own irreplaceable qualities, and an immense amount of self-respect.