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Being Respected

Everywhere we look, the world teaches us to be kinder, more patient and more compassionate towards people. Being empathetic and kind towards ourselves however, isn't something that we learn in school and it probably isn't a conversation our parents would have with us growing up. If anything, we're warned against being selfish.

There's in fact, this moral code that's been embedded into us - that it's normal to put others before yourself, because that's what a kind, generous and giving person would do.

And this is a problem only because it perpetuates the concept of a lose-win situation, for you to gain, I must sacrifice. For the greater good, I must always sacrifice.

The term sacrifice in itself requires us to give up something we value, and 'giving up something' already suggests some kind of reluctance. This is why we can think we're sacrificing for our relationships, sacrificing for our company, but at the end of the day we just feel completely drained and so tired.

We can volunteer and we can GIVE, but we should never sacrifice. When we volunteer, it means we don't have any expectations. When we give, it's only because we have enough to give. But when we sacrifice, it means we're doing something we may not necessarily want to, or that we may not have it in us to give but we're still doing it anyway because we think it's the 'right thing to do'. Because we don't want to be selfish.

And here's the thing - giving ourselves a break, being kind to ourselves... it's not selfish. It's intelligent. Because if we don't, then we'll never learn how to truly give to others... we'll just know how to sacrifice for others.

Self-love and self-care is the opposite of selfish, because only a person who knows how to love herself knows how to love others, and can be truly at peace from the heart, to be happy, always.