April 7: Respect, Loyalty and Love

“Blood makes you related.  Loyalty makes you family.”

This quote is on a t-shirt I own.  I believe this to be true.  Just because someone is a blood relative doesn’t automatically make that person deserve anything from you or others.  The right to deserve anything from others is earned, especially when talking about respect.  It is also meant to be a two-way street.  What we put out into the world will come back to us.  This applies to everything in life.  Respect, love, gratitude, kindness, honesty, EVERYTHING.  Relationships take time, hard work, and consistency.  Loyalty is imperative to a good, healthy, effective relationship, be it at home, work, church, or wherever else we may be creating relationships and bonds with others.

Every interaction is an opportunity to gain or lose, earn or destroy, respect, loyalty, and love.

Are you loyal?  What is loyalty?  What does it mean to be loyal to oneself?  What constitutes loyalty to others?

I think being loyal to ourselves is even more important than being loyal to others.  Our self-talk and our beliefs of self will let us know just how loyal we are to ourselves.  When we do what we say we are going to do, we build credibility with ourselves and our confidence grows.  When we practice discipline in any area of our life, the discipline spills over into other areas of our life, and our confidence grows.  These are great examples of being loyal to ourselves.

An upgrade in beliefs, perspectives, or habits that result in an upgrade of our own Self Image will lead to an upgrade in every other area of our lives-ESPECIALLY respect, loyalty and love.  Once we learn to provide and earn these things for ourselves, and cultivate and grow more of it within, we will have more of it to give away to others.

Respect, Loyalty and Love, in my opinion, to self and others, means we CONSISTENTLY follow the Golden Rule.

 Respect, Loyalty and Love means we don’t trash talk anyone.  Some people think it is okay to be loyal to the people they like then turn around and trash talk the people they don’t like.  I know I have been guilty of this.   A good thing to remember is that any person willing to talk poorly or negatively about someone behind their back with you will soon be talking about you behind your back with someone else.  This is an easy practice to participate in, and can quickly become a destructive habit.

When we choose to become a victim and speak about others in a negative way, many times we are just using others as a way to distract us from the inner misery and work we need to be doing on ourselves.

I believe to be a respectful, loyal, loving person it is best to start by being loyal to ourselves and adopting the principle that we treat all others the same, whether or not we think they deserve it.  Consistently practicing this until it becomes a habit results in progressively trusting ourselves more and how we gain the trust of others.  Consistency builds confidence.  That is how we change ANY environment we are in, and while it may take time and we may not see an immediate result, that is how it works.

CONSISTENCY CREATES A CONVERSION AND A CONVERGENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES THAT WILL SERVE AND SAVE US.

Today’s challenge for myself:  Today I will choose to be respectful, loyal, and loving to myself first, and then to others.  I will choose to focus on the positive and if I want to say something derogatory, negative, or hurtful about another, I will simply choose not to and refocus on the positive.

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Remember:  Mindset matters.  Character counts.  That which we choose to consistently focus on is what EXPANDS in our lives.  WE CREATE our personal realities.