5 ideas to build your self-reliance and redefine dignity

Every human being is unaware of their own gifts that exist on many levels yet remain consciously unacknowledged. Even you are aware of things people are conditioned not to discuss. Part of you may patiently wait for others to discuss them. Part of you is ready and willing to make a different choice.

Even now, you silently reflect on what it means to demonstrate and experience self-respect. You may do this for yourself, for loved ones or strangers who re-evaluate their self-perception during illness and a personal journey to their inner healing. 

Everything in this life teaches you.  You are unconsciously evaluating how you define living with dignity, what kinds of life choices would not offend your view of an acceptable existence. You are judging which lifestyles would work for you, deciding what you would or would not be desirable. You are anticipating based on misperceptions that require attention.

We are each our own prophet, not because we all accept it is possible toforesee the future, but because we are slowly accepting we read energy and signs in the present. We sense what feels right and are acknowledging we have the courage to be more honest with ourselves. Consider these five ideas to build self-reliance and redefine dignity from where you stand;

1) Recognize your own patterns of avoidance of responsibility. To bravely move to assume responsibility for your own perceived problems will humble you, move you, and transform you forever. What do you believe should be done?

2) Acknowledge and explore hidden resentment. The way you choose to live your life, perceive and use time, contributes to your stress and attitude as if you were fueling a fire. What you resent about others reflects hidden things you fear and resent about you.  Which choices no longer resonate with you?

3) Attune to how you perceive and respond. How you are conditioned to experience life is based on learning at a given moment. Yet people carry conditioning like baggage and apply it to situations inappropriately. What would you change next?

4) Notice you are no longer who you were.  What you learn when you have certain faculties, mobility and experience no longer defines your point of reference when your baseline changes. What you are taught at different life stages is not always transferable to others. If your abilities strengthen or weaken, this is simply an invitation to reset your baseline.

5) Choose to rethink what it is to be genuinely loving.  An evolving sense of health and well-being invites you to grow from perceived disappointment.  This means you learn to love yourself despite not always meeting your own expectations, regardless of what other people define as their ideal, freedom, independence or desirable conditions for them.  Only listening to others traps and constricts when you have the power to define your life mission, your sense of dignity every moment.

Comments

[Jay]

I love #5. Love yourself despite disappointment is huge. The more we love ourselves, the more we will realize that those disappointments are simply opportunities to learn something new. Thanks Liara!

[Liara Covert]

Jay, as you evolve, you grow to realize other people or circumstances are not the key to your happiness. Each person can come to see how they have grown dependent on certain ideas of happiness or what they assume is required to feel good. In actual fact, at a given moment, what you do in the physical world only appears to make you happy. It has no bearing on your core reasons for self-respect or dignity. When a person seeks to receive rather than give energy from within, that person is unconcerned with spiritual growth. Each person chooses whether or not to consciously stretch, heal and grow.

[Karl Staib - Work Happy Now]

When I first started blogging, I listened to the big time bloggers as if their word was 100% right. Only after many years did I start to find my own voice and not be afraid to try new things. It's these risks that have been the most rewarding.

We must create our own life or someone will do it for us.

[Liara Covert]

Karl, in taking steps to create your own life, you gain insight into the mysterious nature of love. No human being has ever been able to devise a universally-acceptable and all-encompassing view of love. One might presume that no single explanation for love exists because the experiences you choose shape your evolving awareness. You stretch yourself for the purpose of conscious and unconscious change. This goes further than spiritual growth. Human perception offers no adequate words to define it. You make choices to better understand yourself, however you feel and sense it.

[Grace]

Hi, Liara:

Wonderful advice here. I smiled when I read #4. It reminded me of having to relearn how to parent my children, as they went from "child' to "adolescent' to "teenager' to adult. I've redefined my role in their lives many times over now.

[soulMerlin]

I have been working on point 4 for quite a while - I find it painful
xh

[Liara Covert]

Grace, people tend to reflect back on stages of their lives and have revelations on what they thought necessary or unnecessary. You realize you do not exist to do what other people want you to do. Rather, you exist to discern what you believe makes sense at a given moment and to do it when you choose. No adult, child or force exerts power over your will. You evolve and change as part of your own process of redefining dignity. Love teaches that suffering and change are part of what it means to feel effective as a parent. This is not self-sacrifice or martyrdom. As you choose to learn from your children, you add meaning and depth to your life. In this way, giving your maturing adolescent children more freedom is partly self-serving.

[Liara Covert]

henry, at any moment, every person has choices about how to view conditions. Yet not every person feels he is committed enough, able or willing to meet expectations he places on himself. Commitment is a turning point in the road to self-healing. From the point you decide you can work though a source of discomfort, your process is destined to succeed. You are constantly redefining dignity based on how you shift your focus on your map of reality.

[Mark]

All of your recommendations are great and needed in our growth process. Number 4 is key," Notice you are no longer who you were" is huge. We must acknowledge and accept that we are evolving, that who we are today is not who we were yesterday, and that we do not have to be defined by who we were yesterday! This is so key to our growth.

[Liara Covert]

Mark, your comment reminds me of the idea of a future party. Often, when people get together, the common qustion is, "what do you do?" People evolve to define themselves by work or how they live. And yet, at a future party, each person is supposed to arrive in character, that is, in the mindset of the person they envision being in 5 years. You may imagine you will have realized a particular work project, finished a specific degree, be engaged in missionary work, be living a monestary, or whatever. How you view your future self is how you present yourself at a future party. It is like an acting role, but you evolve into what you believe. It can be a very powerful exercise to stretch this kind of thinking so it is how you perceive yourself in the day-to-day.