When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and you were completely satisfied with what you saw? do you accept everything about yourself everyday?

The answer that comes from so many people who are filled with security and self-confidence is probably, “Yes, But…. ” and that narrows down the ratio to around 4% of the population living near you.

The reason I tried to highlight that example is not to try to bring you down, but to make you see how NOT easy acceptance can be!

In our professional life, in our personal life, in our social life, we face lots of situations where we need to simply & implicitly “accept” another person; but the small hidden question would be “Accepting him/her compared to what? to myself?”

Therefor, generally, accepting someone is always measured by a specific (and sometimes virtual) benchmark that WE set in our mind about what WE WANT THEM TO BE; And coming from the small question I asked in the beginning of this post…  I can tell you that it’s simply going to be HARD WORK.

Now Let’s examine the word Respect for a minute; probably the best (and simple) definition I found would be:

“To Respect someone is to see them the way THEY want you to see them”

So instead of just trying and even striving to accept others based on how YOU want them to be / look / sound / act… Respect them and start seeing them as THEY want you to see them.

Respecting is easy, all you need to do is practice… Can’t find a good example? let me take you back years and years back… When you were a baby, do you think you parents ACCEPTED that you used to wake up at 3 AM crying for attention? They didn’t, but they taught you a great lesson about Respect. They Respected you!

Have a nice Week!
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Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project