Relationship with Self

Honesty, Respect and Self-esteem
Xiaoping Li

This issue continues to illustrate my leadership model:
Self-awareness -> Self-leadership -> Public Relationship -> Public Leadership
After concluding the Self-leadership section last summer, I struggled to write the Public Relationship section. As quality is important to me, I took about 9 months to write this issue. Hope it is a worthy read.

Do you ever talk to yourself? If so, this is one sign that you’re in a relationship with your self – even if that sounds like an odd idea. Developing great relationships with others begins with having a great relationship with your self.

Imagine in your self, there exist lively characters named love, guilt, money, etc., each waiting to be understood and treated appropriately by you. Look at each character and see if you have ignored, misunderstood, or developed a good relationship with it.

One character is Honesty. “I am an honest person!” thinks a man, and he puts on this air to impress others. Once, a cashier mistakenly gave him $20 more in change. He pretended not to notice the mistake and pocketed the change quickly. But his brother-in-law saw this and later asked about it. “I didn’t notice it,” replied this man, ignoring the protest of the Honesty character inside him. His brother-in-law, who had admired this man’s honesty for years, looked at him with a suspicion for the first time.

There are three ways this man could have acted differently to avoid having a dissonant relationship with his Honesty character, and maintain or gain trust from his brother-in-law. To find out what they are, please read the “Answers” section below.

Have you ever reluctantly bent forward to smile at your boss and then felt that you had disrespected your self? To make up the wrong, the next time your boss made a minor mistake, you attacked your boss with contempt. Afterwards, you felt that you behaved badly and you had done a disservice to your self-respect.

Respect is about unconditional acceptance. It has nothing to do with being more important or doing better than others. “With self-respect,” says psychologist Ellen Langer, “we like ourselves because of who we are and not because of what we can or cannot do.” The Respect character in you expects that you accept yourself regardless of your being a subordinate to, or knowing more than, your boss. When you truly accept yourself, you have no need to overly humble yourself or attack others to feel good about yourself.

Throughout my primary, middle and high school years, I was a star in my school. When the schools in China valued revolutionary variety shows, I was a star singer and dancer. When their focus switched to academics, I ranked No. 1 among about 100 classmates every term. I had a “good relationship” with my Self-esteem character. In university I couldn’t rank No. 1 among other top students from many schools. My bad relationship with this character began. As my self-esteem was based on my superiority to my peers, I secretly resented those (including my sister) who achieved more than I did. Now my self-esteem (i.e. my evaluation of my own worth) is based on the effort I make. I can truly feel good about others who have done better than me. (To find out how I changed, please read the “Answers” section below.)

Now can you see how your relationship with the characters inside you may influence your relationship with others? You may examine your relationships with a few characters inside you. You’re welcome to share your discoveries with me. Your sharing will encourage me to continue to share with you my thoughts and ideas.

Answers

I would like to ask you to support my rock climbing friend Ken Allen to reach his goal of raising $5,000 for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation through its 11th Friends for Life Bike Rally from Toronto to Montreal. Please visit Ken’s Sponsor Page to make a donation and let me know that you have done so by e-mail. I will e-mail you the answers.

The Ping Way provides team building and related tranining and coaching services to help realize personal, team, and organizational potential.

Meeting of minds is edited by Jim Gregory.

To ensure that Meeting of Minds will continue to reach you, please subscribe and add us to your safe senders list.