When your spouse, father, mother, brother, sister, boss or any stranger ask you for your assistance, we always tend to help or do what we have been asked to do at our best. And sometimes the request we get from other individuals are totally contrary to our plans, goals or anything we had before but somehow as human beings we tend to stretch ourselves and offer our best to other individuals. You can imagine how many times you have gone far and beyond to help your boss, help your family member, help your spouse and other person just to close the chapter with them and move on. All of the above mentioned things are indeed nice things, but trouble raises when you sit down and promise yourself to read one chapter of a book, you might realized the day has passed, a week, a month or even a year without ever touching the book but yet you keep engaging and volunteer for your boss, your spouse, your friend, family relative or any other stranger except yourself. If you managed to read this far, there is only one blunt conclusion with this kind of behavior, we as human beings we have a tendency of lacking self respect. Sometimes we realize this trend with our lives but most of times we end up stack in the loop and keep repeating the same thing over and over. I’m no expert in this field but as usual, let us try to shade some light on this topic.

The paradox of dual personality
When we receive requests from other individuals and promise to participate, we always create an invisible contracts between us and other individuals. Since other individuals are the initiators of these kind of contract, we always tend to submit ourselves while expecting other individuals to be leaders and enforcers of these kind of contracts. Puzzle arises when we become the initiator of contracts which has to be enforced by us and implemented by us. In self made contracts, a person has to embrace been both a grand master and a humble servant in the same scenario. As a grand master you may order yourself to read a book knowing how significance is it to have knowledge, you may order yourself to workup early in the morning and do exercise knowing your body has to be better, you may order yourself to maintain communication and keep time with your family or loved one knowing how important family is, this can go on and on and on. The point is, each time the grand master in you initiate the request, s/he form an invisible contract with the other self, the humble servant, which will carry the order to the end. Since the grand master aim for the best by stretching the potential of servant while the servant in you might hope for the easy path to accomplish the task, this can create internal conflict and paralysis. If you can become the best leader within yourself, Why failing to become the best servant within yourself too?

Submission to self respect
All of this come down to simple answer, Self-Respect. Within ourselves we always like to assume things will be better if we become our own boss but fact is, that assumption only works when we submit to the boss we create within by becoming our own humble servant, something close to slave. The challenge most of us constantly face is lack of self respect to the boss we create by creating a rebellious servant whom find all sorts of excuses to run away from task initiated by the boss within. This lack of submission to the boss within eventually weaken the master within us and within short period of time we eventually find ourselves stack on the same place. Once an individual accept that the grand master within was smart enough to entrust him/her with particular tasks as a faithful servant and that s/he must carry them diligently as per contract, automatically the task which appears to be difficult might seem easy and executable.

The misfortune of respecting others
Regardless of handling the two selves within causing continuous battle within us, it’s more risky to expect other individuals to act as humble servant when we from any kind of agreement, this include your inability to respect the agreement you made others. This is due to fact that, progress for individuals begin with been honest and responsible within themselves, following this, it’s not a surprise to have several encounters where a person you have form an agreement with end up violate the agreement without any concreate reasons; as per this discussion the reason might be due to constant lack of self respect within the individual you form agreement with. The result of embracing the habit of disrespecting agreement we formed with ourselves always get amplified by constantly disrespecting the agreement we form with others since we will be required to be submissive and get tied with the contract we formed.

The final note to self-respect
Self respect is not a feeling, it’s neither a mood nor anything similar to luxurious journey, in very simple terms, self-respect is the choice to submit to the master within yourself by becoming a self-made humble servant.
It’s hard to amend all the agreement we break with ourselves and others by lack of respect. But it’s possible to build a habit of respecting decisions we made with ourselves and others. Here are some of approaches I have used and still practicing everyday,

• When you agree on something write it down. It’s obvious during execution it will feel tedious to execute but if you will appreciate the master within and become a humble servant you will feel the easy in execution and you can speak to yourself “a humble servant does not need to think, it is masters responsibility” then do what required.
• For each agreement you form with others, create similar other agreement with yourself. There is nothing contagious as the habit of breaking agreements, instead of casting blames to others and invite the same habit, form other agreement with yourself which will stand even when other individual break the agreement. As a result this toxic behavior will have less effect in your life.
• Every time you aim on something, break it down to simple executable steps, as the master of your own life, you must keep your dream high but you must be aware on how the servant within will walk the steps of your dreams. In other terms, after setting goals as the master, you can trick your mind to think of execution or routine to be performed and accept all of it.

At the end, it not easy, but it can be done,
We might fail to be the best, but we can always be better.