Respect is Non-reflexive
In life, the more you give of some things, the more you get. Unfortunately, respect is not one of those things.
We the people award respect for many things, for example: success, valour, popularity, and money, or even size and appearance.
The Dirty Default
Sadly, in the absence those things, all too often we serve disrespect.
That's not one of our greater virtues.
A Peculiarity
Etymologically, respect is the act of looking back on something, and there is an incredible phenomenon in human nature that occurs when we look back on ourselves!
The more you study yourself, the more you discover what you need to do to respect yourself.
And the more you respect yourself, the more others will respect you!
Putting Pen to Paper
Observing your own behaviour and writing it down, is one of the most powerful personal development tools known to man.
Are you taking notes?
How often do you record your own actions?
Are you honest with yourself?
Observing your own behaviour and writing it down, is one of the most powerful personal development tools known to man.
If you're not spending an hour every week to analyze your own behaviour and write down what you could be doing better, you're missing out on tremendous opportunities for a better life.
Start taking notes immediately!
Respect
"Respect and respite are ultimately the same word. Both go back to respectus, the past participle of Latin respicere 'look back at,' hence look at, regard, consider. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix re-, back, and specere, 'look' (source of English spectacle, speculate, etc). Respectus passed into English, perhaps via Old French respect, as respect, in the sense 'regard,' 'relation' (as in 'with respect to'); the key modern meaning deference, esteem developed towards the end of the 16th century. An earlier borrowing of respectus into Old French produced respit, which preserved another meaning of the Latin word, refuge. This was the source of English respite."
~ John Ayto, "Dictionary of Word Origins"
