If you don’t respect yourself, you’ll take away other people’s motivation to respect you too. No matter what societies standards are, you must create a standard of your own that best represents you. After all, it’s your name and your legacy that’s on the line and not societies. When people say your name, you want a certain image to be ingrained in their minds that present you only in a positive light. Your name and your reputation is everything, so you must protect it and preserve it at all cost.
My name Cheyenne Bostock means whatever I stand for and whatever I represent. Anytime my name is placed in headlines, it serves as a way to inform others of my association with that particular organization. For this reason, I must be conscious of the way I carry myself and treat others, for bad news spreads far faster than good. It’s important to have a good standing relationship with the people in your community, church, schools and the media because these are the people who will echo your name for whatever reasons suit them. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing so let your actions influence the things they say. These echoes will reach people who may know you and/or have never met you.
Making a good name for yourself isn’t solely about appearances, it’s primarily about integrity and good character. Do the right thing, so people can always use that against you. There will come a time in every person’s life where we won’t have the opportunity to speak for ourselves, and you will want your actions to have done all the talking for you. The proof will always be in your actions, and there isn’t enough deception in the world to cover up your lack of kindness and servitude here on earth.
When I first started coaching other people’s relationships, I had to make a judgment call. I could either use my relationship insight and years of studying behavioral patterns to create a cult of manipulators, or I could use it to create an army of influencers. I knew that spewing out manipulative relationship advice would be seen as valuable to the manipulators, but it would hold no value to those who were looking to learn and grow. Consequently, my credibility as a relationship expert would be null and void if I merely focused on how a man could win over a woman or vice versa. A relationship is about creating a win/win situation for both parties involved, also known as compromise.
I had to choose long-term victory over short-term, which has not only improved my career as a life & Relationship Expert, but also as a man. You will be faced with this same dilemma many times over, and will have to choose right from wrong. No one is perfect and we all make mistakes, but what’s important is that you learn from them. Learning from your mistakes will show that you have grown as a man, and people will respect you more for it. In fact, if you haven’t made mistakes in your life, you’re either in denial, or not normal.
Back when I was a kid in school, I would make plenty of mistakes and still do today. In fact, I don’t even know if you could even call them mistakes; I was simply young, dumb and was making poor decisions. The most important observation that I could make was that I had not yet learned my lesson. This was a problem for me because since I hadn’t learned my lesson, I was apt to make the same mistakes again. This could land me in big trouble if the punishment were too severe the next time around.
When you’re in school and other social clubs, one thing all men experience is a close association with other men, and we hope that in time we will gain a closer association with other women. You’ll hear stories about how many women they’ve slept with, who they’ve slept with, when and where, and you’ll feel pressured into believing that this is what it means to be a man. On the contrary, degrading and disgracing women is not what it means to be a man; this type of behavior shows that he has not yet grown into a man. He doesn’t respect women as the gift from God that they are, which also reveals that he doesn’t respect himself. When a man respects himself, he carries himself with honor, dignity and respect and closely associates with others who do the same.
It’s true that you are the company that you keep. Show me your best friend and I will show you the type of man you are. Even if you’re not guilty, you’ll be guilty by association. Choosing the company you keep is a reflection of whom you are inside, as it is you who is making the conscious decision to associate. Once you are old enough to make decisions, you will be held accountable, and people will respect your either more or less based on your affiliation with others.
Everything decision you make today effects tomorrow. Most people want their past to be erased because they’re ashamed of it and don’t want it to come up in the future. Your past is and always will be relevant to your future, which is why it’s so important to respect yourself and others today. Consider what your actions would do to your name, or what it would mean for your son or daughter to have to also bear your name in years to come. Consider your parents and their legacy and how it would shame them to be associated with anything disgraceful. Most figure they don’t have to be responsible and accountable until they turn 18.
When you’re 18, no one excuses your behavior like they normally would a child, and you conveniently want others to respect you as an adult. You want the right to vote, pump gas and buy cigarettes, but don’t want to be charged as an adult in a crime. You want to be able to come and go as you please in your parents’ house, but you don’t want to pay rent. You want to have unprotected sex, but have no means of provided for an unexpected child. In actuality, you will find yourself demanding respect because you haven’t grown enough us a man to command it.
Through actions, you can prove that you deserve respect and you can start by respecting yourself. You can show your respect for self by treating yourself with dignity and respect and valuing people, time, money and resources. You can show your respect for people by acknowledging their skills, being supportive and sharing your time and resources. You can show your respect for time by keeping a schedule, being on time and requiring that others do the same. You can show your respect for money by being financially responsible, budgeting your money and being charitable to others.
Treat everyone with dignity and respect not because of who they are, but because of who you are. Your respect for others isn’t always about what you say; it’s also about what you do. Ultimately it boils down to how much respect you have for yourself as an individual. The way you walk, talk, dress and carry yourself will influence the type of people you attract. When I was in high school, I was on the Varsity basketball team under coach Bob Hurley and I had heard that we weren’t allowed to have braids, tattoos or girlfriends.
At the time, I was growing my hair out, and I actually had just taken out my twists before transferring to the school. I was the fairly new kid, and one day, after a frustrating practice, coach finished a statement by saying “Oh yea, and Cheyenne, cut your hair”. The whole team looked at me and holding in their laughter because they knew how much I wanted to grow my hair. I knew that if I came back to practice without a haircut, he would take it as I didn’t respect him, and if I showed up at a game without a haircut, I for sure would not play. The girls liked the Kobe Bryant look I had going on and I was torn.
Needless to say, I cut my hair, returned to school and practice and showed my coach that I did respect him and wanted his mutual respect. It’s important to have a respectful relationship amongst people who are in positions of authority, especially if it in some way can help or harm your future. You’ll increase your chances of gaining their respect if you carry yourself as someone who commands it. Yielding to authority is a sign of humility and grace, and will make people who are in authority feel superior even if they aren’t. That’s the thing about respect, it’s not an admission of an individual’s power or the lack thereof, it’s simply an acknowledgment of their position.
As it pertains to self-respect, you must realize that what you’re working towards is positioning yourself for future acknowledgment. When people see your face and hear your name, you want to be acknowledged for the work you’ve been doing. That brings forth the question of whether or not you are in fact worthy of being acknowledged. What have you been doing with your life? Do you spend your time serving yourself or serving others? Do you focusing on hurting people or helping people? You don’t have to answer; the proof will be evident in everything around you.
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