People greatly underestimate the power of self-respect. The amount that you respect yourself greatly influences every other aspect of your life, even if you don’t realize it. The sad part is that everyone can lose confidence in themselves at some point in their lives and feel like a terrible person.
Perhaps your life hasn’t been going quite the way that you expected lately. This could be due to a lack of self-esteem which is ruling your life. These are 12 clear signs that you’ve lost respect for yourself.
1. You Hide Your Feelings
When something has you feeling down, you try your best to keep it from other people. It may be because you fear appearing weak or because you’re afraid to let others in.
2. You Don’t Listen to Your Instinct
You’re constantly second-guessing yourself. When something doesn’t feel right to you, you often ignore it instead of listening to your gut. A lot of the time, it turns out that your instinct was right and you probably should have listened.
3. You Let Others Control You
Other people bend you to their will and you do nothing about it. Perhaps you don’t notice, or you just tell yourself that it doesn’t bother you. Either way, you’ve let others rule your whole life.
4. You Put Too Much on Your Plate
There’s constantly an overwhelming number of tasks that you need to get done. For whatever reason, you always take on far more than you can handle, and it leads you to some difficult situations.
5. You’re Way Too Hard on Yourself
As the saying goes, “you’re your own worst critic.” More often than not, you think that everything you do isn’t good enough and that you’re not doing enough to improve.
6. You Judge Others
It’s not only yourself that you judge, but others too. Having a negative opinion of other people all the time shows a serious lack of self-esteem in a person. How can you love yourself if you can’t love anybody else?
7. You’re Constantly Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do
Saying no is extremely difficult for you. When someone asks you to do something, you’ll usually say yes, even if you don’t want to. Because of this, you’re always doing things that you would really rather not do.
8. You Don’t Put Your Own Needs First
It’s wonderful t look after the people that you care about. The only problem with this is when you neglect your own needs to focus on others.
9. You Keep Toxic People Around You
Even when you know someone is adding negativity to your life, you still keep them around. You’d rather keep them in your life and avoid conflict rather than cutting them off for good.
10. You Don’t Focus on Your Dreams
There’re always a million other things that need to be done before you can focus on what you really want in life. The problem with that is that you’re never left with any time to pursue your own dreams. If you keep going like this, you’ll never achieve them.
11. You Need Approval From Others
You may not even realize it, but you’re never happy unless someone else tells you that you’re doing well. If you don’t receive validation from the people around you, you feel like a failure.
12. You’re Following a Path You Never Wanted
In life, we need to make a choice about the path that we follow. Do we go down the road that everyone else does, or do we venture out on a new one on our own? Unfortunately, you’ve chosen to go with a plan for life that isn’t really what you want.
A lack of self-respect can completely destroy your life. Along with that, it can greatly contribute to mental illness such as depression and anxiety. If you want to live a better, fuller life, you’ll need to learn to love yourself first. It won’t be easy, but you’ll thank yourself for it later.
If you know someone who struggles with respecting themselves, share this article with them. Let them know that they are far more amazing than they give themselves credit for.
