I like to break stuff down into bite sized, digestible pieces to help understand things deeper. You might be wondering how to give respect to someone and also why and how you like someone to provide you with respect.
So respect to me is when I elevate a thought, belief or desire that is important to someone else because they are important to me. Sometimes the people are simply acquaintances and other times they’re the most important person on the planet to us. The stakes are much higher when it’s someone we really care about and that mean a lot to us. We’ve all felt disrespected and it’s not at the top of the list of things I want to recreate and experience over and over.
Connection is sooo important here. Without connection we can’t have a very deep understanding of a person and without that although not required often we don’t empathize. Without some curiosity it’s pretty tough to come to a clear, deeper knowledge about a person. If we don’t know them it’s hard have respect. I think you get it.
I think it can be pretty easy for us to discount the thoughts of someone that is merely an acquaintance. And… it’s also pretty painful and creates extreme tension when we’re at odds with someone that is extremely important to us. Along the lines of human interface we come up against differences in meaning, wants, preferences, desires etc. etc. This is a part of life. It’s on you to figure out how to harness the place inside yourself to be nice and respect people that you don’t know very well.
How do we make sense of “elegantly” balancing what we want with what someone else in our life wants? We need elevate our connection to the person rather than our own individual preferences. We make the connection itself paramount. We remember why the person is important to us and even more we remember why the connection is so valuable to us.
Curiosity is also an important ingredient and precursor to respect. We can always be asking ourselves “why” in any situation where we come up against competing ideas with another person. Why do they feel this way? Why is this important to them? Why is this important to me? What’s is at stake for me?