Thoughts on Respecting Yourself

 So many people put up with so much abuse. They either abuse themselves or let others abuse them. I remember reading that sexual abuse victims feel like damaged goods. It is common for abuse victims to let one person after another hurt them, because their self-esteem is low. 

If you don't really like yourself, you will let all kinds of bad things happen to you. You will over eat and hurt yourself that way. You will allow verbal abuse toward you to occur often. 

I had a co-worker who kept letting her boyfriend hit her. Every day almost he would beat her up a lot. To be fair she beat him up too. I didn't get why she kept letting that happen. I figured maybe it was their entertainment instead of watching movies. I think it mainly was due to low self-respect. They both did some kind of drugs too, so that was another way they disrespected themselves.

On the Jay Shetty show yesterday I heard a great quote. "Don't let grief be an excuse to hurt yourself." It made me think how I started smoking cigarettes after I lost my daughters. I did not smoke when I was pregnant though. Praise God for helping me to respect myself and my baby then. 

When we miss someone we might hurt ourselves. We blame ourselves for them being gone so we lose respect for ourselves and hurt ourselves. Don't do that. 

Forgive yourself. Whatever you need to forgive yourself for, forgive it. Not every choice in life is easy. Most things are out of your control. We can't do much about what others decided to do or what they wanted. You have to just let things go sometimes. You have to let people go sometimes. Most things will not last forever. You can hope that they will, but realistically life is very unpredictable. Always be ready for anything. Then you won't have a mid-life crisis when things go bad. You will be mentally ready for it. 

There is a fine line though between expecting bad things and realizing that they might happen. If you expect bad, you might cause it. If you realize bad things might happen, you have a back-up plan. You are prepared for anything. 

Respect yourself. No matter what you have done, you deserve to be treated well simply because you are a human. And let the past go.