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When I was a kid, my grandparents used to remind me of the Golden Rule of life whenever I wasn’t behaving nicely.
“Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
I used to live by this when I was young, but at one point, I gave up. More often than not, I felt like no one was appreciating my efforts or loving and respecting me the way I deserve it; no one acknowledged my talents, and I noticed that many people took advantage of my kindness. If they don’t return the efforts and take advantage of me, I start to feel dejected and sad, or even frustrated or angry.
I remembered what my elders used to say when this topic came up with my partner the other day. He swears by the Golden Rule and tries to be as nice as possible with people, even when they mistreat him. As for me, for more than a decade now, I live by the opposite, called the Reversed Golden Rule. Which says: “Treat yourself the way you want to be treated.”
I believe the Golden Rule works perfectly, but only when you are with people who also live by it. Otherwise, as it was in my life experience, you’ll end up always placing yourself last and putting others needs and wants first. Wondering why you’re unhappy and unfortunate.
The first time I heard of the Reversed Golden Rule was when I was attending therapy. My therapist asked me, “Well, that’s all nice, thinking of how you treat others and all. But have you ever considered how you treat yourself?”
Honestly, never. My homework that day was to journal about how I treat myself, how I think of me, and how my inner dialogue was. So much of how we view ourselves—our self-confidence, self-esteem—starts with the way we carry on an internal dialogue with ourselves.
The next week’s assignment was even harder: “Can you look within yourself and appreciate yourself first or recognize yourself first? Do you see yourself doubting more than appreciating yourself? ” my therapist asked. She made a point.
I realized I carried so much self-doubt, criticism for myself, negative inner dialogue, unrealistic expectations, and even self-hatred. Yet, I was wondering why others mirrored the same back to me.
My therapist explained that we falsely call that being humble and nice, but in reality, we are not believing in ourselves but expect others to believe in us, and when they don’t, we blame everyone but ourselves.
As children, we are often taught that placing ourselves first is selfish. But while we are learning how to treat others, we forget to treat ourselves in the right way. In reality, treating ourselves should come first (as the other cliché says “you can’t pour from an empty cup”). This is simply being “self-aware,” knowing your worth, treating yourself with self-respect.
If you do not respect yourself, you won’t be able to set up boundaries to protect yourself, so no wonder why others won’t respect you either and just push you to see how far they can go for their own benefit.
The energy around you is real. I can state this from my own experience based on how people perceive me and treat me these days compared to how it was, let’s say a decade ago. To be honest, nothing much changed except that I treat myself with respect, love, care, and compassion. I still have a long way to go when it comes to believing in my own talents and skills, setting boundaries, and so on, but it’s a work in progress.
Now, there’s an important thing: let’s not confuse The Reversed Golden Rule with arrogance. You have to be humble toward others while still treating yourself right. In fact, the Golden Rule can still be applied after you’ve applied the Reverse Rule first. Treat yourself right first, but still treat others the right way. And I am not talking about walking around egoistically, telling everyone how great you are, how much you love yourself, and such. What I am saying here is nothing new or never said before, but I still see people self-sabotaging themselves and their life and creations.
It’s easier to be said than done, especially if your foundation isn’t the best. For me, it needed years and years of conscious, daily practice to build up where I am today, and I am still working on it. To be able to treat myself right, I had to learn to internally talk to myself the right way.
So let’s take a look at a few things that can help you on this journey (this is based on the work I did with my therapist):
Diagnose your internal dialogue.
Think of the way you narrate and comment your life, how you talk to yourself when you are alone, and the first reactions that pop up in your head. All of that is part of your internal conversation with yourself. Most of the time, you may not be aware of your internal dialogue. However, pausing to reflect on how you’re communicating with yourself will encourage you to notice the role it plays in your life, and from that point on, it will get more easy to catch it and change it. Personally, I realized (and some days I still do) that my inner dialogue sounds exactly as my super critical and judgmental person in my life, which has nothing to do with me.
Be more mindful of your thoughts and how they influence your actions.
Are those thoughts influencing your outward behavior in a positive way or a negative way? If the latter, your internal dialogue might affect you and your actions in an unfavorable way. For example, they can make you become hesitant about pursuing goals, make choices that are not in your best interest, get you stuck in places or with people when you know you should have left long time ago, and so on. The negative thoughts are really just manipulative thoughts that can hold you back from being the best version of yourself, living your best life.
Break the cycle of your biggest critic.
Change in your internal dialogue leads to a major attitude shift and will affect your life in ways. Many people will not like what they see, but be reminded: those people who are upset with you changing for your good are the ones who benefit from your old version of self. Loving, supporting people will not mind if you start to treat yourself right and change in the positive way, even if it means having more boundaries toward them.
But to get here in the first place, you’ll need to change your relationship toward yourself first. I really struggled with this, so my therapist advised to always stop and ask myself: “How would I treat my best friend in this situation?” And apply the answer to myself. Start by treating yourself with some self-compassion: give yourself a break when needed, make a list of things you’re doing well today, and practice patience toward yourself.
Crowd out negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
Some days, it feels like I only have negative thoughts, but those are the days when I need to do the work the most. I try as hard as I can to pick one thing that I see is positive about myself and the situation I am in. Then, find another…and another. Then to crowd out those negative words, I love to play positive affirmations because when I pay attention to some podcast or playlist, I have no space in my head for thinking about negative sh*t and complaining like my life depends on it. Then I like to take an inventory within myself to validate those affirmations because my mind takes them in better when they have truth in them. It takes practice, but you’ll find reasons why the affirmation actually applies to you, whatever it says.
Hopefully, this will guide you toward healing and creating a better inner dialogue, which will result in better ways of treating and respecting yourself. And trust me, once you know how to love and treat yourself right, you’ll attract the right people and situations into your life, and the difference between the two will me jaw-dropping.
Don’t get discouraged if the shift is not immediate and takes more effort and time than you’d like it; it is definitely worth it.
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