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Personal Essay : The Definition Of Self-Respecting

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Self-Respect
“Self-respect, self-worth, and self-love, all start with self. Stop looking outside of yourself for your value.”- Rob Liano
According to the Miriam Webster Dictionary, self-respect is defined as "a proper respect for oneself as a human being." My definition of self-respect is simple: value yourself. Value yourself enough to walk away from something that no longer serves you. Self-respect is one of the most important traits people in all age groups should have. When you respect yourself, you feel confident and worthy of things that you will work hard for. You know you deserve good things even if someone is telling you that you don’t. It’s knowing when something or someone isn’t right for you. Having self-respect is having the courage to say no when you want to, or to stick up for yourself when you need to.
I believe self-respect should be taught to children as soon as we’re old enough to talk. We need a strong foundation to help us deal with problems. I was raised by a single mother who taught my sister and I how to understand what we don’t deserve, and how to stick up for ourselves. She taught us this by ignoring what people would say about single mothers, and proving hateful people wrong by giving us a good life. Kids learn how to respect themselves through the things they hear their parents say or by the things they do. That’s how they learn what’s right and wrong. They see the things their parents tolerated or what they didn’t allow. Unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to be grown up in a loving home. If they saw their mom get abused by their dad and nothing was said about it, why would they say something if it happened to them? How are kids supposed to know that their friends aren’t really their friends if they constantly put them down, if their mom did the same thing to them? Or that, that boy doesn’t really love you if he doesn’t know what the word “no” means, if no one told them that when they we’re growing up?
You can’t respect yourself until you learn how to love yourself. When we’re young, we’re taught to be nice to strangers and to tell our family and friends we love them, so why don’t we do this to ourselves? How can we look in the mirror and think nasty things, then expect

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